Tsafe, Nigeria – It was a sunny afternoon in March. Abdulrahman Yusuf was quiet as he lit a cigarette and drew heavily, puffing twice before passing it to a colleague. The stern eyes of the 17-year-old vigilante told a story of a child who had had to become a man earlier than he should have.
In his penultimate year of high school, Yusuf voluntarily joined a vigilante group to face criminal gangs in his hometown of Tsafe, Zamfara, northwest Nigeria. It was a mission of revenge after a close friend died in an attack by one of the gangs, locally known as bandits, in a nearby village.
