-By Abdul Mahmud
Simon Ekpa has been sentenced to six years in Finland for terrorism-related crimes. His arrest by Finnish police in 2024, which was public was followed by criminal charges, trial, and conviction handled by the courts of that country – in quick time. No politics. No ethnic undertones. No religious sentiment. No ifs. No buts. Just the law. That is how serious nations combat terrorism. They use laws. They use institutions. They make the courts, not politicians, the final arbiters. Finland has shown that when citizens wage wars against the state, there is only one path; the path of justice. Our country and its puissant rulers should take notice. But, will they?
For years, our country has lived under the weight of terrorism and banditry. From Boko Haram in the Northeast, to bandits in the Northwest, to armed herdsmen across the Middle Belt, to secessionist violence in the Southeast, our country has been battered. Yet, ask yourself: who are the high-profile terrorists that our country has ever successfully tried and jailed? Tukur Mamu, the man the SSS named as a terrorist who was arrested in September, 2022? Three years later the hearing of the criminal charges filed against him at the Federal High Court, Abuja, has not gone bail hearing. Who else? None. Rather than pursue justice, our country has embraced appeasement. Rather than resort to trials, it has embraced settlements. Rather than apply the law, it has enthroned the politics of kid gloves. Terrorists, rather than being dragged before our courts, they are courted with amnesty. That kind of détente plays out in grotesque rituals. Men who once stormed villages, who left behind charred homes and unmarked graves, now appear draped in camouflage. Bandoliers of ammunition hang across their chests. Kalashnikovs, the same weapons that mowed down innocents, slung confidently across their shoulders. They grin for the cameras. In those staged moments of “surrender”, the mass killings and abductions they committed, including the humiliation inflicted on our sovereign state, are made to vanish into thin air. Governors pose beside them as though they were statesmen, not outlaws. Soldiers and police officers stand by in silence, complicit in the theatre. What should be a reckoning becomes a performance. What should be justice becomes indulgence. And what should reaffirm the authority of the state instead diminishes it, making the law itself look like a prop in a grotesque show.
They also have a way of christening the rituals to make them appear legit. They call it “deradicalisation”. They call it “reintegration”. They call it “rehabilitation”. In truth, it is a capitulation. It is the surrender of the state to its enemies. The hypocrisy is glaring. When petty thieves are caught, they rot in jail. When kidnappers without political links are arrested, they face endless trials. When poor youths are caught for petty crimes, they are paraded before cameras. When the hideouts of Yahoo-Yahoo boys, the so-called Aza men, as the streets now describe them, are raided, it dominates the headlines and fills the evening news. But when men with blood on their hands, when men who sack villages and massacre innocents are caught, they are offered seats at the table. They are told to lay down their arms. They are “reintegrated” into the very society they destroyed.
This policy of appeasement did not begin today. It has a history. Nasir El-Rufai, former governor of Kaduna State, openly admitted that he paid bandits to stop attacks. He was not ashamed. He said he travelled out of the country to meet them. He said he settled them. His justification was crude: to stop them from killing his people, he had to give them what they wanted. Other governors followed the same path. Bello Matawalle of Zamfara embraced negotiations with bandits, granting them amnesty. Aminu Masari of Katsina tried the same. In Niger State, Abubakar Bello also pursued dialogue and settlement. The logic was always the same: better to settle killers than confront them. Better to appease terror than uphold the law. But what has this brought our country? Nothing but emboldened terrorists. Bandits who now fly helicopters into forests. Bandits who tax farmers before they can plant or harvest. Bandits who shoot down military aircraft. Terrorists who walk free while victims bury their dead.
