The language of power matters. Political actors do not merely deploy words to inform; they use them to manage perceptions, hide contradictions, and legitimize choices that would otherwise be indefensible.
This practised ‘manner of speaking’ aligns with the tradition of doublespeak as a discursive strategy in political communication.
It is a patterned mode of communication in which power actors deliberately construct ambiguities, euphemisms, and denials to sustain hegemonic control.
It is not simply lying; rather, it is the art of “saying without saying,” of holding two contradictory positions while presenting them as coherent.
It depicts what the American social psychologist, Leon Festinger, in his Cognitive Dissonance Theory (1957) refers to as ‘psychological discomfort,’ which individuals experience when ‘holding conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes, or when their actions contradict their beliefs, and are motivated to reduce this dissonance.’
Doublespeak thrives in political communication because it allows the ruling elite to manage public perceptions, disguise failures, and institutionalise contradictions under the guise of rational policy.
In Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), scholars show how doublespeak functions as an instrument of domination; how it reframes failure as strategy, concession as pragmatism, and silence as success.
When those who govern speak in two voices—public denial on one hand, tacit accommodation on the other—they do more than confuse; they corrode legitimacy.
It is within the theoretical prism of doublespeak that we seek to interrogate the recent developments in Katsina State and explore the extent to which the State’s official position on peace deals with bandits is a classic study in contradictions.
A paraphrase of the State government position goes thus: “No negotiation with bandits: The government, led by Governor Dikko Radda, has consistently stated that it will not engage in formal, top-down negotiations with bandit groups.
This policy is based on the belief that bandits previously used such deals to regroup and intensify their attacks…” Then enter the policy’s countervailing clinchers: “encourages surrender and reintegration; decisive action against truce violations; community-driven peace deals; peace in several LGAs; outcomes of the deals; supervised by government and security officials”.
On the one hand, the government loudly proclaims “no negotiation with bandits,” citing past experiences where peace deals merely bought criminals time to regroup, rearm, and resume violence.
Yet, in practice, it has green-lit community-led peace initiatives that function as indirect negotiations, with government officials and security operatives often supervising these very engagements.
This raises a fundamental question. If government insists on no negotiation, what then are these so-called community-brokered deals but negotiations by proxy?
The contradictions deepen when one considers the incentives offered to “repentant” bandits.
While the government frames this as reintegration, in reality, it looks more like a reward system for criminality, complete with business tools and support packages, while law-abiding citizens, who have suffered pillage, abduction, and bereavement, are left without restitution.
Worse still, the state claims it will take “decisive action” against violators of peace deals, but how does one enforce penalties against lawless actors without undermining the very truce one claims to preserve?
Already, a controversial bandit negotiator had reportedly warned the military against ‘provoking the bandits and terrorists by attacking them’ after the peace deals in Katsina.
This comes against the backdrop of the assurances one of wanted bandit kingpins, about the Faskari meeting as a precursor to lasting peace not only in Faskari, Katsina State but also across the entire country and his bare-faced admittance that past hostilities with security operatives worsened after one of his operatives was arrested without explanations in spite of appeals to local and state authorities.
Yet, elsewhere in the Northwest, violent crime continues unabated, shortly after the Faskari meeting as fifty-five people were abducted in neighbouring Zamfara.
This underscores not only the hollow logic of selective calm, but also puts a lie to the sham assurance of the Faskari ‘peace deal’ as the silver bullet for restoring peace in Faskari, Katsina, and indeed Nigeria as a whole.
The narrative of “community-led peace” restoring calm in select LGAs may offer temporary relief, but it institutionalizes insecurity by outsourcing governance to local leaders ill-equipped to manage heavily armed militias.
It also risks creating parallel centres of power where bandits, rebranded as community defenders, wield influence under official tolerance.
Thus, Katsina’s policy straddles a dangerous middle ground, which is neither a firm repudiation of banditry nor a coherent security framework.
Instead, it projects an image of a government trapped in its own doublespeak, mistaking fragile truces and peace of the graveyard for durable peace.
