By Charles Dickson
A man once went to an oracle. The oracle told him: “Your deceased father says you must sacrifice a goat for him.”
The man replied calmly: “Go back and ask my father if he ever owned even a fowl while he was alive.”
In that one answer is a philosophy: before you rush to slaughter goats in the name of tradition, truth or security, first ask the basic, embarrassing, pedestrian questions. Did this man even own a chicken?
Nigeria’s insecurity today is full of “goat sacrifices” – dramatic, expensive, and noisy gestures that rarely answer the simple questions. We sign peace deals, we set up operations, issue threats, hold press conferences. But like sugar and salt, the rituals of “response” and the reality of “security” may resemble each other—white crystals in the same kitchen—but they taste very different.
In Katsina and Zamfara, we have repeatedly watched governments enter peace deals and amnesty arrangements with armed bandits. In 2019–2020, Katsina negotiated ceasefires and amnesty with bandit leaders: surrender some weapons, free some captives, and “we will not prosecute you.” The government later admitted the accord collapsed and that the bandits betrayed the agreement.
Zamfara communities have gone even further. Villages negotiate directly with bandits, paying “protection” or “farming” fees – effectively harvest taxes – just to access their own land without being killed. In some places, communities surrender autonomy, labour, or a share of their produce so that those who wield the guns can “allow” them to live.
Enter religious mediators: Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, who has campaigned for dialogue and amnesty for bandits, proudly speaking of leading hundreds of them to surrender, and arguing that non-violent engagement is the answer. Yahaya Jingiri, a Salafi preacher with his own following. Rev Ezekiel Dachomo, fiery in his critique of government failure and what he calls a targeted war on rural Christians.
On all sides, clerics have become interpreters of the national “oracle,” translating the banditry crisis through the languages of religion, grievance, justice, and forgiveness.
On paper, these efforts look like sugar: sweet words—“peace,” “amnesty,” “dialogue,” “forgiveness”—sprinkled over a bitter meal. But underneath, what actually changes? Are weapons decommissioned and traced? Are victims compensated? Is state authority restored, or outsourced to local warlords who now issue “passports” for farmers to enter their own fields?
When sugar is mistaken for salt in cooking, the stew is ruined. When rituals of peace are mistaken for genuine security reform, the nation is spoiled.
While these dramas play out, Nigerians live with a hard, metallic reality; Bandits and terrorists abduct pastors, especially Catholic priests, knowing that churches and dioceses are often able to mobilise ransoms and international attention. Research shows Catholic priests are prime targets because of their voice in human rights, their visibility, and the financial returns of kidnapping them. Nurses and nursing students, including young women in training, are kidnapped on their way to or from work, or even from campuses and rural homes.
Farmers are forced to pay “harvest taxes” and “farming levies” to bandits in Zamfara and other states just to harvest crops, turning criminal groups into parallel revenue services. Full-blown terror is normalized: villages raided at night, highways turned to hunting grounds, markets emptied by rumours of impending attacks.
Over 4,243 days have passed since the Chibok schoolgirls were abducted in April 2014. Many have returned, but 96 are still missing, and since then, over 1,500 students have been kidnapped in copycat school attacks across the north. Recent weeks alone have seen fresh mass abductions: 25 schoolgirls from Maga in Kebbi, over 200 children and teachers from St. Mary’s Catholic School in Niger State, dozens abducted from a church in Kwara.
This is not just “banditry”; it is a marketplace of terror. Human beings – including priests, nurses, and teenage girls have become inventory.
We hear constantly about “sponsors” of terrorism and banditry, yet almost never see public profiles, prosecution, or confiscated assets. We see periodic parades of “repentant” bandits, but rarely see the financiers who supply them with motorcycles, fuel, food, ammunition, satellite phones, and political cover. Meanwhile, peace deals in Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna and elsewhere keep reappearing and collapsing like seasonal festivals.
Like the man in the oracle story, Nigerians are beginning to respond: “Before you ask us to sacrifice another goat in the name of peace, first answer our fowl-level questions.”
Who exactly are these “imaginary sponsors” of bandits and terrorists? We repeat the phrase as if it is a proverb, but where are the public lists, court cases, confiscated properties, and convictions that match the scale of the killings?
How much does an AK-47 actually cost in the forests of Zamfara, Katsina, Niger, Kaduna or Plateau, and how does that price compare with the salaries of the policemen or soldiers sent to face them? If weapons and ammunition cross borders, who signs the papers, who looks away at the checkpoints?
Where do they keep the hundreds of people abducted at once—schoolgirls, church worshippers, entire buses of passengers? We now have repeated cases where 100, 200, 300 people are moved through forests on motorcycles and foot for days. How can such mass movement happen without drone surveillance, phone tracking, or local intelligence painting a clear picture?
Who feeds these captives for weeks and months? Food, water, drugs, fuel, and phone batteries don’t fall from heaven. There is a supply chain. Who are the traders, informants, and transporters, and why have we not designed a sustained sting operation against that logistics network?
Why is it so difficult to meaningfully deploy drone technology, satellite imagery, and AI-powered analysis in the affected corridors? In 2025, cheap drones, open-source satellite maps, and AI tools exist that can flag movement patterns, heat signatures, and unusual group behaviour. Why does the Nigerian state still behave like a blind giant groping in the dark?
Why are ransom economies allowed to flourish with such impunity? We know ransoms are paid, sometimes by families, churches, NGOs, sometimes quietly facilitated by officials. Where is the tracking of cash flows, the anti-money-laundering intelligence, the monitoring of suspicious transfers and bulk cash withdrawals in bandit-affected zones?
How did “harvest tax” become normalised? When communities in Zamfara and elsewhere pay bandits to plant and harvest, that is a declaration of lost sovereignty. Why are these arrangements not treated as national emergencies equal to secessionist threats?
Why does political, ethnic, and religious competition keep hijacking the security conversation? Each incident is quickly framed as “Christian genocide,” “Fulani agenda,” “Northern plot,” or “Southern revenge.” Yet reports show that bandit violence cuts across faiths and ethnicities, with both Christians and Muslims killed and kidnapped.
Who benefits from keeping the narrative permanently polarised?
Nigeria’s insecurity problem is not only about bullets and bombs; it is also about truth and theatre. Sugar is the theatre: peace deals announced with fanfare, surrender ceremonies, media tours to bandit camps, official statements dripping with optimism. Salt is the truth: over a decade of school abductions, priests and pastors hunted, nurses taken, harvests taxed, villages emptied, and now fresh mass kidnappings that show we have not learned much since Chibok.
Sugar and salt resemble each other, but one is for dessert and the other for wounds. What Nigeria needs now is the sting of salt: Honest mapping of bandit networks, including their financiers. Transparent prosecutions that travel upwards, not just the parade of ragged gunmen. Serious investment in drone surveillance, AI, and human intelligence, coordinated across states not fragmented by politics. Protection of those who dare to expose the logistics of this criminal economy. And a shift from buying fragile peace to building just, durable security.
Like the man who questioned the oracle, Nigerians must insist on basic questions before they surrender another goat, another budget line, another daughter to a failed ritual. Until our leaders can prove that the “father” of this insecurity ever owned a fowl—that they have real facts, real networks, real strategy—we must keep challenging the performance and demanding the taste of truth over the illusion of resemblance.
•Prince Dickson PhD is team lead, The Tattaaunawa Roundtable Initiative.
