Ancient wisdom teaches that you do not go revisiting a path on which you had pulled the curtains for lack of prospects therein. If it was tried before and was abandoned because it didn’t work, it doesn’t make much sense contemplating a revisitation. That is the challenge Hardball has with a recent proposal by the Nigerian Senate that government should explore the prospects of negotiating with bandits.

Concerned about escalating insecurity in the Northwest and Northcentral zones, the Senate requested President Bola Tinubu to raise a task force that will evaluate the effectiveness and implications of negotiating with bandits. The task force, according to the red chamber, will analyse short-term gains against long-term consequences of such option. The Senate adopted the resolution following a motion by Senator Nasiru Zangon Daura (APC, Katsina North) on urgent need to review security approach to dealing with banditry menace in Northwest and Northcentral states.

The lawmakers, of course, proposed other measures including reintroduction of patrol spots across affected states to deter bandit incursions, review of operational methods of security agencies, deployment of additional security personnel and special task forces to identified hotspots to ensure safety and protection of lives and property, and collaboration among the relevant security agencies, state governments, local communities, traditional leaders and stakeholders towards gathering intelligence that will enhance security operations in affected areas. The Senate also urged security agencies to adopt proactive and innovative strategies to secure farmlands, so that farmers can safely return to their farms in affected areas.

Governors of states in the Northwest had about mid-last year served notice of their toeing a new path in dealing with the menace of terrorism and banditry in the zone. Kaduna’s Uba Sani said governors currently in the saddle in the zone had resolved to “have a common approach to the issue, and we have to move away from the mistakes made by some previous governors that decided to compromise the operation in the past when they started giving money to the bandits and negotiating with them.” He spoke against the backdrop of previous governors like Katsina State’s Aminu Masari and Zamfara State’s Bello Matawalle having voiced frustration with their own efforts to bring bandits to reason through negotiation; and Kaduna’s Nasir el-Rufai’s advocacy of a hard hand against the criminals including carpet-bombing their forest hideouts. Only in March, Katsina State Governor Dikko Radda said negotiating with bandits was a doomed approach to addressing the menace of banditry because of multiplicity of layers of their operational command and diversity of their objectives.

Negotiating with bandits is so proven to be a dead end that senators needn’t contemplate exploring its potential application, much less recommending it.