In the annals of statecraft, few images are as emblematic of institutional decay as that of a sitting governor, cloaked in the regalia of constitutional authority, posing meekly beside armed bandits, smiling for the camera while an AK-47 rests casually across the shoulder of a grinning criminal, his primed fingers permanently fiddling with the trigger. This was not a scene from a dystopian film. It happened. It has been happening and there is nothing to suggest that it will not continue happening under our nose and before our eyes in broad day light. And far from being an anomaly; it seems to have become the ‘new normal’.
In a significant intervention, the Northern Elders Progressive Group (NEPG) has urged governors in Nigeria’s North-West to collaborate closely with the Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, and other security agencies in exploring dialogue with armed bandit groups. “Even powerful nations have sat at the table with groups like the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and the Houthis…Negotiation is not weakness; it is about saving lives,” noted the group’s Zonal Coordinator, Yusuf Abubakar. The high-point of his position is that this non-kinetic approach, which is part of a broader strategy to break the cycle of violence, is neither novel nor naïve.
This statement, grounded in global precedent and humanitarian urgency, demands sober reflection, not dismissal, not derision, but dispassionate analysis. The NEPG is correct. History is replete with examples of states, even the most powerful, engaging in dialogue with violent non-state actors. The United States negotiated prisoner exchanges with the Taliban. France engaged in discreet talks with Al-Qaeda affiliates in the Sahel. Saudi Arabia and Oman have mediated with the Houthis. None of these engagements signified capitulation. They reflected calibrated statecraft, that is, dialogue deployed not as a substitute for strength, but as its extension. Yet context is everything. What distinguishes successful negotiations from catastrophic miscalculations is not the mere act of talking but the posture from which one talks. And here lies Nigeria’s dilemma.
The NEPG’s appeal arrives against the backdrop of grotesque precedents, that is, the perilous spectacle of a sitting governor posing beside a grinning bandit, his AK-47 casually slung, finger nibbling at the trigger, which signaled a visual metaphor for sovereign collapse. That governor, negotiating from fear rather than force, soon watched his “peace deal” dissolve into ash as the same bandits returned to the forests to unleash fresh horrors on defenceless communities. His regret, voiced publicly later, was not merely personal; it was prophetic. Hear him: “Bandits fooled me twice with Qur’an; I regret trusting them. Anybody who says he is going to engage them on anything is free. I will pray for him but I will not do it again…I’d be a fool to go the same way…” It exposed the fatal error of confusing dialogue with diplomacy, and diplomacy with desperation.
Indeed, the former governor’s rueful confession is not merely a personal mea culpa, but a didactic parable etched in blood and betrayal. It embodies the English adage, “Once beaten, twice shy,” and finds deeper cultural resonance in the Igbo wisdom: “Agadi nwaanyi daa ada nda naabọ, a gụọ ihe o bu n’ụkpa ọnụ”—when an old woman stumbles twice, the contents of her basket must be counted. In other words, repeated failure demands scrutiny, not repetition. Another Igbo proverb counsels: Anwụ gbaa mmadụ, ọ hụ okpokoro ijiji, ya na ọsọ emewe – One beaten by wasp takes to their heels on sighting a male housefly (Musca domestica). The ex-governor’s experience is not anecdotal; it is analytical. It reveals that dialogue untethered from leverage, verification, and consequence is light years away from diplomacy; it is delusion. To ignore such hard-won lessons is not courage; it is carelessness. And in the theatre of asymmetric violence, carelessness costs lives.
Negotiation is not weakness; Mr. Abubakar is right. Nonetheless, negotiation from weakness is strategic suicide. The distinction is not semantic; it is existential. Global precedents invoked by the NEPG are instructive precisely because they were anchored in strength. The U.S. did not negotiate with the Taliban as it fled Kabul on 30 August 2021; it negotiated after two decades of military pressure, drone campaigns, and institutional degradation of Taliban command structures. France’s engagements in Mali followed sustained counterterrorism operations. Oman’s mediation with the Houthis occurred alongside a Saudi-led military coalition that denied the group total victory. In each case, dialogue was a tool of leverage—not a lifeline thrown by a drowning state.
