For those who think negotiating with bandits is capable of opening a new window of resolving the recurring and perturbing trails of banditry hounding our country, Tuesday, August 24, 2021, turned out another nightmare as Nigerians woke up to yet another mind-numbing gruesome attack when gunmen pounced on the Nigerian Defence Academy, Nigeria’s elite military academy, killing two officers and kidnapping another in a brazen assault on a symbol of the armed forces.
The raid on Tuesday on the NDA, the country’s main officer training school, was a major blow for a military already struggling with an armed uprising and heavily armed criminal gangs.
“The security architecture of the Nigerian Defence Academy was compromised early this morning by unknown gunmen,” said Major Bashir Muhammad Jajira, spokesman for the academy in the northwestern state of Kaduna.
“We lost two personnel and one was abducted. Various army units and security agencies were pursuing the attackers and trying to rescue the kidnap victim, Jajira stressed.
The attack came in the middle of an unconfirmed report credited to the United Nations, that there is a secret government programme tagged, Suhlu, designed to pull commanders of terrorists groups, including Boko Haram and the Islamic State for West African Province out of the forests, rehabilitate them and provide them a means of livelihood.
Angered by recent happenings in Nigeria, Governor Bello Matawalle of Zamfara State is calling for a state of emergency to be declared on security in the northern part of the country.
Matawalle, who spoke when the Assistant Inspector General in charge of Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara States (Zone 10), Ali Janga, visited Zamfara over the recent security situation in the state, said that the whole area was under attacks by bandits.
The governor expressed disgust on the attack on the NDA, saying that no place was safe in the entire northern region.
Matawalle said, “It is unfortunate if the bandits can go up to NDA and kidnap the officers; I think the government has to look into it and declare a state of emergency on security.”
He accused some politicians of fuelling the insecurity for political gains, stressing that, it was not good to play politics with the security.
Kunle Olawunmi, a retired Navy Commodore, on Wednesday, also opined that the federal government knows those behind Boko Haram insurgency in the country.
Olawunmi, who was a guest on Channels Television, said the Nigerian government is not sincere in the fight against Boko Haram.
He recalled that after the arrest of some Boko Haram sponsors, the presidency had said it would publish names of those behind the attacks but it failed to do so.
“Considering the alarming evils these brigands have visited on Nigerians, negotiating with them for amnesty amounts to rewarding them. When evil people are rewarded, peaceful persons are dissuaded from walking the path of the law. If the government is to serve its role of securing lives and property, then, the government must never allow any group to compete with it
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Olawumi who alleged that some of the sponsors are now Governors and Senators, wondered why the Buhari-led government has refused to release their names.
He claimed that the government has developed cold feet in fighting the insurgency because some of those backing Boko Haram are now top-ranking government officials.
However, the report by the UNs’ publication, The New Humanitarian, said a clandestine Nigerian government programme was reaching out to senior jihadist fighters in the bush to encourage them to abandon their goal of building a caliphate by force of arms, and to defect.
It said the report was based on six months of reporting and research.
It is our view that negotiating with terrorists and the so-called bandits to end insecurity in Nigeria is not a feasible model.
They should not be treated with kid-gloves at this time, when they have earned a global status for brutal killings of innocent Nigerians and massive destruction of government property.
The best way the government can negotiate with these bandits is to eradicate them and safeguard citizens and their property. No matter how hard we try to move Nigeria forward, these bandits, if not completely destroyed, will continue to pose as present and future danger for our nation.
Considering the alarming evils these brigands have visited on Nigerians, negotiating with them for amnesty amounts to rewarding them. When evil people are rewarded, peaceful persons are dissuaded from walking the path of the law. If the government is to serve its role of securing lives and property, then, the government must never allow any group to compete with it.
In 2021 alone, there have been more than 10 reported cases of school abductions, with some state governments paying millions of naira in ransom to free the abducted students.
Bandits and terrorists are the least Nigerians want to see walking freely in public, in the name of rehabilitation and dialogue.
While many actors have seen rehabilitation and reintegration programmes as vital in counter terrorism strategies, it is expedient for Nigerian leaders to swiftly foresee the consequences, part of which may be criminal elements in the military colluding with Boko Haram later to secure the release of unrepentant terrorists.
Negotiating with terrorists and bandits will only create a new set of terrorists, encouraging them more.
Nigeria’s continued security shortcomings are connected to its approach to reintegrating criminals at the expense of justice and investing in the military workforce that will protect lives and property.
The federal government must understand that these criminal groups have diverse interests, and an agreement reached with one faction may not be binding on others.
Bringing all of them under the same umbrella and typical dialogue will only lead to internal splits and counterattacks.
As long as the federal government delays action in crushing these outlaws and bandits, so long will state governors continue to pay ransoms.
The federal government must go all out to smoke them out of their holes and bring them to justice.
Nigerians cannot afford the luxury of paying a peace price to these bandits who have continued to elongate our long nights of bloodshed unleashed by their dogs of war.
