Human rights lawyer and public interest advocate, Chief Malcolm E. Omirhobo, has slammed the Chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Bashir Dalhatu, over his suggestion that the Niger Delta Amnesty Programme should serve as a template for resolving the banditry crisis in Northern Nigeria.
In a strongly worded public statement, Omirhobo described the comparison as “deeply flawed, intellectually dishonest, and utterly insulting to the Nigerian people.”
According to him, the Niger Delta agitation was a legitimate, rights-based struggle for resource control, environmental justice, and socio-economic equity, arising from decades of marginalisation and devastation caused by oil exploration. Banditry, he said, bears no resemblance to such a cause.
“Banditry in the North is not a struggle. It is criminality. It is terrorism, kidnapping, extortion, murder, and the mass destruction of innocent lives,” he stated, arguing that unlike the Niger Delta militants who articulated clear grievances rooted in constitutional injustice, bandits have no ideology, no identifiable grievance, and no legitimate demands.
Their motive, he said, is simple: profit through terror.
“They are killing Nigerians for profit. They abduct schoolchildren for ransom, tax farmers, burn communities, and collaborate with foreign criminal networks. That is not a struggle — it is sheer terror,” he added.
The lawyer warned that proposing amnesty for such actors amounts to legitimising terrorism and sending a dangerous message that the quickest path to government attention and funding is to take up arms against the state.
He argued that offering amnesty to bandits would create a chain reaction where every frustrated youth sees violence as an express ticket to state benefits.
Omirhobo insisted that Nigeria must never reward criminality, stressing that conflating militants who fought for constitutional rights with terrorists who kill for ransom is a national tragedy waiting to happen.
Instead, he outlined a set of measures the government must prioritise:
- Strengthening intelligence and security operations
- Decisive military action
- Community-driven policing
- Prosecution of financiers and collaborators
- Rehabilitation only for individuals who repent before committing atrocities
- Long-term socio-economic development for traumatised communities
Anything short of these, he warned, would amount to a betrayal of justice and an insult to thousands who have lost loved ones, homes, and livelihoods to banditry.
“Nigeria deserves peace built on justice, not peace built on rewarding those who shed innocent blood,” Omirhobo concluded.
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