In Nigeria’s northwest, the opposite has too often been the case. Of particular concern here is the constitutional quagmire, which seems to trap the governors, the acclaimed Chief Security Officers’ of their states, in the middle of nowhere, between the rock and hard place! Of course, not unexpectedly, one of them cried out recently, bemoaning his glorified status as a toothless bulldog like Mena Webb’s Jule Carr: ‘a general without an army’. Governors, apparently orphaned by a constitutional provision that dresses them in borrowed robes of ‘Chief Security Officer’ of their States and further stretched thin beyond elastic limits by a federal security architecture seemingly overwhelmed by the rising scale of violence, have resorted to ad hoc, unilateral, and humiliating negotiations. These are not peace processes; they are knee-jerk responses of one statutorily configured on panic default mode. Negotiations lack intelligence backing, victim inclusion, disarmament conditions, or enforcement mechanisms. They are theatrical concessions mistaken for tactical breakthroughs. Otherwise, the former governor wouldn’t have regretted the deals he struck with the bandits and was even generous and truthful enough to counsel against any repetition of such grave tactical error.
Nevertheless, the NEPG’s call for governors to work with the NSA is not only prudent but patently imperative. Mallam Ribadu’s office represents the institutional centre of Nigeria’s security coordination. If dialogue is to occur, it must be nationally synchronized, intelligence-driven, forensically documented, and embedded within a broader campaign of territorial reclamation, community protection, and criminal accountability. Let governors (with or without any army) facilitate local confidence-building. At least, let the mouth-watering security votes they cream off on a monthly basis find discernible line item in the budget as ‘confidence-building sub-head’! Let traditional and religious leaders mediate defections. But let the NSA, the military high command, and the Attorney-General’s office set the red lines. No amnesty for mass murderers; no legitimization of criminal hierarchies; no truces without verifiable disarmament.
Moreover, the ‘non-kinetic’ approach championed by Ribadu, which has been lately contested and (mis)construed by Mr. El-Rufai as ‘kiss-the-bandits’ and ‘backdoor channels’ as bare-facedly acknowledged by Mr. Tambuwal must shed its controversial shibboleths and transcend the elusive threshold of euphemism for surrender or subtle capitulation. It must encompass psychological operations, financial tracking of ransom flows, rehabilitation programmes for truly repentant bandits (if really there can be anything like that), and socioeconomic reintegration in at-risk communities. It must be paired with kinetic pressure—targeted raids, drone surveillance, disruption of supply chains—that makes the cost of returning to violence higher than the cost of laying down arms.
The NEPG is also right to remind critics that saving lives is the highest imperative of governance. But saving lives does not mean preserving the lives of those who extinguish them with impunity. It means protecting the schoolgirl, the farmer, the trader, the grandmother in the village who sleeps to the sound of gunshots. Any negotiation that fails to centre their safety—and their justice—is not peace. It is pacification, and pacification is temporary; it is illusory. Let us therefore reframe the debate. The question is not “Should we negotiate?” The question is: “Under what conditions, with what safeguards, and from what position of power can negotiation yield sustainable peace?”
To those who cite the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, or the Houthis: excellent. Study those cases closely. Note the years of military operations that preceded talks. Note the exclusion of irreconcilables from amnesty. Note the role of regional powers and international monitors. Then ask: Does Nigeria’s current posture resemble those contexts—or does it resemble the photo of a governor smiling beside a man with his finger on the trigger?
The path forward in the direction of sustainable peace and enduring progress is clear. First, governors must cease freelance diplomacy. All engagement with armed groups must be routed through the NSA’s framework, vetted by intelligence, and monitored by civil society. Second, the federal government must visibly reassert control—not through rhetoric, but through results: secured highways, reopened schools, prosecuted collaborators, dismantled ransom economies. Third, any negotiation must be conditional, transparent, and transitional. No photo-ops; no handshakes with warlords; no impunity for atrocities. DDR (Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration) must be mandatory—not optional. Fourth, invest in the non-kinetic ecosystem: trauma counseling for survivors, job programmes for at-risk youth, mobile courts for swift justice, and community policing to rebuild trust.
The NEPG has performed a vital service by elevating this debate beyond emotion into the realm of strategy. Their invocation of global parallels is valid—but only if Nigeria learns the full lesson those parallels teach: talk when you must, but never when you are trembling. Negotiation is not weakness. But negotiating while your citizens are being slaughtered, while your towns are being torched, while your authority is being mocked by men with AK-47s—that is not statecraft. That is surrender dressed in suits. Let Nigeria negotiate. But let it negotiate from strength, from structure, from sovereignty restored, not surrendered. The lives we seek to save deserve nothing less.
Agbedo, a Professor of Linguistics, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Fellow of Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, is a public affairs analyst.
