FG Reaffirms Commitment to Strengthening Environmental Governance

By: Michael Mike

The Federal Government has reaffirmed its commitment to strengthening environmental governance and improving the delivery of internationally funded environmental projects in the country.

The commitment was made on Monday in Abuja as the National Capacity Building Workshop on Project Oversight for the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Operational Focal Point and Implementing Partners commenced.

Declaring the workshop opened, the Minister of Environment, Balarabe Abbas Lawal, described the programme as timely and strategic, noting that Nigeria continues to grapple with a range of environmental challenges, including desertification, plastic pollution, biodiversity loss, oil contamination in the Niger Delta, and the growing impacts of climate change.

The Minister, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Mahmud Kambari stressed that addressing these challenges requires not only access to global environmental financing but also strong institutional capacity for effective planning, implementation, monitoring, and oversight of projects.

He acknowledged the Global Environment Facility (GEF) as a long-standing development partner, highlighting its significant contributions to biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, sustainable land management, and community-based environmental initiatives across the country, while noting that GEF-supported interventions have helped conserve hundreds of indigenous plant species, promote sustainable forest management, and support renewable energy and energy-efficiency initiatives aligned with Nigeria’s climate action goals.

Lawal further emphasized the role of GEF projects in addressing land degradation and enhancing food security through sustainable agriculture and landscape restoration. He cited flagship interventions that integrate nature-based solutions with livelihood resilience as clear examples of how environmental protection can be linked to socio-economic development.

The Minister also commended initiatives such as GEF GOLD+, which promotes mercury-free artisanal gold mining, and integrated landscape management projects in the Niger Delta aimed at transforming cocoa and palm oil production systems.

In the welcome remarks from the office of the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Environment, the importance of strong project oversight in translating GEF funding into measurable and lasting environmental outcomes was underscored.

The remarks which was read by the Director Planning, Research and Statistics in the Ministry, Agnes Aneke noted that the workshop was designed to strengthen Nigeria’s engagement with the GEF and ensure that stakeholders are fully equipped to manage the country’s project portfolio in line with international best practices.

Aneke also noted that Nigeria has benefited from over three decades of partnership with the GEF, with interventions spanning biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and adaptation, land degradation control, international waters management, and the reduction of chemicals and waste. However, he emphasized that funding alone is not sufficient, stressing the need for effective coordination, technical competence, and robust monitoring and evaluation systems.

She said the Nigeria-focused training directly addresses the country’s pressing environmental challenges, including desertification, plastic waste proliferation, oil pollution in the Niger Delta, biodiversity loss, and increasing climate risks, while . explaining that participants would, over the two-day workshop, deepen their understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the GEF Operational Focal Point, implementing agencies, and other stakeholders, while also strengthening skills in reporting, communication, project visibility, and results-based management.

The workshop was organized by the Federal Ministry of Environment in collaboration with the Global Environment Facility, with technical support from the Tropical Biology Association (TBA). It builds on lessons from a recent regional training held in Ghana and is expected to enhance transparency, accountability, and overall performance in the implementation of GEF-supported projects in Nigeria.

Participants were drawn from government institutions, implementing agencies, civil society organizations, and convention focal points were urged to engage actively in the sessions, share experiences, and develop practical oversight strategies that align with Nigeria’s national development and environmental priorities.

The two-day workshop is expected to contribute to improved project performance, stronger partnerships, and more effective environmental interventions across the country.

FG Reaffirms Commitment to Strengthening Environmental Governance

Seven dead, five injured in multiple-vehicle crash along Lokoja–Abuja highway

By: Zagazola Makama

At least seven persons were killed and five others injured on Tuesday morning in a multiple-vehicle collision along the Lokoja–Abuja highway near Gadabiu Village, Kwali Local Government Area of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Sources told Zagazola Makama that the accident occurred at about 9:00 a.m. when a Howo truck, with registration number ANC 665 XA, driven by one Adamu of Tafa Local Government Area, Kaduna State, lost control and rammed into three stationary vehicles parked along the road.

The affected vehicles included a Golf 3 (GWA 162 KZ), another Golf and a Sharon vehicle.The drivers of the three stationary vehicles are yet to be identified.

The sources said the Howo truck had been travelling from Okaki in Kogi State to Tafa LGA in Kaduna State when the incident occurred. Seven victims reportedly died on the spot, while five sustained various degrees of injuries, including fractures.

The injured were rushed to Abaji General Hospital, where they are receiving treatment. The corpses of the deceased have been released to their families for burial according to Islamic rites.

The police have advised motorists to exercise caution on highways and called on drivers to ensure their vehicles are roadworthy to prevent similar accidents in the future.

Seven dead, five injured in multiple-vehicle crash along Lokoja–Abuja highway

How misdiagnosis, narratives are fuelling Nigeria’s banditry escalation

By: Zagazola Makama

Nigeria’s banditry crisis is no longer escalating simply because armed groups are growing bolder. It is escalating because the country continues to misdiagnose the threat, apply blunt policy tools to differentiated actors, and unintentionally feed a violent criminal economy through ransom payments, politicised narratives and delayed state consolidation.

