• No legal basis for dialogue with bandits – Senior lawyers

Bandits causing mayhem in many parts of the country through killings and kidnappings have asked President Muhammadu Buhari to personally lead peace talks with them.

They may have thus shunned the mediation being embarked upon by a popular Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, between them and the government for the release of students and other kidnapped people in their captivity.

But some senior lawyers have cautioned against the ongoing appeasement of bandits, terrorising several states through dialogue between them and some governors as well as non-state actors.

Some of the bandits who demanded this accused the President of not being serious about the ongoing peace talk or calls for amnesty for them to make them to stop their attacks.

In the past few months, bandits have carried out series of attacks and kidnappings, including secondary schools, especially in northern Nigeria.

Gumi had met with some of the bandits in the forests of Zamfara, appealing for peace.

But in an interview with Daily Trust, a masked bandit said if Buhari could travel around the country when he was campaigning, nothing should stop him from coming for peace talks.

He said an agreement was earlier reached with his group, but they were soon abandoned in the forest.

“An agreement was reached, but you left that person in the forest with a gun and nothing to substitute. What do you expect? How do you want that person to survive? All the promises made to us none of it was fulfilled,” he said.

“The president should personally come and preside over the talks. When he was campaigning, he travelled all over, why would he not do it now? He does not take these peace talks seriously and everyday people are being killed.

“There is no day that someone is not killed between Zamfara, Niger, Kaduna, Sokoto and Katsina. There is no tribe that is spared, gunmen kill, soldiers kill, vigilantes kill. Whoever you see with a gun today in Nigeria, he uses it to kill people. You may not know but if I were to tell you the situation of things in this country, you will cry. Even the president will cry.

“We supported this administration and accepted dialogue because we thought Buhari will fix this country, but he won’t fix this country. From the time he praised Goodluck, Obasanjo, and Yar’Adua, these were not praiseworthy. It would have been better if he had praised Abacha, because, under Abacha, pastoralists were being educated.

“During Abacha, there was allocation in the budget for the nomadic communities. There was no such thing again since Obasanjo became president. They stopped looking after the Fulanis. Their forests and grazing areas were taken over.”

He said they took up arms because they, as herders, were not carried along by the government.

According to him, the herders had no security as they were being killed, and the government didn’t do anything.

He also accused the government of not providing education and jobs for their young ones.

But some senior lawyers described dialogue with the bandits, who had kidnapped and killed hundreds of people in Katsina, Niger, Kaduna, Benue, Plateau, Zamfara and Sokoto States, among others, as illegal as there is no legal framework to support it.

The lawyers such as former Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Prof. Epiphany Azinge (SAN); former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Prof. Chidi Odinkalu; Mr. Dayo Akinlaja (SAN) and Prof. Yemi Akinseye-George (SAN), spoke in separate interviews with THISDAY against the backdrop of negotiations with the bandits in order for them to end attacks on various communities in the affected states.

Gumi recently after visiting the camps of the bandits called on the government to grant those willing to make peace ‘blanket amnesty’ if the current security situation must be tackled.

The Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) has also reportedly expressed its readiness to enter into dialogue with the bandits to resolve the current security challenges.

Azinge said it is unacceptable to engage criminals.

“In all criminal jurisprudence, you will always see that the issue of conspiracy to commit a crime or the issue of aiding and abetting the crime has always been criminalised,” he stated.

He added that anyone who negotiates with suspected criminals, whether authorised or not, is aiding and abetting crime.

“This is not something that should be encouraged in any form. It is another way of saying that government is boldly and clearly saying that it has lost grip and is no longer in control,” he stated.

Similarly, Odinkalu condemned negotiation with bandits, saying they have committed offences against the laws of the land and must be punished, accordingly.

He said: “This is not necessarily a matter on which the constitution provides specific instructions. You have to read the tea leaves and other things. It is rather simple to do so.

“Look, the constitution guarantees a right to life for every Nigerian and makes it a crime to kill another without lawful justification.”

He added that reprisal, such as Gumi was speaking about, is not the lawful justification for killing.

“So, that is a crime. Government has a duty to ensure accountability for such crime, not to negotiate it away,” he said.

Akinlaja said there was no legal basis for negotiating with bandits or any criminals.

“Assuming without conceding that there is a legal rule that allows for negotiation with criminals, the very heinous, traumatic and pervasive nature of the banditry that has seemingly held our nation by the jugular would even make it an exception to that rule,” he stated.

Akinseye-George described negotiating with bandits as an admission of state failure.

“Those who negotiate with bandits may indirectly be encouraging banditry,” he said.

Akinseye-George distinguished between what is currently going on and amnesty, stating that amnesty involves a change of heart on the part of the wrongdoers and surrender of arms in exchange for amnesty.