Impact of the Engagement of the Community Protection Guards (CPG) in the Management of Armed Banditry in Zamfara State: An Assessment of the Major Silent Issues
This paper examines the impact of the engagement of the Community Protection Guards (CPG) in the fight against armed banditry in Zamfara state. It has made a chronological overview of the first and second engagements of these special groups of security forces by the past administrations in Zamfara state and assesses reasons why the engagements have failed. It has also made an overview of the decision of the current administration of Dauda Lawal to re-engage these groups of civilian security operatives and whether or not the modus operendi to be applied now may likely be different from the ones implemented by the previous governments. The paper has also made an in-depth assessment of why the fight against armed banditry by the conventional security operatives in Zamfara state since 2011 has failed and what necessitated the integration of the Community Protection Guards as an alternative. The paper adopted mixed research methodology of literature review and field interviews with a view to ascertaining facts from the field and uses them comparatively with the opinion from the existing literatures to arrive at some findings and possible recommendations that may be good for the government to implement.
