BANDITRY AND AGRICULTURAL LIVELIHOODS IN KATSINA STATE: AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT OF JIBIA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, 2016–2024

Abstract

This study investigates the socioeconomic ramifications of rural banditry on agricultural productivity in Jibia Local Government Area (LGA) of Katsina State, Nigeria from 2016 to 2024. While existing scholarship predominantly emphasizes the humanitarian and physical security dimensions of the Northwest crisis, the micro-level political economy of food production systems remains under-researched. Grounded in Daniel Bell's Queer Ladder Theory (QLT), this article examines how armed criminality functions as an alternative mechanism for socioeconomic accumulation in an environment characterized by ungoverned borderlands and institutional fragility. Adopting a qualitative case study design, primary empirical data were generated through fourteen key informant and in-depth interviews with village heads, displaced farming household heads, agricultural extension officers, and local vigilante commanders across seven wards in Jibia LGA. The findings demonstrate that armed groups have transitioned from opportunistic cattle rustling to systematic predatory extraction, enforcing farm-access levies, burning crop silos, and disrupting the Jibia Irrigation Scheme. This systematic predation has induced widespread farm abandonment, escalated rural food insecurity, and disrupted trans-border grain trade between Katsina and the Maradi Region of Niger Republic. The study concludes that sustainable agricultural revival in frontline LGAs necessitates moving beyond reactive kinetic military deployments toward intelligence-led border interdiction, anti-extortion protection corridors, and community-embedded peacebuilding architectures.