The reported Boko Haram ceasefire forces Nigeria to confront the hardest question in its 17-year war: Can a government make peace with men it still calls terrorists without surrendering justice, accountability and the rule of law?
The first thing to establish about Nigeria’s reported ceasefire with Boko Haram is what is known — and what is not.
The New Humanitarian reported on September 7 that a three-month ceasefire had been operating between the Nigerian government and Jama’at Ahl al Sunna li Da’wa wal Jihad, commonly known as Boko Haram, since June. The report said the arrangement emerged from negotiations surrounding the release of 360 civilians abducted from Ngoshe in Borno State and could be extended for another 40 days. Three people with contacts inside the insurgent group, including some with access to senior figures, reportedly confirmed the existence of the truce. Communities around Ngoshe also told the publication that attacks had stopped since the agreement.
The government has not confirmed the ceasefire.
The Defence Headquarters has declined to comment on the allegation. The New Humanitarian said it approached government, defence and military spokespeople before publication but received no response. The government has also denied an allegation that ₦5 billion was paid as ransom in connection with the release of the hostages.
Nigeria may be talking to Boko Haram. It may have agreed to a limited cessation of hostilities. Or intermediaries may have brokered an understanding that has reduced violence in a particular area without amounting to a formal government-to-insurgent agreement.
Until Abuja speaks, the precise architecture of the arrangement remains unknown.
The questions it raises are already substantial.
After 17 years of war, thousands of deaths, mass displacement, kidnappings, destroyed communities and repeated military offensives, Nigeria appears to be confronting a possibility it has publicly resisted for years: that the insurgency may not end through military force alone.
The difficult issue is not whether a government may explore dialogue with an armed group. Governments have done so in wars across the world. The difficult issues are what kind of peace Nigeria is trying to secure, who is negotiating it, what authority they possess, what is being offered in return, and what happens to justice when the guns fall silent.
A ceasefire is not yet a peace agreement
The reported arrangement appears to be narrow.
It does not cover Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP, the rival jihadist organisation operating across parts of the Lake Chad region and northeastern Nigeria. The New Humanitarian reported that fighting involving ISWAP has continued. The reported ceasefire is instead linked to JAS, the faction generally identified as Boko Haram and now led by Ibrahim Bakura Doro, according to the publication.
For years, “Boko Haram” has been used as a convenient umbrella for a fragmented insurgency. The movement has splintered, leaders have been killed, alliances have shifted and rival factions have fought one another. A government that reaches an understanding with one faction cannot assume that the wider insurgency has accepted the same terms.
Nor does a reduction in attacks necessarily mean that an insurgent organisation has abandoned its objectives.
One conflict researcher quoted by The New Humanitarian described the present arrangement as potentially a temporary tactical ceasefire that could benefit both sides without changing the trajectory of the war. A mediator involved in the process reportedly acknowledged that discussions had not reached the stage of a long-term settlement.
The immediate achievement may be measured in lives not lost, villages not attacked and civilians allowed to return home. Those gains are not trivial. For people who have spent years living under the threat of abduction or attack, three months without violence can mean the difference between sleeping in a village and fleeing into the bush.
But a ceasefire is a military arrangement. Peace is a political settlement.
The distance between the two is where Nigeria’s real challenge begins.
The state has negotiated before
The idea that talking to Boko Haram represents an entirely new departure would also be misleading.
Nigeria has spent much of the insurgency moving between public declarations that there would be no negotiations and discreet efforts to establish contact.
There were reported back-channel approaches as far back as 2011 and 2012. In 2012, intermediaries attempted to broker temporary ceasefires. In 2013, the Jonathan administration established a committee to explore an amnesty for insurgents willing to renounce violence. Later efforts included negotiations over the release of the Chibok schoolgirls.
In 2016, the government publicly described negotiations that helped secure the release of 21 Chibok girls as the product of painstaking contacts and confidence-building. The government said the process involved the DSS, the military, an international partner and a humanitarian organisation.
