Editorial: Katsina State and its Peace Deal with Bandits

 

The declaration last Friday by Katsina State Governor, Dikko Radda, that the peace deal entered into with bandits has yielded positive results in councils that were affected by insecurity, is a damning surrender to criminality; a confession of state failure, and an open declaration that the Nigerian government no longer believes in justice, deterrence, or the rule of law, and has instead opted for appeasement by extortion. When a government negotiates with bandits who have slaughtered civilians, and then celebrates the arrangement as progress, it is not making peace; it is laundering criminality through official approval. Let us name this grotesque experiment for what it is: a policy that rewards violence, incentivizes kidnapping, and institutionalizes impunity. This is not pragmatism. It is surrender.

 

During his visit to Batsari and Danmusa local councils as part of his ongoing tour of the state, the governor’s convoy briefly stopped in the middle of the dreaded Danburum forest in Batsari Local Council, which is a haven for bandits and hundreds of people have lost their lives there, among other atrocities committed by the bandits. Reports said some members of the convoy disembarked, trekked some distance into the forest, and picked some edible wild fruits that they ate; and gave some to the governor and his entourage. As proof that the peace deals with bandits has yielded positive results, the governor said, the forest has become relatively peaceful, with farming and related activities gradually picking up.

 

Let us be clear about what is being normalized. Bandits who murdered, kidnapped, raped, extorted, and terrorized entire communities are not being held accountable. They are being appeased, incentivized and rewarded. They have not been disarmed, or prosecuted. They have been indulged. They have been paid and reassured that the fastest route to state recognition is through calibrated brutality. Katsina has effectively announced a new business model for organized crime: abduct civilians, destabilize rural economies, extract ransom and casualties; and if the violence becomes inconvenient enough, negotiate a payout, receive amnesty-by-implication, and wait for the next tranche. This is capitulation.

 

What Katsina State is calling a “peace deal” or security breakthrough is in truth not peace; it is a ceasefire on credit, purchased from criminals with blood-stained hands, using conscience-free cash and celebrated with the kind of performative optimism camouflaged with staged optics that mistakes silence for safety. To dress this arrangement up as a victory is to insult the victims buried in shallow graves across Danburum forest and beyond; and to invite the next, more lucrative round of bloodletting. That a governor could drive briefly through a forest once notorious for mass killings, pick wild fruits for the cameras, and declare victory is not evidence of restored security. It is political theater performed atop unmarked graves. It does not constitute a security strategy. The absence of reported incidents over “a few days” is not peace; it is an intermission. Criminal enterprises pause when paid. They resume when the money dries up; or when the price for renewed terror rises. That is not a forecast; it is the operating logic of ransom economies everywhere.

 

Worse still, the policy sets a grotesque precedent. What signal does this send to every armed gang watching from the periphery? That violence pays. That restraint is compensated. That the fastest route to “dialogue” with the state is through mass kidnapping. If bandit A receives accommodation for terror, what restrains bandit B from escalating to qualify for the same reward? What discourages splinter groups from forming precisely to be bought off later? Negotiation without justice does not shrink the market for crime; it enlarges it. And when the payments stop, because they always do, what then? Do we pretend surprise when the kidnappings resume, harsher and more theatrical, to reset leverage? Do we renegotiate, at a higher price, with a more emboldened cartel of violence? Or do we finally admit that bribing criminals to behave temporarily is not governance but capitulation? In such an environment, the rational actor is not the law-abiding citizen; it is the next syndicate preparing to raise the stakes to qualify for its own payoff. 

 

Supporters of the deal point to a short-term lull in attacks and reduced spending on victims’ medical bills. This is a chilling calculus. A state that congratulates itself for saving money because criminals have paused their assault has inverted every principle of governance. Silence bought with bribes is not peace; because criminal enterprises do not retire on goodwill. They escalate. They fracture into splinter groups. They rebrand. They return with greater brutality to renegotiate leverage. Today’s “peace” becomes tomorrow’s ransom notice. The goal of public authority is not to lower hospital bills by paying extortionists; it is to protect citizens through the rule of law. Justice delayed is corrosive enough. Justice abandoned is fatal.

 

History has already delivered its verdict on this kind of bargain. From Colombia to the Sahel, appeasing non-ideological armed groups entrenches criminal governance, corrodes state authority, and guarantees recurrence. Where accountability is absent, violence metastasizes. Where bandits are paid, successors multiply. Negotiations may have a role in ending political conflicts. They have no place in managing organized crime when they replace accountability with cash. Banditry is not a misunderstanding. It is not a grievance requiring stipends. It is a felony enterprise that must be dismantled through arrests, prosecutions, financial disruption, confiscation of assets, and sustained protection of communities, not through hush money delivered under the table and hailed as wisdom.

 

Most obscenely overlooked are the victims. What does this policy say to the families of the dead? To the farmers driven from their land? To the children traumatized by captivity? It tells them their suffering has been monetized. That justice is negotiable. That the state has chosen convenience over conscience. Nigeria cannot bribe its way out of lawlessness. Peace purchased from bandits is not peace; it is a receipt, proof that the state paid today and promised to pay again tomorrow. If this logic is not reversed, the question is not whether the bandits will return, but when, and how much more brutal they will need to be to renegotiate their price.

 

No one argues that restoring security is easy. It is not. But there is a vast difference between difficult governance and derelict governance. The alternative to appeasement is not endless war; it is lawful, coordinated statecraft: arrest, prosecution, asset seizure, financial interdiction of bandit networks, protection of witnesses, intelligence-led policing, community security partnerships under state authority; not parallel power, and genuine victim-centered restitution funded by confiscated criminal proceeds, not public capitulation. Terror and banditry are not labor disputes. They are felonies. Treating them otherwise corrodes the moral spine of the state. Katsina’s “deal” should be halted, audited, and unwound, not exported as a model. Nigeria must stop paying criminals to behave and start enforcing laws to protect the innocent. This policy is not merely misguided. It is dangerous. It must be stopped.