Conflict Entrepreneurship and the Political Economy of Violence in Northwest Nigeria

This study develops an original theoretical and empirical analysis of conflict entrepreneurship and its role in the political economy of violence in Northwest Nigeria, focusing on Zamfara, Katsina, and Sokoto states. The concept of conflict entrepreneurship, whereby political and economic actors deliberately generate or sustain conflict for private benefit, has been applied in West African contexts but has not been systematically theorised within the specific Northwest Nigerian conflict configuration, where banditry, political patronage, and rural conflict intersect. Employing a critical political economy research design, data were collected through in-depth interviews with 55 conflict analysts, investigative journalists, former government officials, security researchers, and civil society members with documented access to conflict economy information in the Northwest. Supplementary documentary evidence was drawn from Human Rights Watch reports, International Crisis Group assessments, and state government budgetary records from 2018 to 2024. The theoretical contribution is an original Northwest Nigeria Conflict Entrepreneurship Model, which identifies four actor typologies, including political patrons, arms brokers, displacement profiteers, and cattle economy intermediaries, and maps their interdependencies in sustaining the conflict economy. Findings demonstrate that the conflict economy in the Northwest has developed sufficient structural autonomy to self-reproduce independently of the original grievance conditions, representing a qualitatively distinct challenge for peacebuilding. Recommendations include disrupting the conflict economy through targeted accountability measures, reforming political financing laws to reduce patronage-driven conflict funding, and developing disruptive economic alternatives in the most conflict-profitable sectors. Keywords: conflict entrepreneurship, political economy, Northwest Nigeria, banditry, conflict economy.