January 10, 2026 l Reporter: Johnson
KANO/KATSINA, Armed Jihadist Terrorist criminal groups operating within major forest reserves in Kano and Katsina states have reportedly established parallel systems of control in rural areas, demanding illegal levies of up to ₦50,000 per acre from farmers and effectively extorting residents while threatening violence and destruction for non-compliance, local sources and community activists say.
According to reports from Faskari Local Government Area (Katsina) and Doguwa Local Government Area (Kano), bandit groups entrenched in Rugu Forest and Falgore Forest have imposed the illicit farm-tax regime on cultivators particularly sugarcane and maize growers as part of what residents describe as a self-declared “parallel government.”
Farmers in the affected areas told journalists that they are being forced to pay the levy before they can harvest their crops, and in some cases even to access their own fields. Those who refuse to pay allegedly face intimidation, threats, or attacks on their crops, leading many to abandon farming entirely rather than risk violent reprisals.
The forests where these activities are taking place lie within the Kano–Katsina food belt, a critical agricultural corridor that supplies major markets such as Dawanau Market in Kano. Analysts warn that the disruption of agricultural production in this belt could aggravate food shortages and price inflation across northern Nigeria if insecurity continues unchecked.
Despite military and police checkpoints positioned along key routes like the Falgore road, armed groups are reportedly operating within five kilometres of these security installations, raising serious questions about the effectiveness of current security measures and the capability of authorities to safeguard rural communities.
Local residents described the situation as tantamount to a takeover of governance in remote areas, where armed actors now dictate economic activities, collect taxes, and enforce their own rules without significant resistance. These developments have heightened calls for urgent intervention by the state governments of Kano and Katsina and federal security agencies to dismantle the parallel structures and avert a looming rural food-security crisis.
As of publication, neither the governors of the affected states nor the Nigerian security agencies had issued formal responses to the allegations of levies and parallel governance imposed by bandits on farming communities.