A gang leader in Nigeria has accepted a truce offered by the authorities in the state of Zamafara (north-west), devastated for years by deadly violence, said Monday a local official.
Gang leader Bello Turji has agreed to end attacks and kidnappings for ransom, Zamafara State Deputy Governor Hassan Nasiha said in a press conference broadcast on local stations.
"Atrocities"
"We have reached a peace agreement with Turji, and in the past six weeks not a single person has been killed in the areas he controls
," Hassan Nasiha said.
According to him, Turji is now fighting with other gangs who refused to lay down their arms.
Heavily armed bandits have terrorized communities in the region for years, looting villages, killing and kidnapping residents and burning homes.
In exchange for laying down their arms, the deputy governor said the bandits had demanded an end to extrajudicial executions of members of their ethnic community and the release of gang members arrested by law enforcement.
Many of these bandits are pastoralists, and among the conditions set for the truce, they also demanded the restoration of water points and grazing reserves as well as the return of their farmlands seized as booty by local communities.
Local authorities agreed to all demands, despite several previous attempts at peace deals with bandits that did not last.
According to Bulama Bukarti, an analyst at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, Turji himself has violated peace agreements in the past.
"Turji never paid for his atrocities... This is a deal made in a hurry by desperate politicians to score points before the next election,"
he tweeted.