The later “Swiss process” went further. According to The New Humanitarian’s account of the history of the negotiations, Swiss intermediaries, Nigerian negotiators and other actors spent years searching for interlocutors within the jihadist movement. Twenty-one Chibok girls were eventually released in 2016 following negotiations involving ransom and the release of four detained senior JAS commanders.
Nigeria has therefore been negotiating when the lives of hostages are at stake, even while maintaining a public policy that treats terrorism as a matter for military and law-enforcement action.
The latest reported truce represents less a sudden change of philosophy than a return to an old dilemma.
The constitutional question
Nigeria’s Constitution does not require the government to fight an insurgency forever.
It requires the state to protect the country and its people.
Section 14(2)(b) declares that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.” Section 217 requires the armed forces to be maintained for purposes that include suppressing insurrection and assisting civil authorities in restoring order.
Those provisions do not prescribe a single military or diplomatic strategy.
A government could therefore argue that if talking to an insurgent faction prevents attacks and saves civilian lives, dialogue is part of fulfilling its constitutional responsibility rather than a surrender of it.
The harder issue begins when negotiations with an armed group are conducted entirely outside public view.
National security will sometimes require confidentiality. A hostage negotiation cannot be conducted like a parliamentary debate. Revealing the identity of an intermediary or the location of a planned hostage release can get people killed.
Confidentiality during an operation, however, is different from permanent secrecy about state policy.
If a ceasefire is being used as part of a broader political strategy, Nigerians should eventually know its objectives, limits and legal basis.
The New Humanitarian reported that earlier negotiations sometimes suffered from a related problem: different parts of the Nigerian security establishment were not always operating from the same information, creating friction between civilian negotiators, intelligence officials and soldiers on the ground.
A peace process that leaves the military guessing about the government’s intentions creates its own operational risks.
The victims cannot be negotiated out of the story
The argument for dialogue becomes harder when viewed from the communities that have carried the war for nearly two decades.
The northeast has not suffered merely from battlefield violence. It has suffered the destruction of ordinary life.
A UNDP assessment estimated that the conflict had caused nearly 350,000 deaths in the northeast by the end of 2020, most indirectly through hunger, disease and the wider economic destruction caused by the conflict. It estimated about 35,000 direct deaths from battle and one-sided violence.
Human Rights Watch reported that the JAS faction resumed targeted attacks on civilians in 2025 and that Borno continued to experience deadly violence. In March 2026, bombings in Maiduguri killed at least 23 people and injured more than 100, according to police figures cited by the organisation.
Behind those numbers are families still searching for relatives, survivors of sexual violence and forced marriage, children whose education was interrupted, communities that lost farms, homes and businesses, and people who spent years in displacement camps.
For them, peace cannot mean simply that the insurgents stop shooting.
It must also answer what happens to the crimes already committed.
The United Nations has repeatedly stressed the need for Nigeria to investigate abuses by Boko Haram and government forces, prosecute those responsible and provide victims with effective remedies and reparation.
A peace agreement that treats victims as an obstacle to reconciliation risks reproducing the injustice that made reconciliation necessary in the first place.
Justice does not have to mean endless war
There is another danger in the language of justice.
If justice is defined only as the military defeat and imprisonment of every member of an insurgent movement, governments can become trapped in wars that have no political exit.
Nigeria’s own experience demonstrates the problem. Military operations have killed or weakened commanders, recovered territory and disrupted insurgent networks. Yet the conflict has repeatedly regenerated.
The New Humanitarian’s latest analysis describes the northeast as a conflict that has lasted 17 years and produced an enormous civilian death toll. It also records the long history of failed attempts to find a negotiated settlement.
Nigeria therefore needs to resist the false choice between peace and justice.
A serious settlement could distinguish between the architects of atrocities and lower-level members who were coerced, recruited as children or willing to abandon violence. It could provide prosecution for those accused of the gravest crimes, carefully structured reintegration for those eligible for it, reparations for victims and a transparent mechanism for determining who qualifies for what.
Nigeria has already experimented with demobilisation, deradicalisation and reintegration through programmes such as Operation Safe Corridor.