The foregoing forms the factual backbone of a disturbing argument. Katsina’s policy has the outward shape of firmness – we do not negotiate with bandits – but in practice, it has authorised arrangements that amount to negotiation by proxy.
District heads, imams and community elders broker accords; government and security officials supervise them; and images and videos show men in military fatigues and armed individuals seated alongside community and state representatives.
Put bluntly, the state is sharing a table with fugitives. From a purely rhetorical point of view, this is doublespeak at work.
The phrase “no negotiations” functions as a moral signpost; the practical act of supervising local talks functions as the opposite.
CDA teaches us that power thrives in such semantic doublings: re-lexicalize negotiation as “community peace-building,” rebrand amnesty as “reintegration support,” and the public will be nudged toward accepting what used to be intolerable.
But language changes perception only insofar as it is backed by consistent action. Where action contradicts words, trust begins to dissolve—and trust is the very currency a state needs to govern.
All these point to the potency and valence of George Orwell’s dystopian reflections in _1984_ , William Lutz’s further seminal theorizations on doublespeak, Johan Galtung’s (1969) influential work on positive and negative peace, and historical parallels of Rome’s _Pax Romana_ , colonial Nigeria’s ‘pacification policy,’ and apartheid South Africa’s local resistance suppression game plan.
Seen through these theoretical lenses and historical parallels, Katsina’s framing of temporary ceasefires and temporary peace in some communities as achievements is practising doublespeak in its purest form.
It is conflating silence with peace, tactical deals with justice, and temporary relief with durable security. It is not a testament to policy success but to a “graveyard peace”. What exists is a fragile quietude, born of intimidation and temporary deals with factions of bandits, not the positive peace of justice, security, and freedom.
Clearly, this “graveyard peace” is brittle. It depends on the goodwill of violent actors who remain armed, unrepentant, and structurally fragmented. It incentivizes other factions in Zamfara, Kaduna, or Sokoto to intensify violence in order to win their own deals.
Most dangerously, it normalizes a perverse logic where the state outsources its sovereignty to criminals under the façade of community agreements. In CDA terms, what is unfolding in Katsina is a discursive laundering of insecurity.
The government launders its incapacity to protect citizens through the language of peace-building, hoping that citizens and the wider public will mistake silence for safety.
Taken together, there are several fundamental snags with Katsina State’s bandits ‘peace deal.’
First, the legal and constitutional façade is thin.
The Nigerian Constitution does not authorize state governors to enter into any form of ‘peace deals’ or grant amnesty to wanted criminals.
Amnesty is a federal prerogative, coordinated exclusively by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), which requires clear legal grounding and national oversight.
When a state facilitates settlements with armed groups, even indirectly, it trespasses into an area that should be nationally coordinated, transparent, and accountable.
What masquerades as local ingenuity then becomes a constitutional slipperiness that normalizes extraordinary measures outside the rule of law.
Second, the fractured nature of bandit networks makes localized deals logically hollow.
Banditry in the Northwest is not a single, unified movement with a central command susceptible to negotiation.
It is a fluid, transactional landscape of rival gangs, opportunistic cells and patronage networks.
A truce with a faction in one LGA simply creates an opening for another faction elsewhere to escalate its violence in order to secure its own bargaining chips.
The disclaimers about local successes in Jibia, Batsari, Danmusa, Kurfi and Faskari must therefore be read with caution. They may represent tactical lulls, not structural resolutions.
The short-term quiet is the very definition of negative peace—absence of violence—rather than positive peace, which implies justice, equity and institutional reform.
Third, the optics and the message to youth are catastrophic. What does it tell idle, jobless and disaffected young men when armed bandit leaders are photographed in fatigues, weapons on display, smiling and rubbing shoulders with officials? The implicit lesson is stark and corrosive.
Violence pays, notoriety converts to legitimacy, and career criminals can be rewarded with social acceptance and material packages. That is a recruitment advertisement for the next generation of gangsters.
