By Law & Society Magazine Investigations
For every Nigerian who eventually walks out of a forest after months in captivity, there is another story that rarely receives the same attention. It is not simply the story of how the victim regained freedom, but of what happened afterwards. More often than not, there is no dramatic arrest, no painstaking criminal investigation, no courtroom where evidence is tested and guilt established. Instead, there are whispered negotiations, ransom payments disguised as “community contributions,” local peace deals brokered by traditional rulers or clerics, and public appeals urging governments to embrace dialogue instead of force.
In a country battered by more than a decade of insurgency, banditry and mass kidnappings, these measures are frequently defended as the only realistic means of saving lives. Few parents confronted with the abduction of their children would reject any opportunity to secure their release. Governors responsible for communities under relentless attack often argue that imperfect peace is preferable to endless funerals. Security officials privately acknowledge that not every hostage can be rescued through military operations alone.
Yet as negotiation increasingly becomes the default response to terror, another question has quietly emerged—one that receives far less attention than the latest kidnapping or the next ransom demand. If armed groups repeatedly secure dialogue, concessions and even calls for rehabilitation while their victims continue to wait for justice, what message does that send to those still carrying guns in Nigeria’s forests?
That question goes beyond security strategy. It strikes at the heart of the rule of law.
The Nigerian Constitution envisions a state in which criminal conduct is investigated, prosecuted and punished according to law. The Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act provides an extensive legal framework for dealing with terrorism, financing of terrorism, hostage-taking and support for terrorist organisations. The legislation was designed to ensure that acts intended to intimidate the public or undermine the authority of the state attract severe criminal sanctions. On paper, Nigeria’s legal response to terrorism leaves little room for ambiguity.
The reality has proved considerably more complicated.
Across large parts of the North-West and North-Central, where banditry has evolved from organised cattle rustling into sophisticated criminal enterprises controlling vast stretches of territory, the criminal justice system often struggles to reach the scene before local communities are compelled to find their own solutions. Villages surrounded by armed groups cannot suspend daily life while waiting for lengthy investigations or prosecutions. Farmers desperate to return to their land sometimes negotiate access with the very men who drove them away. Families confronted with ransom demands sell livestock, farmland and lifelong savings because the alternative is the possible execution of loved ones.
These are decisions born not of choice but of desperation.
However understandable such decisions may be, they create consequences that extend far beyond individual communities. Every successful negotiation demonstrates to violent actors that sustained pressure can produce rewards. Every ransom paid confirms the commercial viability of kidnapping. Every unofficial truce negotiated without meaningful accountability risks reinforcing the perception that violence has become an effective pathway to influence.
It is within this uneasy landscape that few voices have attracted as much attention—or generated as much controversy—as that of Sheikh Ahmad Gumi.
For several years, the Kaduna-based Islamic scholar has occupied a unique and often contentious position in Nigeria’s national security debate. Unlike many public figures who have demanded an uncompromising military response, Gumi has consistently argued that dialogue offers a more sustainable route to ending the violence. He has travelled into forests to meet armed groups, publicly engaged men accused of orchestrating mass abductions and repeatedly urged governments to pursue negotiation rather than rely exclusively on military operations.
His position rests on a distinction he has drawn repeatedly over the years. While condemning the killing of innocent civilians, Gumi has questioned the tendency to describe all bandit groups as terrorists, arguing that many emerged from decades of unresolved communal conflict, cattle rustling, economic deprivation and failures of governance rather than ideological extremism. In his assessment, applying the label of terrorism indiscriminately narrows opportunities for peaceful engagement and prolongs the conflict. He has therefore advocated rehabilitation, dialogue and, in some instances, amnesty for those willing to lay down their arms.
To many Nigerians exhausted by years of bloodshed, that argument carries an undeniable appeal. History offers numerous examples of conflicts eventually ending through negotiation rather than outright military victory. From Northern Ireland to Colombia, governments have at different times entered into dialogue with armed groups once considered beyond the reach of compromise. Those who support Gumi’s approach argue that saving lives should take precedence over satisfying demands for retribution, especially where continued fighting promises only more death and displacement.
His critics, however, see matters very differently.
They argue that comparisons with international peace processes overlook a crucial distinction. Negotiations elsewhere were often accompanied by structured disarmament programmes, truth commissions, judicial oversight and clearly defined accountability mechanisms. In Nigeria, they contend, negotiations with armed groups have too frequently occurred in fragmented and informal ways, producing temporary cessations of violence without dismantling the criminal structures that sustain them.
Victims’ organisations, constitutional lawyers and security analysts have questioned whether repeated calls for amnesty risk eroding the deterrent effect of criminal law. Their concern is not merely that offenders escape punishment, but that future offenders learn an unmistakable lesson: sustained violence can elevate previously unknown criminal groups into actors important enough to command meetings with government officials, traditional rulers or respected intermediaries.
That concern is no longer theoretical.
Over the past decade, numerous communities have entered into local peace agreements with armed groups after suffering repeated attacks. Some arrangements reportedly required the payment of levies for access to farmland, permission to harvest crops or guarantees against future raids. In several instances, those agreements collapsed within months, with communities finding themselves subjected to fresh attacks or higher financial demands. The cycle of violence resumed, often with greater sophistication than before.
Each breakdown has deepened scepticism about whether negotiations alone can produce lasting peace in the absence of credible accountability.
Perhaps the greatest irony is that those whose lives have been shattered by terrorism rarely occupy the centre of these conversations. Negotiating tables often include government officials, traditional rulers, security agencies, community leaders and intermediaries. Missing from many of those discussions are the widows whose husbands never returned from their farms, the children who survived months in captivity, the traders who surrendered everything they owned to pay ransom, and the families still searching for relatives who disappeared years ago.
For them, peace without justice can feel painfully incomplete.
Every criminal justice system serves two essential purposes. It punishes those who violate the law, but it also deters those contemplating similar crimes. The certainty that wrongdoing attracts consequences remains one of the strongest foundations upon which public confidence in the rule of law is built. When that certainty weakens, deterrence weakens with it.
This is the dilemma confronting Nigeria today. Negotiation may save lives in the immediate term, and few would dispute the moral imperative of rescuing innocent captives. But when negotiation gradually displaces prosecution as the dominant response to organised violence, the state risks creating a dangerous perception that terrorism has become less a crime to be punished than a crisis to be managed.
The consequences extend beyond today’s security challenges. They shape tomorrow’s incentives.
A young man observing events from an isolated community may conclude that legitimate grievances attract little official attention while armed violence compels governments to listen. A criminal syndicate may calculate that kidnapping has become a commercially viable enterprise because negotiations, rather than convictions, have become the expected outcome. Communities abandoned by formal institutions may increasingly rely on parallel systems of authority, paying taxes to armed groups while looking elsewhere for protection.
The question, ultimately, is not whether governments should ever negotiate. History demonstrates that even the most intractable conflicts sometimes require dialogue. The more difficult question is whether dialogue has gradually eclipsed justice as the organising principle of Nigeria’s response to terrorism.
If that has happened, then the country confronts a challenge far greater than insecurity alone.
It confronts the slow erosion of one of the central promises upon which every constitutional democracy rests—that no individual or group, however powerful or heavily armed, stands above the law.
As Nigeria continues to search for peace, it must also answer an uncomfortable question that will define the country’s future long after the guns eventually fall silent: can a nation truly defeat terror if its victims continue to wait for justice?
Watch out for Part IVD – The New Sovereigns: How terror groups are building parallel governments inside Nigeria.
