By UnderTowFinally, Katsina State governor Aminu Masari has come to the despairing truth that appeasing bandits never stands a chance of midwifing peace. Though banditry in the North has not substantially subsided since security forces declared war on the bandits last month, the governor has, however, concluded, after nearly one year of trying to negotiate with bandits, that no peace deal could be reached or sustained with the criminals.Speaking to the BBC this week about the 2019 peace deal he signed with the bandits, he had groaned that it was of no use. As he put it, We choose to sign the peace agreement with the bandits so as to avoid loss of lives and property, but it didnt yield a positive result. This time around we will hand it over to security personnel. In our effort to honour the agreement between us, we cancelled all vigilantes and volunteer groups and we allowed them (bandits) to continue with their normal activities in the state.On January 3, 2019, Gov Masari had addressed a press conference and declared that his state was besieged by robbers, bandits, cattle rustlers, kidnappers and all manner of criminals. His countenance was pained, and he sounded weary and desperate. He had tried everything, prodded the security agencies to live up to their self-proclaimed billing, and rallied the people behind the government to confront the banditry menace. Said the governor: There is no option because we are thinking of the survival of our people and state. It is now a daily occurrence as no day passes without a case recorded. It is not even rustling of cows but now kidnapping of people. Our state is currently under serious siege by armed robbers, kidnappers and armed bandits who arrest rural people at the grassroots at will and demand ransom, which if not paid, they kill their victims. The Permanent Secretary was just informing me that his close relative was kidnapped and a ransom of N5 million was demanded and the person who took the money to them was shot.Not done, the governor added: Some people visited me, and as they left, they were trailed and robbed of their belongings. The armed robbers could not go away with the vehicle because it has security lock. In the past, they carried out their activities in the middle of the night, but now, they operate at midnight, 10pm and gradually in broad day light. It is not up to a month, right here in front of Government House, five electricity poles were carted away. It is getting out of hand that we should not fold our arms. Lets return to God, lets pray to Him to salvage the situation. So we must reach a lasting solution at this meeting to curtail this ugly trendThe people of Katsina in the 34 local governments now sleep with one eye closed and the other opened.Indeed, very unusually for a governor presiding over the affairs of the presidents home state, Mallam Masari had painted a very graphic account of how the daredevil criminals operated, their cocky arrogance, their daring, their brutality. By early this year, the governor was worried that the truce he reached with the bandits was not holding up, but he was nevertheless still cautiously optimistic. Alas, last week, he sighed that very little came out of the states peace initiative and countermeasures, and he had been left holding the short end of the stick by bandits who remained intransigent. If there would be any rapprochement, said the governor cynically, it should be between the military and the bandits, not the state government.Last September, with security agencies seemingly paralysed by fear or incompetence, the governor had felt he had no choice but to reach out to the bandits, many of whom he said the state knew by name. He had entered into discussions with them to forge a truce. That truce seemed to work at first. But it was classical appeasement which this column had denounced, and which was as impracticable as it was immoral. Reflecting the governors optimism, he had suggested that the deal would work despite reservations.As he enthused at the time: Now I can say that over 80 percent of people under captivity in Katsina State have been released. So, in terms of group kidnapping I can only remember that right now we are searching for only 13 people But in terms of massive attacks since we started, there was no single massive attack on any village or community. By my account, about 57 people have been released by them, most of them women and young children. Among them even are nationals of Niger Republic. So, for us it has brought relative peace. The next step is the issue of disarming the bandits and commanders in the forest that command 200, 300, 400 fighters, fully armed on motorbikes. Thats how they operate and attack the villages. In most cases they go three to one on a motorcycle. Theyve reinforced their motorcycles and they are using tubeless tyres. They put something inside so that their tyres do not get punctured or suffer breakdown.The governor made his misgivings public. But so did the bandits. One of their representatives, Idris Yayande, had boldly declared that some of the bandits were driven into crime by the illegalities committed by the security agencies. According to him, We have our complaints as well; it concerns some of our people who were arrested like Alhaji Baldu, Alhaji Lawal and Ibrahim Nakutama who were picked up on return from hajj. I was arrested also and up till now, I have not been told my offence. I was detained for 15 months before I was released. For the past five months, since the fasting period when we met with the community, we have not attacked them. We have no one in captivity. If you hear anything of such is not from this camp. Of course, there are places where attacks and kidnappings are happening because we dont have control of such places.Katsina indeed provides an interesting dialectics of banditry in Nigeria. But hearing from the bandits, it was clear that the problem of banditry had its roots in socio-economic deprivation and injustice. These problems do not lend themselves easily to peace deals involving payment of regular stipends and dispensing token economic and judicial reparations.As Zamfara, Kebbi and a few other states in the North have proved, banditry is at the core of the injustice and lack of economic opportunities that characterise and enervate the society. Nowhere are these contradictions so transparent than the North where elite irresponsibility and poor delivery of justice have spawned an adders nest of recalcitrant and bloodthirsty bands of bandits, many of which have become inured to peace and are drunk on cheap money. Zamfara under their previous governor Abdulaziz Yari began this abominable culture of negotiating peace with bandits. The former governor had also reached the end of his tethers with security agencies which, despite much grandstanding, were unable to rein in banditry in that state. Left with no option, Mr Yari believed it was better to negotiate peace with bandits.It was obvious to critics that the former Zamfara governor simplistically ignored the fundamental fact that the contradictions in his state predisposed the state to banditry. Until those problems are resolved, which the state has not given indication it is capable of doing, Zamfara will not be able to buy peace as it naively hopes. A few months after the initial peace deal, the truce easily fell through, with the bandits returning to their unmended ways.Faced with resurgent banditry, the current governor of Zamfara, Bello Matawalle, has sought to revive the peace deal with bandits. He has enunciated how he intends to restore the peace deal, and has in addition expressed optimism that it would work. It is, however, unlikely to work. Katsina State has finally understood how difficult it is to placate bandits in the face of continuing contradictions in the state. He had deployed the carrot-and-stick approach many times, and has now in despair reposed all his trust in military action. How far that military action will work in the face of a highly mobile and self-accounting groups of bandits remains to be seen.Katsinas newfound optimism may be infectious, considering how northern states, which are reeling from banditry, take their cues from the presidents home state. However, it is not altogether clear how leaving the issues of injustice and poverty unresolved would make the states amenable to peace and development. This hope is exaggerated. For about 10 years, the Nigerian military battled Boko Haram insurgents, a group of terrorists spawned mainly by socio-economic dislocations in the north-eastern part of the country. Though the military recorded some successes, the crisis has merely abated, not completely extinguished. The reason is that the problems that gave birth to the insurgency have still not been resolved. So too is banditry. Until the factors that rendered many northern states unstable and vulnerable are dealt with, neither appeasement nor military action will restore peace in those troubled regions.
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