The legal and moral challenge is to ensure that reintegration does not become another word for impunity.
Nigeria’s terrorism courts have their own problem
The justice question becomes even more complicated when one examines Nigeria’s record of prosecuting terrorism suspects.
Human Rights Watch reported in July 2026 that Nigeria’s latest terrorism trials involved more than 500 defendants in one phase and about 600 in another, but that the proceedings were dominated by lower-level suspects rather than those allegedly responsible for the most serious crimes. It also raised concerns about evidence, plea-driven convictions and the adequacy of legal representation.
The state can neither prosecute everyone indiscriminately nor negotiate everyone away.
A credible peace strategy therefore needs a credible justice strategy.
If Nigeria enters a more formal dialogue process with Boko Haram, one of the first tasks should be building the investigative capacity required to identify those responsible for mass killings, kidnappings, sexual violence and other serious crimes.
The International Criminal Court has previously found a reasonable basis to believe that Boko Haram committed crimes against humanity, including murder and persecution, and has emphasised that Nigerian authorities have primary responsibility for investigating and prosecuting crimes committed in Nigeria.
The burden does not disappear when the guns fall silent.
It becomes more visible.
And then there is 2027
The timing cannot simply be ignored.
Nigeria’s next presidential and National Assembly elections are scheduled for January 16, 2027, under the revised timetable issued by INEC. The governorship and State Assembly elections are scheduled for February 6.
That puts security in the northeast inside the electoral conversation whether the government intends it or not.
A reduction in violence would make it easier for displaced people to return, for election officials to reach difficult communities and for political parties to campaign in areas where insecurity has previously restricted political activity.
There is a difference, however, between a peace dividend and an electoral dividend.
The first belongs to the people.
The second belongs to politicians.
A government would be entitled to benefit politically from genuine improvements in security. The problem would arise if security policy itself were shaped by the desire to manufacture a favourable electoral picture.
There is currently no evidence establishing that the reported Boko Haram ceasefire was negotiated for electoral purposes. Any such claim would go beyond the available reporting.
The proximity of the truce to the 2027 election nevertheless makes transparency more important.
If the arrangement succeeds, Nigerians should know what made it work.
If it fails, they should know what was agreed and why.
The Bukele comparison tells a different story
The temptation is to place Nigeria beside El Salvador and President Nayib Bukele as opposing models: one supposedly negotiating in secret, the other refusing to negotiate with criminal groups.
The history is more complicated.
Bukele’s government itself was accused of secret negotiations with MS-13 and Barrio 18. In 2021, the US Treasury said Salvadoran government officials had negotiated a secret truce with gang leaders and provided financial incentives and prison privileges in exchange for lower violence. Treasury also said gang leaders had agreed to provide political support to Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party.
The episode shows why secret security bargains can become politically dangerous.
They can produce measurable short-term results while creating another problem: what happens when the public discovers that the government has been negotiating with the very actors it publicly condemns?
Bukele’s subsequent security crackdown became one of the most aggressive anti-gang campaigns in the world. Human Rights Watch acknowledges that gang violence and homicides declined sharply, but has raised serious concerns over arbitrary detention, due process and other rights abuses.
El Salvador therefore offers Nigeria no simple model to copy.
It offers a warning about the price of both approaches.
Security gains do not automatically validate the methods used to achieve them. Nor does a government lose legitimacy merely because it talks to its enemies.
Legitimacy depends on the terms of the bargain, the legal authority behind it, the safeguards surrounding it and what happens to citizens whose rights were violated during the conflict.
The military cannot be left outside the room
There is another institutional question Abuja will eventually have to answer.
What does a ceasefire mean to the soldiers fighting the war?
A military is built around command, discipline and rules of engagement. If troops are ordered to stop attacking a particular insurgent faction while that faction retains its weapons, territory and command structure, the arrangement needs to be understood within the operational chain of command.
The history of previous negotiations suggests this cannot be taken for granted.
