It is only in Northern Nigeria that we frequently hear the calls on the Federal Government and State Governors to negotiate with and grant amnesty to terrorists and bandits. This was a narrative they picked up from advocates for the Niger Delta militants who flooded the media with this call.

The late President Umaru Yar’Adua in April 2009, gave the militants in the creeks disrupting our oil sector infrastructure the option to accept amnesty or face a full military showdown. This was what led to the establishment of the Presidential Post-Amnesty Programme, PAP. Northern leaders, politicians, academics and activists have been making the misplaced calls for a similar gesture towards the plethora of armed jihadists and criminals (Boko Haram, bandits and armed Fulani herdsmen) destabilising Nigeria.

The latest of such call came two weeks back from a group called Northern Elders Progressive Group, NEPG, to Northern Governors to cooperate with Office of the National Security Adviser, ONSA, in pursuing dialogue with bandits. The group’s coordinator in the North-West, Yusuf Abubakar, practically made a salesman’s pitch on behalf of the bandits and terrorists. “It is better for a governor to spend his resources on saving lives than in spending billions on condolence…even powerful nations have negotiated with groups such as al Qaeda, Taliban and Houthis. Negotiation is not weakness; it is about saving lives”.

There is a big difference between negotiating from the position of strength and abject display of cowardice before hardened, heartless criminals who are in crime for money. The State of Israel is in negotiation with Hamas terrorists. They want their hostages released in exchange for the end of the Gaza War, which will be two years old on October 7, 2025. They are obviously negotiating with strength. For us to have any hope of ever ending the insecurity caused by forest-dwelling terrorists, jihadists, bandits and land-grabbers, we must establish the dominance of the Nigerian State over them and force them to beg for dialogue. That is how a strong country that inspires respect and confidence in its citizens and comity of nations behaves.

That was how the former Governor of Abia State, Theodore Orji, was able to eliminate Obioma Nwankwo, alias Osisikankwu and stamp out kidnapping and terrorism in the Ngwa area of the state till today. It is so unfortunate that since the once peaceful Northern Nigeria came under attack by their home-bred and foreign elements, the elite have either politicised the insecurity or tried to extract religious or pecuniary capital from it. Has amnesty for “repentant” Boko Haram terrorists ended Boko Haram? Have negotiations, payment of ransoms and installation of bandit leaders as traditional chieftains reduced banditry? These have only helped to proliferate them! Those making these calls should be probed for their possible involvement!