The perceived success of the
gesture was evident in the fact that Governor Bello Masari of neighbouring
Katsina State also embraced the strategy after four years of fruitless efforts
to contain the outlaws who specialise in the killing, kidnapping, highway
robbery, racketeering in precious metals and cattle rustling.
In fact, Masari drew the anger
and outrage of well-meaning Nigerians when he led a convoy of state officials
into the Faskari Forest base of the bandits and allowed their leader to pose
beside him with his assault rifle while an unarmed Nigerian Army officer
sheepishly looked on. Many read that picture as symbolising an abject surrender
to the impunity and “superior firepower” of the criminals.
President Muhammadu Buhari,
during a recent meeting with Northern governors, appeared to have given a tacit
nudge for them to go back home and initiate similar dialogues to help reduce
security threats, going by what Borno State Governor, Prof. Babagana Zulum,
told the media.
We hasten, once again, to call
for caution in the use of this self-defeatist strategy. Let us put ourselves in
the shoes of these bandits. If after the Police and Army, along with the Air
Force, were serially deployed to flush us out but we continued to grow in
boldness enough for the government to beg us for negotiation, won’t we feel triumphant?
Won’t we have the upper hand in the negotiations?
Our fear is that these outlaws, most of whom
are reportedly foreign gunmen supposedly assembled by evil politicians for
sinister purposes, will feel entitled to not only become Nigerians but might negotiate
their ways into plum political positions. They would have been rewarded for
their criminal, armed incursion into Nigeria‘s territorial sovereignty. If they
fall out with the politicians they will simply morph into another Boko Haram.
Let our politicians ( Bello
Mohammed ) stop misinterpreting the spirit and intentions of the unconditional
amnesty that the late President Umaru Yar’Adua extended to the Niger Delta
militants in June 2009 which brought peace to the treasure base of our economy.
When a government voluntarily offers to negotiate with foreign or even local
criminals, it is a sure failure of leadership and governance.
Criminals who killed, kidnapped
and raped innocent citizen should not be allowed to walk the streets free.
Their place is with the laws of the land.
We must involve the states and
local communities in securing the grassroots by spreading the presence of
government into ungoverned spaces such as forests, game reserves and abandoned
plantations. This will ensure that criminals do not hide there to terrorise
innocent citizens.