The Dangerous Philosophy Within Nigeria’s Security Governance — With Katsina State As A Case Study

 The Dangerous Philosophy Within Nigeria’s Security Governance — With Katsina State As A Case Study  A society governed by law is sustained ...

 The Dangerous Philosophy Within Nigeria’s Security Governance — With Katsina State As A Case Study 

A society governed by law is sustained by a simple moral logic, which is that crime must be punished, innocence must be protected, and the state must never bargain away justice. When this logic is reversed, when terrorists are negotiated with and rewarded, while innocent citizens are imprisoned, the result is not governance but moral collapse. This tragic inversion of justice has become alarmingly visible in Katsina State and stands as a damning reflection of Nigeria’s broader crisis of leadership, security, and sovereignty.

For years, Katsina State has been ravaged by banditry, terrorism, mass abductions, and rural occupation by armed groups. Entire communities have been displaced, livelihoods destroyed, and countless lives lost. These crimes are not accidental; they are deliberate acts of terror. Yet, instead of decisive justice grounded in law and accountability, the response of the state has increasingly leaned toward negotiation, appeasement, amnesty, and in some cases, material rewards for violent actors.

Negotiating with terrorists while they retain their weapons and territories is not peace; it is surrender dressed in policy language. Rewarding such groups with money, promises, or legitimacy sends a catastrophic signal: that violence is a viable path to power, recognition, and wealth. It tells criminals that the state fears them more than it respects its own citizens. This approach does not end terrorism; it institutionalizes it.

Even more disturbing is the simultaneous persecution of innocent citizens. While terrorists are courted, rewarded, or “rehabilitated”, peaceful individuals as community leaders, protesters, critics, and ordinary citizens are arrested, detained, intimidated, or imprisoned under vague security pretexts. In this upside-down system, innocence becomes suspicious, while brutality becomes negotiable.

This is the complete inversion of justice. In Katsina State and the wider Nigeria in whole, Justice have ceased to be blind and instead becomes selective; harsh on the powerless, lenient toward the violent. Such a system does not deter crime; it punishes decency. It creates a perverse moral economy where law-abiding citizens are treated as liabilities and armed criminals as stakeholders.

The consequences for sovereignty are profound. Sovereignty implies the monopoly of legitimate force exercised under the rule of law. When the state negotiates with armed groups as equals, pays them off, or allows them to dictate terms, the state effectively concedes authority. Territory may still appear on maps as part of the state, but in reality, sovereignty has been fragmented and outsourced to terror.

Morally, the damage is incalculable. Victims of terrorism, like widows, orphans, displaced families, are forced to watch as those who murdered their loved ones are forgiven, rewarded, or reintegrated without truth, justice, or restitution. This breeds deep resentment, erodes trust in government, and fractures the social fabric. A state that comforts criminals while silencing victims forfeits its moral legitimacy.

That is the current case of Katsina State where the government believe that temporary calm achieved through appeasement is preferable to principled justice. But h8g8g888g8g8history proves the opposite. Appeasement emboldens criminals, multiplies violence, and guarantees long-term instability.

True peace cannot be negotiated at gunpoint. It cannot be purchased with ransom or secured by rewarding terror. Peace is built on justice, accountability, equality before the law, and the protection of innocent lives. Any strategy that contradicts these principles is not a solution but a postponement of catastrophe.

Katsina State, and Nigeria as a whole is doomed, unless drastic measures are initiated to urgently reverse this tragic inversion. Terrorists must be confronted within the framework of law, not incentivized. Innocent citizens must be protected, not imprisoned. Justice must be restored to its rightful place, morality reclaimed as the foundation of governance, and sovereignty reasserted as the non-negotiable duty of the state.

A government that negotiates with terror while criminalizing the innocence is not preserving order, it is dismantling it. And history will judge such failures with unforgiving clarity.

Family Writers Press International