From Iron Fist to Open Hand: Peter Obi’s Security Gamble

 

Negotiating with child-kidnapping butchers hands criminals exactly what they want. Peter Obi’s proposal signals weakness where strength is needed. Peter Obi need to understand that Nigerian government is not a counseling center hidden inside a forest. Its first duty is to protect the innocent, defeat the guilty, and preserve the authority of the state. Appeasement has repeatedly failed. History always  repeat the same warning: weakness rarely buys peace. More often, it purchases the next attack.

The former governor of Anambra State and presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress in the 2027 election, Peter Obi, reportedly said that if elected President, he would negotiate with bandits who genuinely wanted to surrender and embrace peace. I disagree. Negotiating with terrorists is a dangerous game because it rewards killers and insults victims. Obi’s proposal may sound practical on the campaign trail, but it raises a question that refuses to die: since when did kidnappers, rapists, village burners, and schoolchild abductors become people the Nigerian state should sit across the table from and bargain with?

Watching this unfold feels like sitting through a bad Nollywood movie where the hero shakes hands with the devil while the village burns behind him. During his years in Anambra, Obi built a reputation for putting relentless pressure on kidnappers. There were no peace conferences in the forest. No public courtship. Criminals faced heat until they scattered. Fast-forward to the race for 2027, and suddenly negotiation enters the script. The timing is impossible to ignore. It reeks of political arithmetic aimed at northern votes. Poverty, unemployment, and failed leadership may breed frustration, but they do not force anyone to butcher farmers or kidnap schoolchildren. Millions of poor Nigerians endure hardship every day without becoming murderers. Hawkers dodge stray bullets. Farmers bury their loved ones. Parents sleep hungry. Yet they still wake up and choose honest work instead of bloodshed. Poverty explains suffering. It does not excuse slaughter. Dressing murder in the perfume of poverty only leaves the smell of death underneath.

Katsina offers a painful lesson. The so-called amnesty deals became little more than a paid vacation for criminals. In 2025, the state government unveiled peace agreements with bandits, promising forgiveness in exchange for repentance. By January 2026, violence exploded across Dandume, Faskari, Funtua, Jibia, and Kankara. Villages were attacked. Families were shattered. Women disappeared. Bodies piled up. More than 1,500 civilians were reportedly killed in Katsina between 2021 and 2025, yet authorities still considered releasing 70 bandits facing trial. Public outrage erupted. Afenifere, the Arewa Consultative Forum, and Ohanaeze all condemned the proposal, arguing that it rewarded violence instead of justice. Some bandits even arrived at negotiation meetings carrying rifles, fired celebratory shots into the air, and later returned to rustling cattle and collecting ransom. That was not peace. It was mockery wearing a government name tag.

That is not negotiation. That is surrender dressed in a borrowed suit.

Picture the scene. Deep inside the forest, a bandit commander leans against a tree, an AK-47 hanging from his shoulder, laughing into a satellite phone.

"Oga, government don dey beg again. Collect the money. Release two hostages. Then move to the next village."

That picture becomes harder to dismiss when the numbers enter the room. Nextier’s Nigeria Violent Conflicts Database reported that violent incidents rose by 51.5% in May 2026 to 156 cases, while deaths climbed to 842, representing a 90.1% increase from the previous year. Kidnappings reached nearly 279 incidents during that month alone. Between 2021 and early 2026, more than 32,667 Nigerians reportedly lost their lives to violent attacks across the country, averaging about 15 deaths every day. In 2024 alone, 2,452 people were abducted, a 31% increase over 2023. Northwest states such as Zamfara, Kaduna, and Katsina continued recording thousands of kidnappings while families paid billions of naira in ransom. Fear became an industry. Banditry became a business model.

Obi correctly identifies decades of failed leadership, collapsing values, and neglected education as ingredients in Nigeria’s security crisis. Fair enough. But none of those failures loads a rifle, squeezes a trigger, or sets a village on fire. Social collapse may explain the decay. It does not erase personal responsibility. As governor of Anambra, Obi did not plead with kidnappers. He made the state unbearably hot for them. Security agencies squeezed their operations until they retreated. That projected strength. This new language projects accommodation.

Supporters often point to the 2009 Niger Delta amnesty as proof that negotiations can succeed. The comparison falls apart under scrutiny. Niger Delta militants fought over resource control, political representation, environmental destruction, and revenue from oil extracted from their communities. Whether one agreed with their methods or not, their grievances had identifiable political roots. The amnesty disarmed thousands of fighters, reduced attacks on oil infrastructure, restored production from below 1 million barrels per day, and provided training, financial assistance, and reintegration programs. Even then, the program developed cracks over time as oil theft persisted and fresh violence resurfaced.