The New Humanitarian reported that earlier dialogue initiatives sometimes generated friction because military commanders were not always fully informed about negotiations taking place through civilian and intelligence channels.
A ceasefire that is unclear to soldiers creates the possibility of miscalculation.
Any durable arrangement requires precise rules: where the ceasefire applies, which fighters are covered, what movements are prohibited, how violations are verified, who investigates them and what happens when one side breaks the agreement.
Without those mechanisms, a ceasefire remains an understanding rather than a settlement.
What would a serious Nigerian peace process look like?
If Abuja is genuinely exploring dialogue, the next stage should not be another arrangement whose terms are known only to a handful of officials.
It should be an organised national policy.
The government would need to answer several questions.
Who is negotiating? The public may not need the names of every intermediary during sensitive operations, but the institutional authority of the negotiating team cannot remain permanently ambiguous.
Who is being negotiated with? “Boko Haram” is no longer a sufficiently precise description of the northeast’s armed landscape. Any agreement must identify the faction, its command structure and the extent of its authority.
What is the end state? A ceasefire that merely suspends attacks is not peace. Nigeria needs to know whether the objective is hostage recovery, local stabilisation, disarmament, demobilisation, reintegration or a broader political settlement.
What happens to weapons? A group that retains its weapons and territorial influence remains an armed actor. If disarmament is part of the eventual settlement, it must be measurable and verifiable.
What happens to prisoners? Any proposal for releases or amnesty must distinguish between people who can legitimately be reintegrated and individuals accused of serious international crimes.
What happens to victims? There should be a mechanism for compensation, rehabilitation, tracing missing persons, restoring property where possible and documenting abuses.
Who verifies the agreement? A ceasefire cannot depend solely on assurances from the parties. There must be an independent mechanism for recording violations.
What happens if Boko Haram breaks the agreement? The state needs a defined response rather than improvisation.
And there is a final question:
Who ultimately answers to the Nigerian people?
The danger is not dialogue. It is unaccountable dialogue.
There is a temptation in counter-insurgency to divide the world into two camps: those who favour force and those who favour negotiation.
That is too simple for Nigeria.
Military pressure may be necessary to bring an insurgent organisation to the negotiating table. Dialogue may be necessary to end a war that military pressure alone has failed to end. Intelligence operations may be necessary to locate hostages. Local actors may be necessary to persuade communities to accept returning fighters.
None of these tools is inherently illegitimate.
Problems arise when one is used without a clear relationship to the others.
Nigeria has already learned that Boko Haram is capable of adapting. It has survived leadership changes, military offensives, factional splits and territorial losses.
It can also adapt to negotiations.
If a ceasefire gives the insurgents time to reorganise, recruit, move weapons or improve their bargaining position, the state may eventually discover that it has bought temporary quiet at the price of a stronger enemy.
The reverse is also possible.
If a limited ceasefire allows communities to breathe, hostages to return, humanitarian access to expand and confidence to grow, it could become the first stage of a genuine political settlement.
The reported truce should therefore neither be celebrated as a breakthrough nor condemned as betrayal before its terms are known.
It should be subjected to scrutiny.
The real test
The most consequential question is not whether Nigeria has spoken to Boko Haram.
It is what Nigeria is prepared to do with the peace if the talking works.
The victims of the northeast war deserve more than silence from the guns. They deserve the return of their communities, the restoration of their livelihoods, the tracing of those who disappeared, rehabilitation for survivors and accountability for those responsible for the worst crimes.
The state also owes its soldiers clarity. It owes Parliament and the public an eventual account of the policy being pursued in their name. And it owes future generations a settlement that does not simply postpone the next phase of the conflict.
Nigeria has spent nearly two decades trying to defeat Boko Haram.
It may now be discovering that ending the war requires something harder than defeating an enemy on the battlefield.
It requires deciding what peace will look like when the enemy is still armed, the victims are still waiting and the state must negotiate without surrendering the law.
The reported ceasefire may be an opening.
Or it may simply be another pause in a war that has learned how to survive every pause before it.
Either way, Nigerians deserve to know what is being negotiated in their name.
