Why are we still losing soldiers to bandits in 2025?

By Kebbi Daily News on Fri Oct 17 2025

The burial in Zuru was more than a military rite. It was a national mirror. A reflection of courage buried too soon and leadership that must now answer hard questions.

Last week, the sun in Zuru, Kebbi State, rose heavy — not because of heat, but because of grief. Three soldiers from the Dakkarawa Barracks were laid to rest, their coffins wrapped in the nation’s flag, their comrades standing motionless, eyes locked in that distant stare soldiers wear when duty collides with death. The Emir of Zuru, His Royal Highness Sanusi Mikailu, Sami Gomo III, attended the burial — his presence a quiet reminder that even in tradition, we still ache for justice and order.

There are moments in a nation’s story when silence is more dangerous than war. This is one of them. Because beneath the solemn prayers, beneath the tears that fall into red dust, lies a truth we’ve refused to confront: Nigeria is bleeding, and our bravest are dying on the margins of maps that too many leaders no longer visit.

The fallen were not statistics. They were men with stories — sons, brothers, fathers. They faced bandits in the rugged stretches of Zuru Emirate, a region that has, once again, become a frontier of fear. Unashi. Bena. Wasagu. Sakaba. Dakitakwas. These are not just dots on a security report — they are battlefields where the thin line between civilization and chaos is being redrawn every day. And if we continue pretending it’s not our problem, one morning we’ll wake up to find that line erased completely.

Let’s be clear: what’s happening in Zuru Emirate is not “banditry.” It’s territorial assertion. It’s organized violence driven by profit, impunity, and the slow collapse of state presence in rural Nigeria. These so-called bandits are no longer just criminals; they’re occupiers. They’ve established shadow economies, imposed illegal taxes — millions of naira extorted from terrified villages — and carved out spheres of influence where government authority used to stand.

In social theory, Max Weber defined the state as “the entity that holds the monopoly on legitimate use of force.” But here, that monopoly has fractured. What happens when non-state actors become the enforcers, when the taxman is armed, and when the soldier’s gun is the last symbol of resistance? We are no longer just talking about insecurity. We are talking about sovereignty — slipping, bleeding, bargaining for air.

And yet, at the center of this storm, are men and women in uniform who keep showing up. They fight not because it’s easy or glamorous, but because they made an oath — one that doesn’t bend with fear. They are deployed to forests and border towns that barely exist on our national agenda, and they stand guard in places where the rest of us would rather forget. When they fall, we write short headlines. But to their families, the war never ends.

The burial in Zuru was more than a military rite. It was a national mirror. A reflection of courage buried too soon and leadership that must now answer hard questions. Why are we still losing soldiers to bandits in 2025? Why are local governments like Danko Wasagu and Sakaba becoming recurring targets of violent raids? Why are the same towns — Unashi, Bena, Wasagu, Dakitakwas — appearing in dispatches year after year with no decisive end?

To understand this crisis, we must admit something uncomfortable: Nigeria’s security strategy has often been reactive, not proactive. We mourn after the attack. We send reinforcements after the village burns. We promise reform after the coffins return. It’s the politics of aftermath — governing by condolence. But wars aren’t won by mourning; they’re won by momentum.

Proactivity in security isn’t just about deploying troops; it’s about intelligence, coordination, and community trust. It’s about ensuring that local vigilantes, traditional leaders, and military commanders share a single, unified channel of information. It’s about cutting off the financial lifelines of these criminal networks — the same networks that now “tax” villages like small governments. And it’s about restoring hope, because despair is the soil where terror grows.

Here’s the brutal irony: for every soldier buried, there’s a village that feels more abandoned. For every headline about a counter-operation, there’s a farmer who decides not to plant this season because the road to his farm has become a death route. The economy of fear is expanding, and it’s bankrupting the moral contract between citizens and the state.

And still, somehow, amid the chaos, there is dignity. At the burial, one officer whispered a quiet prayer for his fallen comrades. He didn’t shout or curse or blame. He simply said, “We’ll hold the line.” Those four words — simple, defiant — carry more patriotism than a thousand campaign speeches. They remind us that the spirit of Nigeria is not dead; it’s just buried under bureaucracy, waiting to breathe again.

This tragedy also forces us to revisit a fundamental theory in governance — the “Social Contract,” popularized by thinkers like Rousseau and Locke. The idea is that citizens surrender certain freedoms to the state in exchange for protection and order. But when the state fails to protect, the contract cracks. In Zuru, that contract is no longer theoretical; it’s broken glass. Villagers who pay “taxes” to bandits are not doing so by choice. They are negotiating survival in a vacuum of governance.

Let’s not romanticize this moment. The soldiers who died were not martyrs in a movie. They were casualties of a system that reacts too late and invests too little in intelligence, equipment, and community resilience. Their sacrifice demands accountability — not pity. Because if their deaths don’t trigger reform, then we are complicit in the repetition.

But here’s where hope flickers. The presence of Emir Sanusi Mikailu at the burial was not just ceremonial. It symbolized unity — the reminder that tradition, government, and military must work together. Security is not just a job for the armed forces; it’s a collective covenant. The people of Zuru Emirate have endured enough to deserve that collaboration — between chiefs and commanders, between local councils and central authority.

The time for “urgent action” isn’t tomorrow. It’s now. Security agencies must adopt predictive intelligence — identifying patterns before attacks happen, not after. The government must empower local defense systems legally, not leave them in a grey zone of improvisation. And above all, leadership must stop treating rural insecurity as a regional issue. What burns in Zuru today can spread to Sokoto, to Zamfara, to Niger — because fear doesn’t need borders.

We cannot rebuild faith with speeches. We must rebuild it with safety. And that means drawing a clear line in the sand: these territories belong to Nigeria, not to bandits, not to criminal warlords, not to the tyranny of fear.

As the final salute echoed in the Dakkarawa Barracks, a hush settled over the crowd. Mothers wept. Soldiers stood tall. The flag was folded — not as an end, but as a reminder. A reminder that our freedom, fragile as it is, still depends on the courage of those who defend it.

May the souls of our fallen heroes rest in peace. But may their sacrifice also awaken the living — to act, to protect, and to finally win back the peace we keep postponing. Because nations don’t die when soldiers fall. They die when leaders stop learning from it.