Gunmen kill eight police officers sent to secure Nigeria senate primary

Gunmen killed eight police officers sent to provide security for a senate primary election in Nigeria's restive northwest on Monday in the latest suspected gang attack.

The assault in Zamfara state comes as Africa's most populous nation prepares for general elections in January in the midst of worsening violence from criminal gangs across northwest and central Nigeria.

The gangs, locally called "bandits", raid villages, impose "taxes" on farmers and miners, and conduct kidnappings for ransom across swathes of rural territory where state presence is weak or non-existent. 

"They were ambushed by bandits. The bandits opened fire on the bus the police were in and killed eight of them and took the rest into the bush," Ibrahim Umar, a resident of the village of Gidan Kano told AFP.

The attack occurred outside Gidan Kano near the village on a rural highway linking Zamfara and neighbouring Sokoto state.

The vote was being held to select a senate candidate for President Bola Tinubu's party, the All Progressives Congress, in the Zamfara North senatorial district.

Senate primaries in the rest of Nigeria had already been held, but Monday's vote was ordered after a court tossed the previous poll in the Zamfara North over irregularities.

Adamu Kantu Gora, secretary of Zamfara's Maradun local government council, gave AFP the same death toll, adding "five more were kidnapped and three others are in hospital with injuries."

Yazid Abubakar, Zamfara state police spokesman, said the officers had been sent from neighbouring Sokoto state to provide security for the election.

"The casualties were taken to Sokoto," he said, without giving further details. 

Sokoto police referred comment to their zonal headquarters, which had not issued a statement as of Monday evening.

Nigeria also faces a 17-year jihadist insurgency, deadly farmer-herder conflicts over land, and a simmering separatist conflict in the southeast.

Though the Boko Haram jihadist insurgency has waned from its peak a decade ago, violence has been worsening since 2024, driven by banditry and jihadist attacks, according to US-based conflict monitor ACLED.

Olatunji Disu, inspector general of the Nigeria Police Force, told AFP in an interview earlier this year that there would be "safe and secure voting in the country" during the January 16 general election.

He pledged that Nigerians in the north, battered by bandit and jihadist attacks, would "definitely" be able to vote.