There are policy choices that are merely controversial. Then there are those that are consequential enough to redefine how a government is perceived, at home and abroad. The reported decision by the Katsina State Government to release about seventy suspected bandits and terror linked defendants under a so called peace arrangement belongs firmly in the second category.
According to multiple reports, the state Ministry of Internal Security and Home Affairs forwarded lists containing dozens of suspects, including people already standing trial in various High Courts, to be freed as part of a negotiated settlement with armed groups operating across roughly fifteen local government areas. The justification offered is that this concession will consolidate a peace deal with repentant fighters who, in turn, have reportedly released abducted victims.
On paper, it is packaged as pragmatic conflict resolution. In reality, it risks becoming a masterclass in state enabled moral hazard.
The commissioner overseeing the process defended the move by comparing it to prisoner exchanges after wars, including references to exchanges during the Nigerian civil war. That comparison is deeply flawed. War prisoner swaps occur between recognized combatant parties in structured conflict. Uniformed forces. Defined chains of command. Negotiated ceasefires. What Katsina is confronting is not a battlefield exchange between lawful belligerents. It is criminal terror networks accused of kidnapping, village raids, killings, rape, and systematic civilian intimidation.
To blur that distinction is to blur the line between justice and bargaining.
Bandits are not captured soldiers. They are criminal defendants. Some are mid trial. Some face grave charges. Releasing them through executive arrangement short circuits the judiciary and tells victims something chilling, your suffering is negotiable.
Between 2021 and 2025, reports indicate that well over a thousand civilians were killed in bandit related violence in Katsina State alone. Entire communities have been attacked. Worshippers have been killed inside mosques. Villages have been burned. Motorcades ambushed. Farmers murdered. Wedding guests abducted. Even during periods when so called peace deals were said to be in place, attacks reportedly continued across places like Dandume, Kankara, Jibia, Faskari, and Funtua.
This raises the obvious question, what exactly is being consolidated? Peace, or illusion?
Nigeria has walked this road before. Deals with violent groups dressed up as repentant actors have often produced tactical pauses, not strategic endings. The pattern is familiar. Negotiation window. Regrouping phase. Renewed attacks. Expanded demands. The cycle repeats because the incentive structure is broken. Violence earns leverage. Prosecution becomes optional.
Even federal security leadership has publicly warned that terror actors frequently exploit negotiations as camouflage. When state level authorities proceed with concessions that contradict federal security doctrine, the result is fragmentation of strategy and confusion of signals. Confusion is oxygen for insurgent and criminal networks.
The intellectual defense often presented for these releases is that northern violence is primarily grievance driven, poverty, marginalization, exclusion, and therefore best addressed through amnesty and dialogue. Poverty is real. Marginalization debates are real. But analytical honesty matters. Not every armed network is a political movement. Not every violent actor is an ideologue with a manifesto. Many are profit driven, loosely networked, opportunistic, and cross border enabled.
Where structured political grievance exists, it speaks clearly and publicly. It produces articulated demands and identifiable leadership. The Niger Delta militancy, often cited as precedent, revolved around resource control, environmental justice, and revenue allocation. One could map the grievance architecture even while condemning the violence.
The northwestern bandit ecosystem is different, fragmented cells, ransom economies, ideological overlaps, and fluid command structures. Treating it as a mirror of Niger Delta militancy is not just inaccurate. It is operationally dangerous.
Public reaction across Nigeria reflects this concern. Socio political and regional groups across ethnic lines, from Afenifere to Arewa consultative voices to Ohanaeze and Middle Belt stakeholders, have criticized the release plan as reckless and destabilizing. When condemnation cuts across regional blocs, policymakers should pause and listen.
The broader problem is what this signals about governance under President Tinubu’s administration, whether or not the presidency directly authored the decision. International perception does not follow Nigeria’s internal bureaucratic wiring. External observers see one sovereign security system. When terror suspects are released under negotiated arrangements, the global reading is blunt, Nigeria’s rule of law is flexible under pressure.
That perception carries consequences.
Security partners question prosecutorial reliability. Intelligence sharing partners grow cautious. Investors mark up risk premiums. Diplomatic analysts downgrade state capacity scores. Counter terror credibility weakens. A government trying to project reformist firmness cannot afford optics that suggest concession under duress.
There is also the human dimension that policy papers rarely measure correctly, victim psychology. Communities that bury their dead do not interpret suspect releases as peace gestures. They interpret them as abandonment. Trust in the state erodes when justice is deferred in closed door bargains. Citizens begin to suspect that force gets faster government response than lawful behavior.
Peace built without justice is rarely peace. It is intermission between assaults.
None of this means security must be purely kinetic. Intelligence reform, local defense partnerships, technology enabled surveillance, community policing, forest warfare capability, and regional security auxiliaries, like the South West’s Amotekun model, all deserve serious scaling. Hunter ranger integration, drone reconnaissance, and terrain based special units can shift the tactical balance if properly managed. Dialogue may have a place, but only from a position of strength, with verifiable compliance mechanisms and judicial transparency.
Negotiation from weakness is not reconciliation. It is permission.
Nigeria needs peace in the North. Urgently. But peace cannot be manufactured by releasing defendants and rebranding them as stakeholders. Justice must not become a bargaining chip in a ransom economy.
When government trades prosecution for promises, the criminals are not the only ones taking notes. The world is too.
By Hon. Chimazuru Nnadi-Oforgu
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
OBLONG MEDIA GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE 
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