If anyone still sympathises with bandits after they carried out the Papiri (Niger State) St Mary’s School abduction of 230 pupils and students, then they must be cut from the same cloth. Aged between 10 and 17 years old, the victims were taken on November 21. One hundred of them were released on December 8, while the remaining regained their freedom last Sunday. Watching the video of the abductees paints not only a picture of state helplessness and impotence in securing what is clearly a very vulnerable country, it also paints a gory picture of the abductors’ abominable cruelty and callousness. They may still be more accurately described as bandits, but they are now also legally terrorists. They can, therefore, no longer plead socio-economic underpinnings for their crimes or take refuge in their so-called struggles; and they can no longer feel entitled to any sympathy from anyone who is not a terrorist or a terrorist sympathiser.
The bandits also clearly specialise in artisanal mining and protection rackets, turning vast regions of the Northwest and North Central parts of Nigeria into a replica of the North and South Kivu provinces of the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In addition, they have discovered the equally lucrative secondary attraction of kidnapping hapless citizens for ransom. Their exploits in mining and running protection rings do not, however, receive as much attention as their kidnapping prowess, but the two crimes are undoubtedly intertwined. No matter what anyone says or feels, they are unenthusiastic about abandoning the crimes. Just as they abduct one set of victims and release them, a fresh abduction is concomitantly planned. Series of dialogues between the blighted states and bandits have done little to smother the crime as law enforcement agents idealistically hope. To enter into lasting peace deal with the terrorists would be, in the estimation of the bandits, a call to disarm and renounce their crimes. They are unsure any state is capable of satisfying their criminal urges.
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The world was outraged by the 2014 abduction of Chibok schoolgirls in Borno State, the 2018 Dapchi abductions in Yobe, and since then many more abductions of lesser severity; but in recent years no kidnapping spree has arrested popular imagination as the November 21 Catholic school attack that saw 230 pupils, students and staff of the Papiri St Mary’s School seized by bandits. To tear away so many young learners from the embrace of their parents and comfort of their homes, some of them as young and impressionable as just 10 years old, is unforgivable. But the bandits enacted that crime, showed no sense of remorse, and swapped some of them for the release of their own fighters and possibly money. The federal government has refused to disclose the details of the negotiations, but there are indications that a swap might have been involved.
Most of the bandits are family men. They have wives and children, and have been known to be so embittered by the state killing of their family members as to also respond with vicious attacks on the society. For men so touched by the killing or arrest of their relations to respond in kind by picking on infants, is an obvious and irreconcilable contradiction. Will they do it again? Yes, they will, if they can. With so much ungoverned space in Nigeria, can the state prevent future reoccurrence? It is not clear. But it is the state’s responsibility to tighten security around schools and monitor, through the installation of novel security architecture, forests and other ungoverned spaces around the country. It is not a small task, given the fact that for decades, the authorities had failed to invest in national security that includes border patrols and drone surveillance. That decades-long failure has brought Nigeria to this sorry and tragic point.
It is pointless reposing hope in the kindheartedness of bandits. They do not see the children and the infirm they abduct as mere victims or collateral damage when they practice their crimes. They deliberately go after soft targets, hoping to elicit the highest form of cooperation from the government and security agents caught flatfooted. This means they will do it again if they get half the chance. Branding them terrorists may sound tough, practicable and even sensible, but what the authorities need to do more is to ensure that any future re-enactment of mass abduction of schoolchildren is forestalled. The state may not be able to recalibrate and monitor the entire country, but once abduction takes place, they must be able to lock down the affected areas with a view to ultimately thwarting the crime. And if abduction occurs, they must not rest until a fitting closure in favour of the state and the victims is achieved. More, the authorities should urgently acquire the capacity and expertise to monitor and foil the banking and spending of ransom money, no matter in what currency it is laundered.
Bandits do not care whatever it costs to settle scores, nor do they have any scruples, as they showed in the Papiri abductions. Completely desensitised, they will plunge the country into war if they had the chance. Equally, Northeast terrorists do not care what harm they bring upon others or attract to themselves. The United States has controversially waded into the picture by conducting some airstrikes; it remains to be seen whether the bandits and terrorists will bow to the massive display of force of outsiders, having long disdained or compromised the efforts of Nigeria’s security agencies, or whether they will absorb the punishment and transmogrify into something more sinister. They don’t have shame going after infants; but they may, however, prove to be even more cowardly and vulnerable than the society they had preyed on for more than a decade.
