The Theatre Of Betrayal In Katsina: When Killers Become Guests Of Honour
WE live in a land where the dead are forgotten, where shallow graves hold the voices of innocents, while their killers are welcomed into halls of power. In Katsina State today, terrorism has been rewarded with handshakes, smiles, and state recognition. What should be a firm stand against bloodshed has become an embrace of it. Instead of silencing the guns of murderers, authorities are placing them at the table, dignifying them with negotiations, and calling this dangerous compromise “peace.”
But peace cannot be born from complicity. Peace cannot emerge when men who carried out massacres are treated as partners. To negotiate with terrorists while they still wield weapons is not reconciliation—it is surrender disguised as diplomacy. It is treachery against the living and sacrilege against the dead. Imagine embracing a man whose hands drip with the blood of your neighbours and expecting your white garment to remain unstained. This is the absurd theatre unfolding in Katsina.
The bitter truth is that real peace rests on justice. Justice demands accountability, disarmament, and dignity restored to victims. Anything less is a charade—a performance to pacify the fearful and deceive the masses. Without justice, the foundations of society rot. Without accountability, the cycle of violence spins endlessly, emboldening the killers and deepening the wounds of the bereaved.
The most painful insult lies in the details: among those sitting at the so-called peace meeting was the very man who led the Dan Mantau attack—the man who desecrated a mosque with innocent blood. Families who lost fathers, mothers, and children to his brutality are forced to watch him seated with authority, not in chains but in comfort. What could be a greater dishonour to the dead than this? What could be a deeper betrayal to the living than watching their government treat a murderer like a statesman?
This is not peace; it is betrayal dressed in the robes of authority. It is cowardice parading as wisdom. It is an injustice so grave that it reopens wounds instead of healing them. When victims see their killers elevated, they are told their lives do not matter. When terrorists are rewarded instead of punished, the message is clear: violence pays. This dangerous precedent guarantees more blood, more graves, and more shattered families.
If the state continues down this path, what future awaits Katsina? Children will grow up seeing killers legitimised and justice denied. Citizens will lose faith in their leaders, and despair will harden into anger. And that anger, suppressed long enough, will not seek negotiation—it will seek vengeance.
The responsibility of government is to protect the innocent, not to empower the guilty. Katsina’s authorities must decide: will they stand with the victims buried in silence, or with the killers who sit at their table? To choose the latter is not leadership; it is complicity in terror.
True peace is not handshakes with bloodstained hands. True peace is the silence of guns, the disarmament of killers, and the accountability of those who spilled innocent blood. Until then, every “peace meeting” is nothing more than theatre for the foolish—an elaborate betrayal of justice that only deepens the graves of the forgotten.
