Nigeria: Befriending Bandits!

 By Suyi Ayodele

The photograph is graphic. The message is obvious. The semiotics are unmistaken. A bandit in military fatigue sits comfortably. On his lap is an AK-47 assault rifle. Around his neck are various communication gadgets. His look betrays his hubris. He is a man of power! His confidence shows who is in charge. It is audacity in its illiterate form!

Another man in a native attire bends towards the bandit. He smiles sheepishly. He holds a handset, in a very suggestive manner. The caption tells the entire story: “Nigerian Government Official ‘Exchange Contact’ with Bandits After a ‘Peace Deal’ Meeting in Subuwa LGA in Katsina State.”

When the junior rival wife to one’s mother is older and more powerful, one is advised to call her mother (tí orogún ìyá eni bá ju ìyá eni lo, ìyá làá pèé). This ancient wisdom is to ensure a peaceful coexistence within the family. And the peace here goes beyond the idea of a crisis-free environment; it is a comprehensive one that ensures that one lives and is alive, too!

Nigerians, especially our brothers and sisters up North, are tapping into this wisdom. They need to live and be alive simultaneously. They recognise those who have the capacity to cut short their lives. Then they took the most reasonable steps towards survival. Nigerians now go cap in hand begging the new ‘givers-of-life’ in town. We now appease bandits, terrorists and other felons who hold the power to kill and make alive! What impudence!

Our elders say once you recognise the one that will not allow you to eat and be filled, it is better you add his portion while preparing the food. That is what is happening in the various ‘peace deals’ being sealed with bandits in the North. The peasants of the region have recognised that the State is incapacitated.

They have come to the bitter reality that the Nigerian nation lacks the capacity or the willpower to protect them from bandits and terrorists. They have elected to take their collective destiny in their own hands. The new normal is negotiation. This is because the State is completely absent with the terrible leadership truancy syndrome afflicting us!

It is happening in the North today. The rest of us read about it and shake our heads in incredulity. Many of us feel that it is their problem over there. We feel that the North should find enough bananas for its troublesome monkeys. Majority believe that the problem of banditry is self-inflicted and those in the affected region should carry their burden. But I think otherwise.

I hope nobody, by any stretch of the imagination, thinks that the madness will not go round. Very soon, and this is not being pessimistic, what our northern kith and kin are experiencing at the hands of bandits will be replicated down South and in every part of the nation. The ill wind will soon blow in every part of Nigeria. It is just a matter of time. When those bandits have no more people to kill or maim up North, they will look down South! That is if they are not already in our midst, down here!

Those who feel secure today will have to negotiate with bandits very soon. Kwara State is almost doing that. The bandits operating in the Kwara South Senatorial District have just two more local governments, Offa and Oyun, to overrun, and they will be in Osun State! Ekiti, Ifin, Oke Ero, Ifelodun and Irepodun Local Government Areas of Kwara are already under the control of bandits.

While penning this piece, information filtered in that a prominent member of Sagbe town in Ifelodun Local Government Area was kidnapped! Offa and Oyun, my contact said, “are relatively peaceful for now!” Once they break through those two “relatively peaceful” council areas, Osun State will be next. Osun will affect Ekiti State, which shares boundaries with Ondo, Kogi and Kwara States. All of us will chop breakfast

Even the biblical blind Bartimaeus can see clearly that Nigeria is already a failed State! The government and its apologists can deny it as many times as they want. The reality is too obvious; only the locusts in power cannot feel it. And we won’t blame them. Those in power don’t feel what the ordinary man on the street goes through. That itself is one of the indicators of a failed nation; a situation where the leaders are detached from the led. When you see a country where leaders travel around in armoured cars and the masses are left at the mercy of felons who are constantly on the prowl, look no further for a failed State!

If Nigeria were not a failed nation, how come ‘government officials’ sit on the negotiation table with bandits? What do we call a situation where a supposed government functionary, elected or selected to protect the people, is the one grovelling to have the contact of a bandit who is armed to the teeth to a ‘peace deal meeting’? Where in the sane world would bandits armed with Rocket-Propelled Grenades (RPGs), General Machine Guns (GMGs), and AK-47 rifles, be allowed to walk in and out of a ‘peace meeting’ leisurely? After the ‘peace accord’, where do the bandits retire to? Yet, they say Nigeria is working!

Residents of Matazu Local Government Area, where the ‘peace deal meeting’ took place in Katsina State, expressed shock at the audacity of the bandits to display all those sophisticated weapons without any consequence! One of the residents who witnessed the peace accord was quoted to have quipped: “You came to a peace talk with AK-47 rifles, RPGs, and GMGs, and you return to the bush with the same weapons. How can this be called a peace deal?” That is the type of ‘peace deal’ you get when there is total leadership failure. Imagine that ‘security’ was also provided at the venue!

