The incredibly high crime rates recorded in Northwest Nigeria are alarming. The region also has exceptionally high rates of common correlates of crime, including illicit drug use, broken families and children who are out of school, which makes it even more crucial to investigate the factors that contribute to the present predicaments. The dearth of research on the socioeconomic root cause of armed banditry is the motivation of the study. The purpose of this study is to explore the socioeconomic factors of armed banditry in Northwest Nigeria.
This study is quantitative and cross-sectional and uses primary data by surveying 700 bandits/inmates serving in Katsina and Zamfara state prisons through a multi-step sampling technique. A multinomial logit model was used to analyze the data, using social disorganization theory as a guide.
The multinomial logit results indicated that employment status, family disruption, family background, marital status and educational attainment are negatively significantly related to kidnapping, property crime, rape and robbery. At the same time, the father’s employment, family size and drug consumption are positively related to committing kidnapping, property crime and robbery.
The chosen participants portray diverse exposures to armed banditry in Nigeria. For this study, the authors do not involve other victims of terrorist groups, such as Boko Haram in the Northeast, militant groups in the South-South and Indigenous People of Biafra in the Southeast, as the scope of the survey was limited to Northwest Nigeria. Future research could use a much larger sample from other regions that reflects the country’s demographic diversity. Also, future researchers can sufficiently compare the results in diverse contextual and social circumstances.
This research has explored the socioeconomic factors influencing armed banditry in NWN. The findings of this study will be helpful in policymaking for the appropriate policies to address the socioeconomic issues that have previously been used to justify resorting to violence, institutionalizing family affairs, proscribing banditry, criminalizing child neglect and considering the need for religious institutions and traditional leaders to take a constructive role in community affairs.
The outcomes are ground-breaking by empirically investigating, identifying and evaluating the socioeconomic factors that ultimately serve as incentives for armed banditry in the NWN and establishing statistical significance between socioeconomic variables and crimes.
