By Tribune Editorial Board
Copyright tribuneonlineng
IN an eloquent display of desperation arising from the government’s failure to protect life and property, some local communities in Katsina State recently negotiated with bandits to maintain peace in their area and allow farmers to farm. However, judging by the history of peace efforts along this non-kinetic route, the current one, too, holds no promise as the collapse of peace agreements in the past often led to renewed and more ferocious violence. Nonetheless, the communities involved in the peace deal with the criminals can hardly be blamed as they apparently resorted to taking their destiny in their own hands in the face of official tardiness in executing its most important responsibility of protecting lives and properties. Some of the notorious bandits and their representatives who are on the watch list of the security agencies reportedly participated in the peace talk, with some of them heavily armed at the negotiating table!
The alleged demand of the “bandits”, who are actually terrorists, is freedom of movement and market access to the Fulani. They were also said to have requested for the development of their area by the government. And in exchange, they reportedly agreed to halt attacks on villages, allow farmers safe passage, and release abducted persons. Officials and critical stakeholders in Faskari Local Government Area, one of the most frequently attacked local councils in the state, reportedly spearheaded the talk. And with some of the bandits fully armed to make demands at the negotiating table, the peace deal seemed to be more about pacification and concessions to the criminals than negotiation between two parties on equal footing. For a state that is not officially at war, it is demeaning of the government that criminals in a supposedly governed space are dictating the terms of citizens’ safety and security and, more significantly, farmers’ ability to continue being economic actors.
Meanwhile, in the neighbouring Zamfara State, terrorists reportedly abducted 43 worshippers from a mosque in Gidan Turbe village in Tsafe Local Government Area. They were also said to have kidnapped 12 persons in Godai village in Bukkuyum Local Government Area of the state. The victims were reportedly ferried to Gahori Mountain in Tsafe, which is situated in a thick forest that straddles Zamfara, part of Kebbi State, and Birnin Gwari in Kaduna State. Both incidents occurring at a time when a peace deal has just been struck by some communities in Katsina State underscore the imperative of concerted and pragmatic actions against terrorists by governments in the North-West as a whole.
We note that the affected communities took the decision to hold a peace talk with the terrorists afflicting them out of desperation but the veritable issue is whether terrorists, who have tasted the filthy lucre that banditry attracts, will be bound by the agreement they reached. We also note that the Katsina State government said it was the local authorities in that place that made the deal, not the state government. But again, the question is how reliable and enduring have such peace deals been in the past even when the state government participated actively in the deals? It bears stressing that the desperation that drove the communities to hold peace talks with terrorists would not have arisen if the government had protected the people. In other words, the peace talks with the criminals took place largely because the Nigerian State shirked its primary responsibility of protecting its citizens.
Though the peace deal was seemingly inevitable in the circumstance, yet it was the wrong thing to do on several scores. For instance, is it not instructive that the terrorists were not required to disarm? The terrorists came with arms and ammunition to the negotiating table; they were not disarmed and they did not commit to disarmament. What kind of peace deal is that? You cannot beg terrorists not to kill. It is little wonder that the terrorists went on a killing spree after the event. There should have been a consensus among critical stakeholders in the security architecture of the country before holding such a peace deal. The suboptimal action has implications for Nigeria’s sovereignty as the peace deal is, in a sense, akin to surrender of state power to hoodlums. Instructively, when the country was faced with seemingly intractable acts of criminality in the other section of the country, no one engaged in a half-hearted peace deal not accompanied with the laying down of arms. For example, nobody came up with the idea of a peace deal when the Lawrence Aninis of this world held Nigeria hostage. It is evident that the governors in the North are finding it difficult to govern and the peace deal, which is a kind of submission to the will of terrorists, is an ineffective tactic to get by. No meaningful deal has been achieved when the terrorists did not lay down their arms. And there is even the danger that other criminals will be emboldened to perpetrate more evil and make higher demands. You don’t negotiate from a position of weakness.
ALSO READ: I never told anyone I wanted third term, Obasanjo opens up
It should be mentioned, and with every sense of responsibility, that apart from its impropriety and bad reflection on the government, any form of official negotiation with terrorists is pointless as it is neither efficacious nor enduring. For it is foolhardy to expect terrorists to abandon the lucrative business of banditry and kidnapping to choose the ‘strange’ but more dignifying path of honest living. The government must up its ante and rejig its security strategy in order to stymie citizens’ embrace of embarrassing and frustration-driven peace pacts with criminals.