The attendance of the bandits taken at the Katsina State ‘peace deal’ listed Idi Muwage, Alhaji Kabiru, Kachalla Rusku, Kachalla Murtala, Kachalla Mai Saje, Kachalla Dawa, Ardo Abdulsalam Fatika, and Alhaji Labi as leaders who represented their various bandit groups! These are known figures in the killing and maiming of thousands of innocent Nigerians in the state!

In all, a total of nine LGAs: Sabuwa, Dandume, Batsari, Kankara, Kurfi, Musawa, Danmusa, Jibia, and Faskari in Katsina State had at various times entered ‘peace deals’ with bandits, where “it was agreed that there should be a ceasefire, with the bandits agreeing to stop attacking or harming the local communities.

The report of the ‘peace deal’ stated that: “It was also agreed that there should be free movement, with the bandits allowed to enter towns or communities for trade and commerce without being harmed by the local communities. Another issue agreed upon at the meeting is the release of abducted victims by the bandits, while the bandits, on their part, requested the government to release their captured members. Furthermore, it was agreed that both bandits and community members would work towards maintaining peace and stability in the region.” To cap it all, the bandits were “assured of their safety and welcomed them to continue their business activities in the local markets!”

Katsina State is not the only state in the North negotiating with bandits. Kaduna State, for instance, was said to have negotiated with the bandits operating along the Birnin Gwari axis of the state so that the people in the area could go back to their farms. In the entire seven states of the North-West geo-political zone, only Zamfara and Kebbi States were said to have insisted that they would not strike any deal with the bandits.

The North-East and the North-Central zones are not faring better. And gradually, the malady is approaching the southern part of the country. While the late governor of Ondo State, Arakunrin Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), mobilised the states in the South-West to form the Western Nigeria Security Network (WNSN), otherwise known as Amotekun, to combat the menace of bandits and killer herdsmen in the region, the novel security outfit appears dead with the demise of Akeredolu.

Safe for Oyo and Osun States where Governors Seyi Makinde and Ademola Adeleke, respectively, significantly hold the Amotekun banner flying, the outfit is moribund in the other states of the zone. Interestingly, Lagos State, the home state of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, never for one day lifted any finger to support the creation of the security outfit in the first instance. Lagos is aloof from Amotekun because the security outfit does not sit well with the sole proprietor of the state!

That itself speaks volumes of why the Federal Government under the leadership of President Tinubu is flat-footed in the fight against banditry and terrorism. The government can only deceive itself into thinking it is winning the war. Those who are directly at the receiving end of the security crisis are already in talks with the bandits and the terrorists. We are already befriending bandits!

This is Nigeria of this era. A government that places politics far above the wellbeing of the people cannot but be lethargic in situations where decisive actions are needed! The only reason why bandits would come for a ‘peace deal’ armed and suffer no consequences is politics. The only reason why Sheikh Ahmad Gumi would openly ask for amnesty for bandits, and nobody would bring him in for questioning is the same compromised politics of appeasement!

How on earth, Gumi, with all his acclaimed education, could not differentiate between the militants of the Niger Delta and the compulsive killers called bandits of the North beats one’s imagination. The Niger Delta militants, though condemnable in their approach, had a clear agitation. They took up arms against the State because of the environmental degradation of the region which is the nation’s hen that lays the golden eggs. They were angry because even though the Niger Delta produces the wealth of the nation, the region has nothing to show for it.

Again, those Niger Delta militants did not target individuals. They went after State wealth like oil installations and blew them up. If there were human casualties, they were insignificant, very puny and largely inconsequential. But what do we have in the North with the bandits? Can Gumi explain to us what the agitations by his bandit friends are? What are they fighting for? What exactly do they want? What is the essence of wiping out a whole village? What are the unmet demands of the bandits that necessitated them killing villagers in their sleep!?

And if we may ask, why is Gumi concerned about the welfare of the bandits, and he is not bothered about the calamities suffered by the victims of the bandits’ operations in the North? Can he, in his sober moment, imagine the number of orphans, widows and widowers that the bandits he loves to protect so much and defend have donated to the North? Where in the Holy Quran is it written that one must kill others for a living?

Has Gumi, in his erudition, ever come across the works of great Islamic scholars such as Muhammad Ali (December 1874- October 13, 1951), Maulana Sadr-ud-Din, Basharat Ahmad (1876-1943) and the British Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner (October 14, 1840-March 22, 1899)? Is he familiar with their incontrovertible position that “the Quran forbids initial aggression, and allows fighting only in self-defence?”

For as long as Nigeria continues to tolerate curmudgeonly figures like Ahmad Gumi to dictate the pace without commensurable consequences, bandits and other felons would continue to hold the tilt of the sword while the masses would be at the receiving end. The danger here is that when the killers of the common men have no more common man to kill, they will turn to the protected elite! That is how nature balances societal equations.

*Ayodele is a commentator on public issues