Fifty Nigerians Massacred in Binnari, and the State Looks Away

Fifty dead. On a Friday. In a rural village in eastern Nigeria, Binnari, in the northeast of Taraba State. Men on motorcycles swept in on the residents, opened fire, looted the shops, and rode off, leaving behind bodies that were counted at first light and counted again as more were found. The toll rose day by day. Every number is a family that will never eat together again.

How many more times will we shrug when we read the word "bandits"? The word has become so familiar that it sounds like bad weather, something that simply happens. But it does not fall from the sky. It names specific men: organized, armed, who extort taxes from farmers and from mining sites, who kidnap, ransom, and kill, and who know that no patrol will arrive before nightfall. The word protects the people responsible. It never protects the victims.

The facts are stubborn. For years, northeastern Nigeria has endured a jihadist insurgency. Taraba State faces gangs driven by money rather than ideology, which makes the threat even more cynical: these are not martyrs, they are entrepreneurs of terror. In the northwest and the centre of the country, powerful gangs confront a police force and an army stretched past their limits, in rural areas that take hours to reach. There, villagers pay twice: once to a state that does not come, and once to bandits who come far too often.

Let us recall what this country has already paid. In 2014, Chibok tore 276 schoolgirls from their families, and a decade later the question haunting their parents is still the same: where are they? In 2024, in Kuriga, in Kaduna State, hundreds of schoolchildren and civilians were abducted in broad daylight. And in the 2010s, in Zamfara, illegal gold mining poisoned hundreds of children with lead, and their families never received justice. Each time, the script repeats itself: the alarm comes late, the security forces arrive late or not at all, official figures minimise the toll, and forgetting does the rest.

We cannot accept this logic. A country of more than two hundred million people cannot rely on a few hundred thousand police officers to cover its territory, especially when part of that force is assigned to protecting urban elites. Security is the first duty of the state. When it fails, everything else collapses: the school closes, the market empties, the farmer gives up on planting, the young person takes the road to the clandestine mine or the gang. Bandits are not only killers. They are the visible proof that the social contract has been torn apart.

We must also look squarely at the economy that feeds this violence. Where gold mining is illegal, there are no titles, no transparent taxes, no environmental oversight. There are armed networks dividing up de facto concessions, and middlemen supplying the weapons. Who buys this gold? Who supplies the motorcycles, the rifles, the fuel? As long as these questions go unanswered in public, violence will remain a profitable industry. Serious investigations into illicit flows must stop being the exception and become the rule.

Whether we are talking about Nigeria or the rest of the continent, we know the difference between a state that protects and a state that is preyed upon. Botswana built its prosperity on relatively transparent management of its resources, with institutions that held firm against temptation. Mauritius turned the rule of law into a competitive advantage, attracting investors and talent because contracts are respected there. Senegal, despite its challenges, has shown that peaceful alternation of power is possible when citizens demand accountability. These are not paradises. They are proof that African success is not a utopia, but an institutional choice.

So here is what Nigeria must do, and quickly. First, adopt constitutional reform that allows for the creation of state police forces under democratic control, modelled on existing regional arrangements such as Amotekun in the southwest, on the condition that they are accountable to local assemblies and to the courts. Second, shut down illegal gold-mining sites, issue transparent mining licences, and publish the revenues, so that mining enriches the state instead of financing gangs. Third, ban the informal levies imposed on villagers, and prosecute those who collect them the way one would prosecute any extortionist. Fourth, publish the findings on attacks within 72 hours, with the names of the victims, and compensate the families. A tragedy that we refuse to count is a tragedy we are preparing to repeat.

Regional actors have their part to play too. ECOWAS and the African Union must make rural security a priority on their agenda, with intelligence-sharing mechanisms and technical support, without ever handing over to foreign powers the sovereignty that belongs to the peoples of this continent. Civil society, traditional rulers, the churches and mosques of Taraba can organise early warning and community surveillance, provided these arrangements are governed by law and not left to vengeance.

And citizens? You must demand, relentlessly, what the state owes you. Ask your lawmakers where the state police bill stands. Ask the governor of Taraba for the exact number of police officers and soldiers deployed in the northeast of the state, and why they did not arrive in time in Binnari. Demand from the federal government a public inquiry, with its conclusions published. Share the facts, name the places, and refuse the word "bandits" used as a smokescreen. A democracy that does not protect its villages is not a democracy. It is an empty promise.

Fifty dead in Binnari. How many names must we still learn by heart before our leaders understand that this is not a minor news item? We are not condemned to this violence. We are not condemned to powerlessness. We are a people who have already defeated apartheid, driven out dictatorships, and voted for change. What we lack is not courage. It is collective demand. So let us demand, now, that every village in Nigeria be protected by a state that answers for its actions, and that the names of Binnari never fall into oblivion.

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL