A criminal gang killed nine farmers on Friday in Nigeria’s Zamfara state, the epicentre of the country’s violent cattle rustling and kidnapping crisis, an official and two residents said.

Motorcycle-riding “bandits” — as the gang members are locally known — rounded up a group of farmers working their fields outside Jangebe village in Talata Mafara district, kidnapping around 15 others, the sources said.

Armed gangs across Nigeria have taken root across its rural hinterlands amid poverty and government neglect. They raid, loot and burn villages, exact taxes, and conduct kidnappings for ransom.

“Bandits attacked the farmers and killed nine of them,” Yahaya Yari Abubakar, political administrator of Talata Mafara district, told AFP.

“The attackers kidnapped around 15 other farmers, and they are yet to make contact,” said Abubakar, who attended the funeral of the nine who were killed.

The victims included the head of the village’s vigilante self-defence group and his five comrades, along with three residents, said Abu Zaki, a Jangebe resident.

“Everybody is now afraid of going to the farm for fear of being attacked,” said another resident, Bello Ahmadu, who gave the same toll.

The village was the scene in 2021 of the mass abduction of more than 300 girls from a boarding school.

The girls were freed days later after authorities made a ransom payment.

Nigeria’s bandits maintain camps in a huge forest straddling Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna and Niger states, in unrest that evolved from clashes between herders and farmers over land and resources into a broader conflict fuelled by arms trafficking.

Increasing cooperation between the criminal gangs, who are primarily motivated by financial gains, and jihadists — who are waging a separate, 16-year-old-armed insurrection in the northeast — has compounded the situation and seen attacks worsen.

Zamfara’s state government has recruited vigilantes and anti-jihadist militias to assist the military in fighting the gangs.

Last month, vigilantes, with the aid of Nigeria’s secret police, killed around 100 bandits when they raided the enclave of a bandit kingpin in the state’s Shinkafi district, according officials.