by Mohammed Bello Doka
Nigeria has reached a strange and dangerous moral crossroads. In one breath, governments—federal, state and local—negotiate, bargain, release detainees and strike “peace deals” with armed bandits. In another, the same system prosecutes a senior police officer whose career was built on confronting those very criminals, with little effort to balance firmness with fairness. This is not a regional lament. It is a national alarm.
Across the North-West and beyond, the record is public. State authorities have openly acknowledged negotiations with bandit groups, community-level pacts brokered to halt attacks, prisoner releases framed as confidence-building measures, and ad hoc amnesties justified as pragmatic responses to insecurity. In Katsina, Zamfara and neighbouring states, officials have defended these moves as necessary to calm communities battered by years of kidnappings, school closures and farm destruction. The argument is always the same: peace now, questions later.
Yet set against this reality stands Abba Alhaji Kyari, a former Deputy Commissioner of Police whose professional life was devoted to the hard edge of state security. The contrast is jarring—and it demands a national conversation about consistency, justice and the incentives we create.
A national record of service
Between 2016 and 2019, Kyari commanded the Nigeria Police Force’s elite Intelligence Response Team (IRT) from Abuja, operating nationwide. The IRT was the spearhead against kidnappers, armed robbery networks and terror cells at a time when insecurity dominated headlines.
In June 2017, after months of surveillance and intelligence coordination, the IRT was central to the arrest of Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike, widely known as Evans, in Lagos State. Evans had become the face of high-value kidnapping, linked to a string of abductions that terrified families and businesses. His arrest was celebrated across Nigeria as a turning point.
In 2018, the IRT announced the arrest of Umar Abdulmalik, identified as a Boko Haram commander, along with multiple associates in operations in the North-East. That same year, the unit tracked and arrested suspects connected to the December 2018 killing of former Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, who was attacked and murdered along the Keffi–Gitata road near Abuja.
These were not isolated victories. They were national operations, conducted under lawful authority, praised by police leadership, and presented to Nigerians as evidence that intelligence-led policing could deliver results. Kyari received commendations, rose through the ranks, and became—fairly or unfairly—a symbol of tough policing in a tough time.
The other Nigeria: bargaining with violence
Now consider the parallel Nigeria that has grown in recent years. In communities ravaged by banditry, governments have chosen negotiation as policy. In Katsina State, officials moved to free dozens of detained suspects as part of a peace consolidation effort, describing the releases as exchanges meant to secure calm. In Zamfara, earlier amnesty experiments promised surrender, disarmament and reintegration, only to see violence relapse. Across several local government areas, community-brokered deals have allowed armed men to lay down weapons—temporarily—in return for guarantees, payments or freedom of movement.
Federal authorities have at times warned against these arrangements, even as they persist. The contradiction is visible: the state condemns criminality while rewarding leverage. The lesson learned by violent actors is simple—create enough pain, and the state will come to the table.
This is not a theoretical debate. It is a policy reality. And it sits uneasily with how the system treats its own servants when allegations arise.
A question of national priorities
No serious society excuses wrongdoing. Allegations must be tested, evidence weighed, and courts allowed to decide. But policy coherence matters. When governments negotiate with armed groups accused of mass violence—sometimes releasing suspects before trial—while prosecuting a senior officer without any comparable effort to foreground due process and institutional balance, the message to the country is distorted.
What incentive does this create?
To the criminal: escalate until you are indispensable.
To the officer: take risks, deliver results, and stand alone if controversy comes.
To the public: justice is flexible for those with guns, rigid for those in uniform.
This is not about personalities. It is about rules. A state that bargains with violence while insisting on uncompromising prosecution for its agents risks hollowing out the very institutions it needs to survive.
The cost of inconsistency
Negotiations can be pragmatic tools—if they are embedded in transparent, lawful frameworks: disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR); victim restitution; monitoring; and clear consequences for relapse. What Nigeria has often practiced instead are ad hoc bargains, negotiated under pressure, light on accountability, heavy on symbolism.
The cost is measurable. Peace deals that fail embolden copycats. Communities learn that calm is rented, not secured. Security agencies see mixed signals about risk-taking. And citizens lose faith in equal treatment before the law.
Against this backdrop, the Kyari case has become a mirror reflecting our contradictions. Here is an officer whose career is defined by confronting kidnappers and terror suspects, now facing the full force of prosecution—rightly subject to the courts—while the same system finds room to bargain with those who terrorised entire regions.
A national call—without excuses
This is where Nigeria must choose principle over convenience.
Federal leaders must articulate and enforce a single, coherent doctrine: no parallel justice tracks. If negotiation is unavoidable, it must be lawful, transparent, time-bound and monitored—and it must never include pre-trial releases that undermine the courts.
Governors and legislators must resist the temptation of short-term calm at long-term cost. Peace purchased by impunity is a loan with compound interest.
Security agencies must be protected institutionally—not shielded from accountability, but supported with clear rules that reward lawful courage and punish misconduct consistently.
Civil society and the media must insist on symmetry: the same due process for the powerful and the violent, the same transparency for the uniformed and the insurgent.
And Nigeria’s youth and social media influencers—many of whom have experienced harassment, intimidation and arbitrary power—must recognise a shared interest here. A system that bargains with violence today will police dissent tomorrow. Consistency is your shield.
The standard we must set
The question before us is not whether Abba Kyari is guilty or innocent. Courts will decide that. The question is whether Nigeria will continue to incentivise coercion while disincentivising service. Whether we will negotiate our way into permanent insecurity, or build institutions strong enough to deliver peace without capitulation.
If Abba Kyari were a bandit, the state might well be negotiating with him. That reality should trouble every Nigerian—north and south, civilian and uniformed. Because a country that rewards leverage over law will always struggle to secure either.
It is time to demand one rulebook. One justice system. One standard. And the courage to apply it—consistently, nationally, and without fear.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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Opinion