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By Owei Lakemfa

Kaduna State Governor  Uba Sani who announced on January 27, 2025 that he is negotiating with killer bandits, is dead wrong. The over six months he said he has  been negotiating  with these vipers who  kill, maim, kidnap and collect ransom from innocent people, is a waste of  time.

The governor’s claims that he engaged in peace talks with the bandits  after consultations with  critical stakeholders including the National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu, does not sanctify  the process.

In self-justification,  Governor  Sani declared: “I’d rather negotiate with bandits than to bear the weight of a single life lost in Kaduna. If not, I will be held accountable on the day of resurrection, having promised and sworn an oath.” This sounds fine. But it is only a sound. Contemporary history teaches us that negotiating with bandits and terrorists including granting them amnesty, has merely led to more deaths and a sense of empowerment by the criminals.

Governor Sani was right in 2021 when as Senator representing Kaduna Central, he vowed never to negotiate with the bandits. Drawing on his experience as part of the Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai government that had previously negotiated with the bandits, Sani told Nigerians on Arise Television: “When you  give them (bandits)  money, these guys  are not reasonable. They are not responsible. They will use  the money  to buy more arms and ammunition to continue to attack  more people.”

In that interview he declared: “…We don’t talk to the bandits. Or you want the Kaduna State Government   to talk to the bandits? We will not do that.” He gave a cogent reason why there should be no negotiation  with the bandits: “ They (bandits) will never retire. The most important  thing is that  we need to confront them. We are a country. We are a government. When you are elected, you must always take difficult decisions.”  That was Governor Sani three years ago. So what has changed? Is it that the bandits have repented their ways and are now candidates for heaven? Or better still, why has Uba Sani changed?

Also, he needs to disclose the terms of agreement he has reached with the bandits. What are they getting in return from the government? What happens to their guns; will they be taken to other states, handed over to the government or simply tossed into River Kaduna? What happens to the bandits? Are they to be given land to resettle? If so, what happens to the hordes of bandits that are not Nigerians? Will they and their families be given citizenship?

I have raised these questions so that tomorrow, after having expended state resources on this fruitless journey, Sani would not like other governors who had taken this path, come with tales of woe. I think it is a bad idea to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.

Sani had worked with El-Rufai when he was the Federal Capital Territory Minister and, moved with him to Kaduna State in 2015  when the latter was elected governor. The following year, the El-Rufai government  took state resources to pay off the bandits.  It reached out to these killers as far as the Republics of  Niger, Cameroon, Chad, Mali and Senegal.

El-Rufai told the media why his government took money out of the country to pay the killers: “Fulanis are in 14 African countries and they traverse this country   with the cattle. So many of these people were killed, cattle lost and they organised themselves and came back to revenge.”

On some of the steps his government took, El-Rufai said: “We got a group of people that were going round trying to trace some of these people in Cameroon, Niger Republic and so on to tell them that there is a new governor who is Fulani like them and has no problem paying compensations for lives lost and he is begging them to stop killing.”

As Sani explained in his interview, these bandits simply used the money they were paid to buy more arms and ammunition. The result is that Kaduna State became a killing field.

Similarly, Governor Bello Masari of neigbouring Katsina State engaged in negotiations with the bandits for three years from 2016. In September 2019, he announced that:  “The negotiation is yielding results. Now I can say over 80 per cent of people under captivity in Katsina State have been released.”

Masari announced amnesty and dissolved the vigilante and volunteer groups that were fighting the bandits. But nine months later after the bandits had secured all they could from the state government, the governor cried that  they had reneged.  In saying that the bandits are worse than animals, Governor Masari lamented: “How can a human being behave the way an animal cannot behave?”

When Muhammadu Buhari was President and Commander-in-Chief,  he told Nigerians that many of these bandits are trained mercenaries from Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad and  Central African Republic who fled Libya after Mouammar Ghadafi was defeated. So, how does Sani hope to rehabilitate them? I am sure the governor is aware that banditry in Kaduna State is not mere criminality; that there is an ethno-religious bent. This is why the bandits have strong supporters amongst the affluent like Sheikh Ahmad Gumi who claims that the bandits are: “ a population  that is pushed  into criminality” and that; “They are a peaceful people.”  In fact, Gumi says the bandits are liberation fighters!

Also, the current Minister of State for Defence, Bello  Muhammad Matawale as  Zamfara State Governor in 2021 told then President Buhari that: “Not all of them (bandits) are criminals…some of them, sometimes were cheated by so-called vigilante groups…when the vigilante groups attack them, they go for reprisals.”

I think in order not to get entangled in such conspiracy theories and the type of wasted journey  Governors like El-Rufai and Masari embarked upon,  Governor Uba Sani should simply uphold  his oath of office to ensure the welfare and security of the people. This includes ensuring that criminals, irrespective of ethnicity, gender, religion or citizenship, are brought to justice.

As we all know, the armed forces and the security services alone cannot overcome the bandits. In fact, the greatest armour against banditry is the masses on whom it is visited.  To ensure this, all our communities should in the model of the Civilian JTF, be trained and armed to fight bandits and terrorists.

In the short term, our military should be deployed to retake all territories under the control of bandits and terrorists and, return our peoples currently in the Internally Displaced Peoples’ IDP camps back to their homes. To politicise such a basic necessity, is to endanger the whole country.