Within hours, Nigerian fighter jets were airborne, a neighbour’s airspace was secured, and a coup in Benin Republic was crushed. The message was unmistakable: democracy must not fall. Orders were clear. Force was decisive. The response was swift.
At home, however, bandits erect roadblocks in broad daylight. They tax villages, overrun highways, sack communities, run parallel courts, kidnap at will — and livestream their exploits on TikTok. Instead of jets, they get dialogue. Instead of force, they get negotiations. Instead of being crushed, they are courted.
This is the contradiction Nigerians are struggling to understand.
What exactly separates a coup plotter in Cotonou from a bandit warlord in Zamfara, Katsina or Niger State? Both seize territory. Both overthrow legitimate authority. Both rule by fear and violence. Yet one is bombed with urgency, the other is invited to talks.
The Benin intervention proved a crucial point Nigeria’s own citizens already know: the country has the military capability, the intelligence reach and the command speed to neutralise armed threats when it truly chooses to. Jets can fly “within minutes.” Foreign airspace can be secured. Armed men can be flushed out. Democracy can be defended — when the political will exists.
Why is that same will missing when Nigerian villages fall?
For years, Nigerians have been told banditry is “complex,” “asymmetric,” and “difficult to combat.” That argument collapses when bandits broadcast their locations live, administer illegal courts openly and announce taxes without fear. This is no longer a hidden guerrilla threat. It is a parallel state operating in plain sight.
Yet the federal government — with the backing of several governors — has repeatedly chosen negotiation. Amnesty deals. Cash-for-peace arrangements. “Dialogue” with men who have turned mass murder and kidnapping into an industry. Each negotiation confers legitimacy. Each handshake tells victims their suffering is negotiable. Each deal teaches the next gang that violence pays.
Supporters of the government insist negotiation saves lives. But whose lives? Certainly not the farmers driven off their land, the commuters abducted on highways, the villagers slaughtered at dawn. What negotiation has ended taxation by gunpoint? What dialogue dismantled illegal courts? What pact stopped livestreamed executions?
The uncomfortable question Nigerians are now asking is not whether the government can act — Benin answered that — but whether it wants to.
Why is the preservation of democracy across the border treated with urgency, while the collapse of authority inside Nigeria is managed with patience? Why do foreign constitutional orders inspire decisive force, but Nigerian lives invite political caution? Why is insecurity in the North endlessly negotiated, explained and managed — never ended?
There is no public document proving an intention to destabilise Northern Nigeria. But intentions matter less than outcomes. Rural communities are emptied. Local economies collapse. Traditional authority erodes. Millions are displaced. Youth are radicalised. Whether by design or neglect, the result is the same: a weakened region and a shrinking state.
Silence from governors only deepens the suspicion. Are political calculations more important than restoring sovereignty? Are elections, alliances and expediency standing in the way of action? Who benefits from endless insecurity — and who pays the price?
When criminals openly challenge the state and are rewarded with dialogue, sovereignty bleeds. When a government shows it can act decisively abroad but hesitates at home, legitimacy erodes. And when citizens begin to believe their lives rank below regional diplomacy, trust collapses.
Nigeria cannot keep fighting coups abroad while negotiating its own disintegration at home. A state that bargains with bandits but bombs coup plotters sends a dangerous message: some threats deserve force, others deserve accommodation. History is unforgiving to such contradictions.
The question confronting President Bola Tinubu and the governors he works with is now unavoidable — and it is brutal:
If Nigeria can save democracy in Benin within hours, why has it spent years negotiating with men destroying Nigeria itself?