If the state wants to deter violence, it must show that criminality ends in incarceration and justice—not in negotiation tables and livelihood kits.
Fourth, the invocation of the Niger Delta amnesty as precedent is a false equivalence. The Yar’Adua-era amnesty addressed a specific political economy – communities ravaged by oil exploitation with grounded political grievances and a clear adverse relationship to the state’s revenue extraction.
Banditry, by contrast, is largely criminal entrepreneurship – kidnapping-for-ransom, cattle rustling and extortion – without a coherent political programme or an accountable leadership that speaks for affected constituencies.
To collapse the two contexts is an error of overgeneralization and a rhetorical sleight that obscures responsibility rather than clarifies it.
Fifth, the moral insult to victims cannot be overstated. To parade fugitives at peace meetings while grieving families await justice is a betrayal.
It is to hand impunity a cloak of respectability and to render victimhood invisible. The legitimacy of the state rests on its capacity to protect and to mete out justice; anything less is governance in bad faith.
Finally, CDA scholars remind us that words make worlds. CDA reminds us that the language of governance matters. To call surrender “peace” is to normalize impunity.
To call appeasement “policy” is to undermine sovereignty. To mistake silence for stability is to mortgage the future.
The lesson from CDA is clear. Discourses of doublespeak may produce short-term calm but they erode trust, hollow out governance, and perpetuate cycles of violence.
When the state consistently talks peace while practicing appeasement, it constructs a social reality in which silence becomes mistaken for harmony.
This is the classical “peace of the graveyard,” an eerie stillness that is the product of suppression and exhaustion, not the product of reconciliation or institutional remedy.
Historical parallels abound that hid exploitation behind talk of stability, showing that coerced quiet rarely yields long-term safety.
Katsina, and by extension Nigeria, must resist the temptation of linguistic camouflage. The pathway forward is not in graveyard peace but in positive peace: justice for victims, accountability for perpetrators, and socio-economic reforms that address the roots of rural banditry without rewarding those who profit from it.
What then should Nigeria, and Katsina in particular, do?
First, end the doublespeak. There must be a single, consistent public line – the state does not reward violence.
If community processes are to be used, they must be transparent, legally authorised, and strictly supervised by federal security and judicial institutions, not merely overseen by sympathetic local officials.
Second, reassert constitutional processes. Any reintegration scheme must be framed within federal amnesty frameworks that include disarmament, demobilisation, and restitution for victims, conditional rehabilitation, and monitoring by independent bodies.
Governors cannot and should not unilaterally grant clemency or transact with armed outlaws.
Third, invest in civilian security and intelligence, especially in rural peripheries.
Fragility in local policing and porous intelligence create the vacuum bandits exploit. Rebuilding trust between communities and formal security institutions is indispensable.
Fourth, hit the financiers and patronage networks. Target the money, the logistics and the partisan patrons, who enable criminality.
Without choking off the financial and political oxygen of the bandit economy, rounds of negotiated truces will be cosmetic.
Fifth, rebuild the social contract with youth – through jobs, education and civic inclusion – so that the alternative to militia life looks credible and dignified.
The state must never abdicate its monopoly of legitimate violence, nor outsource peace to those who have profited from carnage.
Allowing armed criminals to sit at negotiation tables, wearing military fatigues, brandishing AK-47 with full complement of fearsome cache of ammunitions strapped across the chest and catching the eyes of ‘peace deal’ choreographers, sends a troubling message Nigeria can scarcely afford – that violence is a viable path to political recognition.
That message will echo in towns and villages until the next cycle of abductions, reprisals and communal resentments.
If Katsina’s experiment is to be reframed into genuine conflict resolution, it must begin by naming things honestly. Stop calling negotiation “community peace” when it is anything but peace and follow through with law, justice and institution-building.
Anything less is doublespeak and peace of the graveyard with blood on its hands. Remember; word matters!
Agbedo is a Professor of Linguistics, University of Nigeria Nsukka, Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Amsterdam, and public affairs analyst.
