Displaced Zamfara Woman Describes Fleeing Bandit Attack That Emptied Her Village
A 55-year-old internally displaced woman from Zamfara State has given a harrowing account of a bandit attack that forced her and her family to flee their community, describing conditions so severe that a nearby village was left completely deserted, with, in her words, not even a chicken remaining behind.
Speaking to the BBC over the weekend, the woman, identified only as Fatima, described the impossible choice facing residents caught in banditry-hit communities across the state: being shot if they attempt to flee, or abducted if they remain. She said bandits struck her community at around 2am, dividing themselves into three groups to surround the village from multiple directions, with one group positioned at the entrance, another moving into the community itself, and a third stationed behind the settlement to cut off any escape route. “If you run into a room, they set the room on fire, and if you come out and try to run, they shoot you,” she said, describing the terrifying calculus residents were forced to make in the moment.
Fatima said she fled with other residents and their children into a nearby forest, which became a makeshift refuge for those escaping the violence. She recalled the chaos of trying to keep children together amid the panic, saying that anyone unable to locate their own child in the confusion would simply carry a neighbour’s instead. Describing the aftermath, she said one nearby village had since become entirely deserted, its residents having fled en masse, leaving nothing behind, not even livestock.
The displaced residents eventually made their way to Gusau, the Zamfara State capital, where Fatima now lives in a temporary camp alongside her seven children, aged between nine and 30. She described conditions at the camp as extremely difficult, citing inadequate shelter, insufficient food and assistance that arrives only sporadically. Reflecting on how drastically her family’s circumstances have changed, she said they had once been comfortable when peace prevailed in their community, but had since been reduced to begging to survive, breaking down in tears as she spoke.
Fatima also disclosed that displaced children at the camp are sometimes sent out to gather firewood for sale, in an effort to raise money for food, a practice that has itself proven dangerous. She said bandits had abducted 22 children who had gone out on one such firewood-gathering trip.
Fatima’s testimony adds to a growing body of accounts from displaced residents across Zamfara and neighbouring northwestern states, where banditry and mass abductions have continued to displace communities and disrupt livelihoods for well over a decade, despite ongoing security operations in the region. Her account offers a rare, direct window into the human toll of a crisis that has forced thousands of families from their homes and into overcrowded camps with limited resources across the state capital and beyond.
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