Across the North-West and parts of the North-Central, banditry has evolved beyond rural violence into a structured, profit-driven security threat. Yet public debate remains trapped between emotional appeals for dialogue and absolutist calls for force, leaving little room for the strategic clarity required to halt the violence.

At the heart of the escalation is money. Banditry today survives on a diversified revenue architecture that includes ransom payments, cattle rustling, illegal mining, arms trafficking, extortion levies on farming and mining communities, and collaboration with transnational criminal networks. Each successful kidnapping or “peace levy” reinforces the viability of violence as a business model.

Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in December 2024 underlined the scale of this economy with the North-West accounting for the highest number of kidnap incidents and victims.

Zagazola argue that as long as communities remain unprotected and ransom payments continue as a survival strategy, banditry will regenerate faster than military operations can suppress it. This is not ideology-driven violence at its core; it is cash-flow-driven criminality as every payment funds the next attack.

Another accelerant is Nigeria’s persistent failure to differentiate categories of armed actors. Security assessments increasingly point to at least two distinct groups operating within the banditry ecosystem.

The first consists of low-level, defensive armed actors, often rural residents who acquired weapons after suffering attacks and whose violence is reactive rather than predatory. The second group comprises entrenched, profit-driven bandit networks responsible for mass kidnappings, village destruction, sexual violence, arms trafficking and territorial control.

Yet public discourse and policy responses frequently collapse these actors into a single category of “bandits,” resulting in indiscriminate dialogue offers, blanket amnesty rhetoric or, conversely, broad-brush security operations that alienate communities. This conceptual error, allows high-value criminal leaders to masquerade as aggrieved actors while exploiting negotiations to buy time, regroup and rearm.

Dialogue has repeatedly been applied in contexts where the state lacks coercive leverage. Experiences in Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Kaduna states and parts of the North-West show a consistent pattern: temporary reductions in violence following peace deals, followed by rapid relapse and escalation. Officials who participated in the dialogue have openly acknowledged that many agreements collapsed within months.

The negotiations conducted without sustained military pressure, intelligence dominance and post-agreement enforcement mechanisms merely incentivise armed groups to pause tactically. When criminals negotiate from a position of strength, dialogue becomes appeasement.

Perhaps the most dangerous accelerant is the ethnicisation of banditry. Although criminal gangs include actors of identifiable ethnic backgrounds, the violence itself is not driven by ethnic grievance. Nonetheless, selective media framing and political rhetoric like what had been witnessed in Plateau have increasingly cast banditry through identity lenses, particularly in farmer–herder contexts.

This framing obscures the criminal logic of the violence and deepens mistrust between communities that are themselves victims. In Nigeria today, the fulani herdsmen and pastoralists communities are being weaponized and stereotyped as bandits. This dangerous persecution has strengthens bandit recruitment narratives, allowing criminal leaders to cloak profit-driven violence in claims of ethnic persecution or genocide.

Historical records and sociological studies show that Fulani, Hausa, Tiv, Berom and other communities coexisted for decades through complementary economic systems. The breakdown of this coexistence has been exploited by armed groups seeking cover, recruits and informants. Security agencies possess significantly more intelligence on bandit networks than is visible in public debate. Lawful interceptions, human intelligence and post-operation assessments routinely reveal financial motives, supply routes and internal hierarchies within armed groups.

However, public advocacy for dialogue often relies on forest-level engagements that security officials describe as “theatrical performances” by bandits choreographed grievances designed to elicit sympathy and concessions. The disconnect between classified intelligence and public narratives has allowed emotionally compelling but strategically flawed arguments to dominate national discourse.

Another escalation factor is the emerging convergence between bandit networks and ideological terrorist groups as Nigeria’s internal security landscape firmly indicates that what has long been treated as banditry especially in the North-West and parts of North-Central Nigeria has evolved into a hybrid jihadist campaign, driven by Boko Haram (JAS faction) and reinforced by JNIM elements operating from Sahelian-linked forest sanctuaries. Shared arms supply chains, training exchanges and joint operations could transform banditry from criminal violence into full-spectrum insurgency if unchecked. Nigeria’s past experience with Boko Haram demonstrates the cost of dismissing such convergence as isolated or exaggerated.

Military operations have succeeded in degrading bandit camps in several corridors, but the absence of immediate governance has allowed violence to recycle. Clearing operations not followed by permanent security presence, functional courts, reopened schools, healthcare and markets leave vacuums that criminal actors quickly refill. Bandits and other criminals thrive where state authority is episodic rather than continuous. Security victories without governance consolidation merely displace violence spatially and temporally.

Therefore, Nigeria must urgently reset its approach by formally adopting threat differentiation, choking financial lifelines, regulating community defence structures, and ensuring intelligence-led, precise enforcement against high-risk criminal networks. Dialogue, they say, must be selective, conditional and embedded within formal disarmament and reintegration frameworks not deployed as a moral reflex.

Above all, the state must reclaim narrative control by defining banditry clearly as organised criminal violence, not a sociological misunderstanding. As one senior official put it, “Banditry escalates where sentiment overrides strategy. The cure begins with honesty.”

Without that honesty, Nigeria risks allowing a violent criminal economy to entrench itself deeper into the country’s security architecture at a cost measured not just in money, but in lives, legitimacy and national cohesion.

How misdiagnosis, narratives are fuelling Nigeria’s banditry escalation