SUMMARY

Bakassi Boys was the name of a vigilante group active in south-eastern Nigeria. The group was founded in 1998 in Aba in Abia State by shoemakers and traders, angry about the lack of police protection against criminals. From mid-2000 to mid-2002 they were part of the forces of the local governments in Abia and Anambra States and thus, formally did not act as an independent group.

Under the pretext of conducting law-enforcement operations, the Bakassi Boys were reported to have killed and dispossessed civilians. The Bakassi Boys became known for their brutal public executions of suspected thieves instead of handing them over to the police. These executions, dubbed “instant justice” in popular discourse, attracted large crowds of observers. Alleged criminals were killed with machete blows, their bodies were then dismembered and burned at the site of the execution. In order to determine whether a suspected criminal was guilty, the Bakassi Boys ostensibly used magical powers that also protected them from enemy bullets. Due to the lack of thorough investigations and trials, it was often unclear whether the victims of the attacks had conducted armed robberies, as the group maintained, or not.

The Bakassi Boys first became active as a one-sided actor in the UCDP data in 2000, when the one-sided violence resulted in over 25 civilian deaths. The threshold was reached by the end of July that year when the group killed over 30 civilians in Onitsha town.