by Mohammed Bello Doka
20 June, 2026
Ever wonder why you have never seen a Boko Haram member operating a Facebook or TikTok account, yet you have seen countless bandits, some even doing giveaways? The answer is as brutal as it is revealing. The stark disparity in how the Nigerian government and its security apparatus treat these two violent groups is not rooted in the number of lives lost or the scale of atrocities committed. It is rooted in ambition. Bandits can be tolerated on social media because they do not threaten the political elite's seats. Boko Haram, on the other hand, wants to establish a caliphate, and in doing so, they directly threaten the very political order that keeps the current ruling class in power. This distinction, often lost in the fog of daily violence, is the key to understanding the selective war on terror being waged in Nigeria today.
At its core, banditry in Nigeria is a criminal enterprise motivated by material gain. The bandits who terrorize villages, rustle cattle, and kidnap for ransom are not driven by an ideology that seeks to replace the Nigerian state. They want money, they want resources, and they want to carve out spheres of influence where they can operate with impunity. They are, in the eyes of the political establishment, a nuisance rather than an existential threat. They want our heads in the sense that they want to terrorize the common man into submission, extracting wealth and survival from the masses. But they do not want the presidency. They do not want the governorships. They do not want the National Assembly. Their ambitions are grounded in the dirt of the countryside, not in the marble halls of Abuja. This is precisely why a degree of tolerance, however cynical, is extended to them. They can be negotiated with, paid off, and even rehabilitated because they do not pose a direct challenge to the political monopoly.
Boko Haram presents an entirely different calculus. From its inception, the group has declared war on the very idea of the Nigerian state. Their demand for a caliphate is a demand for the complete dismantling of the secular political order. When they attack, they are not just killing; they are making a declaration that the government in Abuja has no legitimacy. This is the one red line that cannot be crossed. The political elite are willing to deploy the full weight of the military against Boko Haram not because the group has killed more people than the bandits, but because they have threatened to take the seats of those in power. The government is more interested in fighting Boko Haram because Boko Haram is the only group with a manifesto that explicitly names the political class as enemies. The protection of political power is the primary function of the state, and Boko Haram's very existence is a direct assault on that function.
Yet, in this narrow and dangerous calculation, the Nigerian government is making a catastrophic error. They assume the bandits will remain forever indifferent to political power. They assume that because the bandits are currently driven by economic grievances and ethnic vengeance, they can be contained, managed, or even co-opted. But history teaches us that armed groups, once they accumulate significant territory, weaponry, and manpower, inevitably develop political aspirations. They realize that to protect their ill-gotten gains, they need a voice in the governance structure. They realize that without political power, they are only one military offensive away from annihilation. The government is betting that the bandits will remain apolitical, but this is a fool's bet. If the bandits become strong enough, they will seek political power to protect themselves, or worse, they will find common cause with the very group the government fears most.
This is where the specter of radicalization looms largest. It is no longer a distant possibility; it is a visible trend. Recent videos emerging from the Northwest have shown bandits chanting "Allahu Akbar" and "Alhamdulillah" while committing atrocities. This is not a coincidence. It is a sign of a profound shift in their identity and self-perception. These men are no longer seeing themselves as a motley crew of angry herders on a revenge mission against the state. They are increasingly viewing their actions through a religious lens, framing their violence as a pius struggle. This slight shift in rhetoric should send shivers down the spine of every right-thinking leader. When a criminal starts seeing himself as a soldier of God, he becomes infinitely more dangerous. His grievances become holy, his enemies become infidels, and his violence becomes a sacrament.
The gradual radicalization of bandits is the darkest cloud on the horizon. If the government continues to tolerate and negotiate with bandits while exclusively unleashing hell on Boko Haram, they are creating a perfect storm. It is only a matter of time before Boko Haram reaches out to these fragmented bandit groups and succeeds in buying them over or radicalizing them further. Boko Haram has the ideology, and the bandits now have the terrain and the manpower. A fusion of these two forces would create a hydra-headed monster that no amount of military force could easily subdue. The government is playing a dangerous game of segregation, treating one cancer with chemotherapy and the other with painkillers. In doing so, they are allowing the painkiller-dependent cancer to mutate into something far more resistant and lethal.
The elites who sit comfortably in their seats believe they have drawn a clear line. On one side are the bandits who want money and cattle, and on the other side are the terrorists who want the seats. They believe that as long as they keep the bandits fed with ransoms and appeased with amnesties, the line will hold. But lines drawn in the sand do not hold against the tide of religious fervor and political ambition. The bandits are watching Boko Haram. They are watching how the government fights them with unmatched ferocity. They are beginning to understand that the only way to achieve true safety and legitimacy is to adopt the language and ideology of those who are taken seriously. If chanting Islamic declarations turns them from mere criminals into formidable jihadists in the eyes of the state, then that is the path they will take.
The title of this discourse is not merely a clever observation; it is a chilling prophecy. The tolerance shown to bandits is based entirely on their current lack of political ambition. But ambition is not static. As the bandits grow in strength and as their spiritual rhetoric intensifies, they will inevitably set their sights higher. They will realize that the ultimate protection is not in the bushes of Zamfara but in the government houses of the state capitals. They will realize that to truly protect their cause, they must chase the same seats that Boko Haram has been chasing for over a decade. The government is so fixated on protecting its immediate political interest that it has become blind to the long-term existential threat brewing in its own backyard. When that day comes, and the bandits, radicalized and emboldened, finally pivot from demanding heads to demanding seats, it will be too late to distinguish between the criminal and the terrorist. They will have become one and the same, and the seats they covet will be the very seats the current elite are so desperately clinging to today. The warning is clear: the enemy of your enemy is not your friend; he is merely your future enemy in training.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
Abuja Network News
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Opinion