Rural Banditry and Food Security in Oyo State (2019-2023)

Abstract

Banditry is not peculiar to Nigeria alone, as many nations especially in Africa continue to battle with its surge in recent years. In Nigeria, media platforms are daily abashed with the evils perpetrated by the bandits across the states claiming several lives, destroying billions worth of property, generating humanitarian crisis with negative implications on food security.  Adopting broken windows as a theoretical framework, the paper interrogated the trends and reasons for rural banditry and its deleterious effects on food security in Oyo state. The paper employed desk research method using secondary sources data.  It argued that rural banditry has intensified affecting food security with recent attacks concentrated on farmers in the state.  If further argued that farmers have lost their lives to attacks, kidnapped for ransom, had their farmlands looted and plundered leading to reduction in low agricultural investment and poor crop production, invariably increasing prices of food products. The paper concluded that the menace of rural banditry has indeed caused affected food accessibility, availability, sustainability and utilization in the State. It therefore recommended that government should employ the use of utter force to clampdown on bandits in their hideouts and also introduce advanced surveillance technologies to monitor activities in the ungoverned forest and reserves.