A coordinated, intelligence-led operation by the Department of State Services, DSS, working alongside community vigilantes and locally trained hunters, has resulted in the killing of more than 60 suspected bandits in Bakori Local Government Area of Katsina State, security sources have confirmed.
Among those neutralized was Idi Abasu Aiki, a notorious bandit kingpin long linked to a string of deadly raids across Nigeria’s troubled Northwest, particularly in Katsina and neighbouring Zamfara State. Also killed were 14 of his top commanders, according to sources familiar with the operation.
According to security sources, more than 200 heavily armed bandits, led personally by Aiki and reinforced by fighters loyal to the Ado Aleru faction operating out of Zamfara State, descended on Guga village in Bakori LGA. Their target, sources said, was communities suspected of supporting the Community Watch Corps — the local defence outfit credited with protecting villages across the axis.
“Over 200 armed bandits led by kingpin Idi Abasu Aiki stormed Guga village in Bakori LGA of Katsina State,” one security source disclosed. “Assisted by several bandits from the Ado Aleru band in Zamfara State, the bandits were out to attack communities they believed had been supporting Community Watch Corps protecting the surrounding villages.”
The attack, sources said, was a reprisal mission. Early last month, the same group had suffered heavy casualties at Dawan Laila village, also in Bakori LGA, after clashing with local hunters. Humiliated by that defeat, the bandits regrouped with the aim of dislodging the frontline community defence group before unleashing mass violence on surrounding villages.
But the raid never went as planned.
“Unknown to the bandits, the DSS had water-tight intelligence plans,” the source said. “The over 200 armed bandits literally walked into a trap. Over 60 of them, including Idi Abasu Aiki and 14 of their top commanders, didn’t come out of that trap alive.”
Four members of the community vigilante and hunter groups also lost their lives in the exchange, sources confirmed.
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Another security source said the DSS and its supporting units launched a large-scale clearance operation in the aftermath of the ambush, sweeping the area to recover abandoned weapons, ammunition, motorcycles and other items of concern left behind by the fleeing bandits.
A Long Trail of TerrorÂ
The killing of Aiki marks one of the most significant blows against organised banditry in the Northwest in recent years. Katsina and Zamfara have for over a decade been the epicentre of a bandit insurgency that has evolved from cattle rustling and rural feuds into industrial-scale kidnappings, village raids and mass killings.
Aiki’s name had, over the years, featured in intelligence briefings on cross-border attacks, mass abductions and reprisal killings along the Katsina–Zamfara corridor. His alleged partnership with Ado Aleru — himself one of the most wanted bandit leaders in the region — had made the axis one of the most volatile flashpoints in northern Nigeria.
Successive military and police-led operations, including Operation Hadarin Daji and various joint task-force deployments, have targeted bandit enclaves in the Rugu, Kamara and Sububu forests spanning Katsina, Zamfara and Kaduna states.
But it is the growing effectiveness of community-based defence outfits — vigilantes, Community Watch Corps and volunteer hunters, often equipped with locally made weapons and deep knowledge of the terrain — that has increasingly turned the tide in several LGAs.
The Bakori ambush appears to reinforce a shift in tactics: pairing DSS intelligence with community manpower on the ground. Security analysts have long argued that until locals are integrated into formal counter-banditry strategy, kinetic operations alone will not permanently degrade bandit networks.
Residents of Bakori and surrounding communities, who have endured years of raids, abductions and forced displacement, reportedly greeted news of Aiki’s death with cautious relief — mindful that the bandit economy in the Northwest is a hydra, and that the fall of one kingpin has often only opened space for another.
Crediblenewsng.com
