Abstract
Banditry have in most recent times in Niger State become a major hindrance to the socio-economic development especially in rural communities which intensifies poverty and affect rural infrastructural development. The study investigated banditry dynamics and its socio-economic effects on poverty levels and rural infrastructural development in Niger state, Nigeria. The state fragility theory by Robert I. Rotberg was adopted to explain the pattern and magnitude of banditry and its attendant effects on poverty and infrastructural development. The study subscribed to primary sources of data collection where self-administered questionnaire buttressed with secondary source dominate the instruments for data collection while descriptive statistics was utilized as techniques for data analysis. Deducing from the data generated, the study discovered that bandits in Niger State heavily rely on motorcycles for swift attacks and escape and they often carry out their attacks more frequently during dry seasons when access roads are usable. It was further found that banditry operations in Niger State results in high rate of displacement as well as increase in poverty headcount ratio in Niger State’s rural communities of Munya, Mashegu, Magama, Paikoro, and Lapai which are considered the hotspots of banditry operations in Niger state. It concluded that the crisis of banditry threatens every sphere of socio-economic development indices and if security is not assured, myriad of challenges which affects the people’s socioeconomic development will arise. In concordance to the above findings, the study recommended that Federal Government of Nigeria and Niger State Government should jointly work assiduously towards intensifying anti-banditry security operations especially during dry seasons in order to nip in the bud all forms of operational nature of banditry as well as to pave way for socioeconomic development in the state. Furthermore, there is need for grassroots inclusive poverty alleviation programme to enhance infrastructural development in the rural areas affected by banditry in Niger state.
Keywords: Bandits, Niger, Poverty, Infrastructure, Development.
Author Name(s):
Inuwa, Abdallah Magaji
Department of Political Science, Faculty of
Social Sciences, Nasarawa State University, Keffi.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1792-0573
Assoc. Prof. Ruth Caleb Luka
Department of Political Science, Faculty of
Social Sciences, Nasarawa State University, Keffi.
Dr. Aminu Ibrahim
Department of Political Science, Faculty of
Social Sciences, Nasarawa State University, Keffi.
Assoc. Prof. Abdullahi Mohammed Abdul
Department of Political Science, Faculty of
Social Sciences, Nasarawa State University, Keffi.
DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23088202
Copyright © [2026] The Author(s). Published by the Journal of People and Worldviews (JPW). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are properly credited.