When the state rewards its own breakdown
The recent suggestion attributed to the Northern Elders Forum — that armed Fulani herdsmen should be contracted to guard forests just as ex–Niger Delta militants were contracted to guard pipelines — is a calculated provocation. It tests the moral boundaries of the Nigerian state and measures how far absurdity can be normalised in the name of “peace.” This proposal reflects a deliberate attempt to redefine violence as a tool of governance.

What is being proposed
The logic is stark: since armed herdsmen already occupy forest zones, the government should formalise their presence and assign them security responsibilities. In effect, groups accused of killings, displacement, and land seizures are to be transformed into official guardians of the same territories.This is not conflict resolution. It is the legalisation of coercion It assumes that: Persistence equals legitimacy. Force creates entitlement. Occupation should be rewarded Victims must adjust to perpetrators. Such logic does not reduce violence; it rebrands it.

The false parallel with Niger Delta Militants
Supporters of the idea rely on the Niger Delta precedent. That comparison fails on every substantive level. The Niger Delta arrangement: Emerged from a formal amnesty programme. Followed demobilisation and disarmament.

Targeted a specific economic asset (pipelines). Was framed as a transitional security measure.What is now proposed is fundamentally different: It involves armed groups still active. It is based on ethnic identity. It covers entire ecosystems and communities. It grants territorial authority. This is not post-conflict stabilisation. It is ethnic franchising of force.

The question of ownership and legitimacy
Forests are not vacant spaces. They exist within communities, histories, and jurisdictions. The idea that armed outsiders should be paid to “guard” them raises fundamental questions:By what authority were these forests entered? Who owns the land? Who authorised their militarisation? Why must victims accommodate their attackers? The proposal shifts the burden of peace from aggressors to the injured. It demands submission instead of justice.That is not reconciliation. It is moral inversion.

Privatising sovereignty
What is being promoted is not security reform but the outsourcing of state authority. It replaces national institutions with armed identity groups. It converts territory into bargaining chips and violence into leverage.This approach signals to every armed group in Nigeria that recognition comes not through law, but through bloodshed.A state that cannot disarm non-state actors no longer holds a monopoly of force. A state that negotiates with armed ethnic formations abandons sovereignty in practice, even if it retains it in name.

The long-term consequence
History offers no comfort to societies that institutionalise conquest. Such systems do not stabilise; they fragment. They do not unify; they generate cycles of revenge.

When: Occupation is legalised; Violence becomes currency;Identity replaces law; then the state becomes a fiction and peace becomes transactional.This is not pragmatism. Pragmatism solves problems without destroying principles. This proposal sacrifices both.

What real security would look like
If forests require protection, the Nigerian state must provide it: Through constitutional forces, through lawful operations, through disarmament and through accountability.

Not through ethnic militias, not through armed herders, or through private armies in communal spaces.

If people are “already in the bushes,” the response is disarmament — not employment.

What this moment reveals
This proposal reflects a deeper political decay. Violence is no longer treated as abnormal. It is now a negotiating tool. Displacement is reframed as coexistence failure. Killings are rationalised as misunderstandings. This is how republics erode: not by coups, but by moral concessions. First, armed groups are tolerated. Then they are rationalised. Then they are rewarded. Finally, they rule.

A red line for the Federal Republic of Nigeria
This is not a debate about forests. It is a debate about the meaning of Nigeria. A country that rewards armed occupation cannot claim unity. A government that legitimises violence cannot claim authority.

A federation that trades justice for convenience cannot claim peace.Calling this proposal “pragmatic” is dishonest. It is not realism; it is surrender. Peace without law is not peace. Security without justice is not security. Stability built on fear is not stability.
What is being suggested is not policy.

It is capitulation.

Udenka is CEO Igbo Renaissance Awakening. #AfricaVisionAdvancementTrust