Northern bandits present a different reality. They are criminal enterprises built around ransom, extortion, murder, and intimidation. Their business plan is simple: burn villages, kidnap children, demand payment, repeat. They have no political manifesto. No constitutional demands. No coherent reform agenda. Their only negotiation point is permission to keep what violence has already stolen. Equating them with Niger Delta militants stretches comparison beyond recognition.

Terrorism combines armed robbery with attacks against the state itself. Those crimes carry severe penalties because they strike at both citizens and national security. Why should men accused of such atrocities receive rehabilitation packages, stipends, and forgiveness while victims remain trapped in IDP camps, abandoned farms, and shattered communities? Reports have repeatedly surfaced alleging that some so-called repentant terrorists later returned to armed groups or supplied intelligence to former associates. During the Buhari administration, similar allegations emerged involving former fighters. History keeps repeating the same warning: weakness rarely buys peace. More often, it purchases the next attack.

Walk into the shoes of a mother whose daughter disappeared during a school abduction. She is not demanding dialogue. She wants her daughter home. She wants justice. Visit the farmer standing in the ashes of his village. He is not dreaming about reconciliation seminars. He wants security. He wants the killers brought to account. Any peace arrangement that sidelines victims while elevating terrorists reverses the moral order. It hands the microphone to those who created the tragedy.

Obi’s distinction between negotiating with supposedly genuine repentant bandits while crushing hardened criminals may sound sensible inside a campaign speech. On the battlefield, those lines quickly dissolve. Once negotiations become official policy, every kidnapper suddenly discovers repentance—at least until the next ransom payment arrives.

Nigeria does not need softer speeches. It needs sharper teeth.

Build intelligence networks capable of locating camps before attacks begin. Deploy surveillance drones over forests instead of waiting for tragedy. Equip security forces with modern weapons that function when lives depend on them. Improve salaries, welfare, and training for troops risking everything on the front lines. Strengthen coordination among the military, police, intelligence agencies, and local vigilantes instead of allowing fragmented responses to flourish. Break terrorist capacity first. If broken, disarmed fighters later emerge genuinely seeking peace, discussions can follow. But negotiations should come from overwhelming strength—not government desperation. Anything less projects a state losing its grip on authority.

The irony could hardly be sharper. Leaders who failed to prevent poverty, unemployment, and educational collapse now propose negotiating with the monsters those failures helped create. Yet millions living under identical hardship never picked up rifles. Why elevate those who chose violence over honest struggle? Banditry is not a liberation movement. It is organized crime with excellent cash flow. SBM Intelligence has estimated that kidnappings across Nigeria's Northwest generate billions of naira through ransom payments every year. Strip away the slogans and one truth remains. This is commerce powered by fear.

Obi's own record in Anambra demonstrated that determined enforcement can push criminals backward. Replacing that posture with negotiation risks transforming the Presidency into a confession booth for mass killers. Victims deserve more than symbolic sympathy. They have already surrendered homes, livelihoods, relatives, and futures. Diverting scarce national resources toward rehabilitating attackers while survivors struggle to rebuild sends a message that violence pays better than innocence.

Call things by their proper names. Terrorists are killers. Mass murder needs no poetry. No proverb washes away the rape of a schoolgirl. No political slogan resurrects murdered farmers. Government is not a counseling center hidden inside a forest. Its first duty is to protect the innocent, defeat the guilty, and preserve the authority of the state. Appeasement has repeatedly failed. Katsina's broken agreements stand as a warning written in blood. Bandits do not honor deals. They exploit them to rest, regroup, recruit, and rearm.

If Nigeria truly wants lasting peace, it should pursue victory instead of photo opportunities. Dismantle the networks. Strengthen intelligence. Properly arm those defending the country. Reward courage instead of savagery. Anything less risks selling Nigeria's future for campaign calculations.

Peter Obi's own history should remind him of that lesson. The authority of the state begins to crumble the moment it kneels before those who wage war against it. Stand firm. Fight relentlessly. Crush those determined to destroy innocent lives. Otherwise, the republic will continue bleeding frame by frame while history keeps rolling the cameras.

The victims are watching. History is watching. There must be no more holidays for butchers.

 

For readers interested in a separate line of thought, the titles in my “Brief Book Series” are available on Google Play. Read them here on Google Play or in Barnes & Noble bookstore: Brief Book Series.