The early days of March, 2024 have not been pleasant for Nigeria. It will seem as if the northern part of the country has remained under perpetual and unbreakable siege imposed by kidnappers, bandits and terrorists. On March 4, about 200 internally displaced women in Ngala, the headquarters of Gamboru Ngala in Borno State were abducted by some bandits while fetching firewood in the fields. This is a most pathetic scenario for the women. While suffering the painful fate of being internally displaced, they were haunted down in the fields where they had gone to fetch firewood, abducted and dragged into the forests to suffer worse fates. As the country was still trying to figure how to deal with that, some daredevil abductors took their criminality a notch higher by carrying out an audacious abduction of 287 pupils and their teachers from Kuriga Government Secondary and LEA Primary Schools in Chikun Local Government Area, LGA of Kaduna State. This particular abduction has caused global outrage not only because of the number of victims involved but also because a majority of them are children.
Another factor that got the world bewildered was how that number of people were moved so conveniently from the village, evading all forms of security checks and community vigilance, until they got deep into that part of the forest the military described as ‘difficult but not out of reach’.
That is apart from the abduction of 15 Tsangaya students at Gidan Bakuso area of Gada LGA of Sokoto State earlier. Just few days after the abductions, Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi sought the permission of government to negotiate with the bandits responsible for the abduction of the school children. This is curious, given that the federal government was already working with security agencies at the highest level to ensure the abducted students and their teachers were rescued safely. Even northern leaders under the aegis of Northern Elders Forum (NEF) have also joined Gumi in asking the Federal Government to yield to his request. Conspiracy? This approach by northern elites in dealing with the ravaging and seemingly intractable insecurity in the region is what has not only made kidnapping, banditry, terrorism and such other violent crime fester but also assumed the more dangerous status of a hydra-headed monster. It will seem that these northern elites know more about this criminality than they are ready to admit. Their usual rush to rationalise these violent crimes and urge government at every turn not to descend heavily on the criminals but negotiate with them is suspect.
While this approach could have been desirable, it has proven over the years that it is not only ineffective but has also emboldened the criminals to carry out their heinous crimes even with more baffling audacity. It is high time we started interrogating this ugly phenomenon of negotiations dispassionately. The attitude of covering up for and protecting criminals by these elites for whatever reason is what is fueling the situation. When Deborah Samuel Yakubu was gruesomely murdered in Sokoto by some misguided youths, some voices in the north justified it in the name of religion; several other such crimes have been committed by youths in the North and justice was prevented from taking its due course against the perpetrators for regional and religious reasons.
When crime is pampered for so long, there can only be one consequence: it will return to haunt those giving it cover even on a far larger scale. And that is what is happening to the north today. Unfortunately, many do not seem to want to hear the truth and learn from the errors of the past.
Sometime in April 2014, in the course of the war against insurgency and terrorism, former governor of Adamawa State, Murtala Nyako and others pointedly accused the then Federal Government led by Dr Goodluck Jonathan of carrying out genocide against northern Nigeria. The fight against insurgency has continued to suffer huge setbacks as a result.
Former President Muhammadu Buhari later assumed office as President, and the killings in the North assumed even a more monstrous dimension. The seeds of compromise and blackmailing of security agencies sown in the past by some of these northern elites have germinated and grown to become a nearly invincible phenomenon. The consequence for crime should always be applied to serve as a deterrent. Compromise and negotiations with criminals are enablers of crime. Another angle worthy of consideration is the possibility of some northern elites making fortunes from the misfortune of the downtrodden in the region. The request to negotiate on behalf of government presupposes that these elites know the bandits as much as the bandits know them; we have even seen where some of those calling for negotiation with bandits visited them in their domains in the forest and were posing for photographs with them. Why did they not cease such opportunities to impress it upon the bandits to surrender their arms and stop their criminal acts? Why would these northern leaders prefer piecemeal rather than once-for-all negotiations even if that becomes a last resort? If negotiating with these bandits could stop banditry and kidnapping, why have the previous negotiations not worked till now? Are these negotiators feathering their own nests under the guise of negotiating on behalf of victims and government? Many questions begging for answers.
Rather than engage in such a wild goose chase, the north should look inwardly and try to figure where the rain started beating them so that they can retrace their steps and help government deal with these issues decisively and comprehensively especially as President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has demonstrated commitment and capacity to restoring sanity to the country as was the case in Abuja where kidnappers, bandits and terrorists were rooted out within days of them unleashing mayhem on the territory.
Let me end this piece with the advice given by the Birnin-Gwari Emirate Progressive Union (BEPU) through its chairman, Ishaq Kasai, in response to one of those calls by some northern elites for government to negotiate with bandits, this time by a former governor of Zamfara State, Ahmad Yerima: “To successfully bring an end to armed banditry business in Nigeria, all bandits’ camps in our various forests must be dislodged as anything short of this will not address or bring a lasting solution to the problem. Engaging in negotiations with armed bandits will never yield significant positive outcomes because past experiences have demonstrated that criminal elements such as armed bandits, often exploit negotiations as a means to buy time, regroup, and strengthen their positions. They view negotiations as a sign of weakness of government, which emboldens them to continue their violent activities.”
Ndukwe writes in from Abuja .

By:  Jude Ndukwe