Ekpa’s sentencing in Finland throws all this into sharp relief. Here was a man who incited violence from abroad. Here was a man who issued threats, who enforced stay-at-home orders in the Southeast, whose words and actions paralysed local economies and endangered lives. Our puissant rulers cried out, again and again, until their voices broke and turned hoarse. Our country itself wailed in anguish. But nothing tangible happened here. It took a foreign country, thousands of miles away, to act. Why? The answer isn’t farfetched. In Finland, the law is supreme. In our country politics is supreme and it trumps law. Yet, hypocrisy rises to the surface, traded as the common currency of power and persuasion. Our leaders say they are fighting terrorism; but, they refuse to use the one tool that makes nations strong: the impartial force of justice. They are quick to parade the poor. They are quick to jail the powerless. But they refuse to jail terrorists. They refuse to even try them. So we must ask again: who are the high-profile terrorists that Nigeria has jailed? Is it Shekau? No. He died by his own hand. Is it any of his commanders? No. Is it the masterminds of the Chibok abductions? No. Is it the killers of students in Katsina, Kankara, Kagara, or Yobe? No. Is it the men who sacked hundreds of villages in Zamfara, Benue, Plateau? No. The answer is clear. No one.
But, every other market day, the military announces the surrender of hundreds of “repentant” Boko Haram fighters. They are fed. They are clothed. They are trained. They are sent back into society. Their victims, the widows, the orphans, the displaced, are left with nothing. This is not justice. This is betrayal.
Our country has turned upside down the meaning of justice. Instead of trials that affirm the rule of law, it creates photo opportunities for terrorists and bandits who shake hands with governors. Instead of courtrooms, it arranges negotiation tables. Instead of jail cells, it sets up reintegration camps. Ekpa’s case is instructive. He was not tried here. He was not punished here. He was punished in Finland. And he was punished because a nation that values law and order cannot allow terrorism to fester unchecked. Our country, by contrast, has allowed terrorism to become an industry. An industry of settlements. An industry of amnesty. An industry of deals. The consequences are dire. Terrorism has metastasised. Banditry has grown. Kidnapping for ransom has become the national enterprise. Farmers are abandoning their land. Children are being denied education because schools are unsafe. Citizens are paying for the failure of the state to act. It is time to say the truth: our country is not fighting terrorism. Our country is accommodating it. Our rulers are bargaining with it. Our rulers are feeding it.
Those who defend the appeasement policy argue that our country lacks the capacity to fight. They argue that the military is overstretched. They argue that negotiation saves lives. But they miss the point. No country has ever secured itself by appeasing terror. No state ever won peace by rewarding killers. Peace without justice is an illusion. Finland has shown what is possible. Finland has shown that when institutions work, the law can confront terror. Our country must learn. Our country must rise. Our rulers must stop hiding behind appeasement and confront the reality that they have abandoned justice.
The question remains: who will bell the cat? Who will summon the courage to prosecute terrorists? Who will put Shekau’s successors on trial? Who will bring the leaders of bandit cartels to court? Who will give our citizens the assurance that the state is not in league with killers? Our hypocrisy will remain exposed. We jail the petty thief. We reintegrate the mass murderer. We punish the weak. We reward the strong. We claim to fight terror while pampering terrorists. This is why trust in the state is collapsing. Citizens see a government that cannot protect them, yet embraces those who butchered their families. They see widows mourning while killers are feted. They see children out of school while warlords are called “repentant”. In such a climate, the idea of justice becomes hollow, the meaning of citizenship erodes, and the authority of the state shrinks into ridicule.
A nation that cannot punish its worst offenders cannot command the loyalty of its people.
And so the cycle continues. Bandits strike, the state negotiates. Terrorists kill, the state forgives. Villages are burnt, the state calls for dialogue. The message is clear: in our country, crime pays when it is scaled high enough. Small men are crushed by the system; big men are courted by it. This inversion of justice is not only obscene; it is suicidal for a fragile state. For no republic can endure when the sword is turned against the weak while the strong are shielded from the law. The lesson from Finland is plain. Nations that survive are those that make no distinction between the weak and the powerful in the eyes of the law. They understand that justice is not an option, but the very lifeblood of order. Our country with its rulers must decide whether its wants to remain a theatre of indulgence or a country governed by law. Until it chooses justice, our citizens will keep burying the dead, keep mourning the abducted, keep watching governors shake hands with killers. And our hypocrisy, already naked before the world, will become the grave digger of our republic.
Ekpa’s sentencing is a mirror. A mirror that shows us the face of our country’s failure. The question is: will our country’s rulers look into it? Or will they, as always, look away?
Time will tell.