The Zamfara State Police Command said Wednesday that security forces killed 600 bandits and rescued 2,000 hostages during 45 major anti-banditry operations conducted over the past year, pushing back against an intelligence report that questioned the scale of the state’s counter-insurgency campaign.
In a statement signed by command spokesperson DSP Yazid Abubakar, police said the operations — carried out jointly by Police Tactical Operatives, the Violent Crime Response Unit, the Anti-Bomb Squad and military units — also recovered more than 3,500 cattle and 277 sheep stolen by bandits, which were returned to their owners. The command said over 30,000 people displaced by violence, including residents of Fegin Kanawa, Fegin Mahe and Yarkatsinan Laka, had since returned to their communities.
The statement was issued in response to a report by the intelligence firm SBM Intelligence, which claimed only four anti-kidnapping operations were conducted in Zamfara between July 2025 and June 2026. Abubakar said the figures cited in that report did not reflect the true scale of security operations undertaken in the state, while acknowledging that banditry and kidnapping remain severe problems there.
The police command did not provide a breakdown of casualties or hostages by individual operation. Zamfara has been one of the epicenters of Nigeria’s northwest banditry crisis, with armed groups engaged in kidnapping for ransom, cattle rustling and village raids across the state’s forested terrain for years.
