Human rights lawyer, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, has strongly condemned the release of 70 confirmed bandits and jihadist terrorists by the Katsina State Government.
Ejiofor the Lead Counsel to the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), described the action carried out under the euphemistic banner of a so-called “peace accord”—as a dangerous encouragement of crime and criminality.
The lawyer gave the condemnation in a statement titled “Midweek Musing: When Terrorists Are Negotiated With and the Innocent Are Imprisoned—Katsina State Government and the Tragic Inversion of Justice, Morality, and Sovereignty.”
Ejiofor said the development should send “cold shivers down the spine of every conscientious Nigerian.”
According to him, the release is not merely troubling but signals a perilous policy direction which, if unchecked, could ignite widespread instability across the North and further imperil Nigeria’s already fragile national cohesion.
Ejiofor argued that any government that chooses to negotiate with terrorists, reward violence with legitimacy, and substitute justice with political expediency is not brokering peace but institutionalising insecurity.
Unmistakable message
“The message is unmistakable,” he said. “Arms, bloodshed, and lawlessness have now become viable bargaining tools in engagements with the Nigerian state.”
Ejiofor stressed that Nigerians are entitled—indeed morally compelled—to ask whether this disturbing action enjoys the tacit approval or silent acquiescence of the Federal Government and the nation’s security agencies.
He warned that the absence of a firm and unequivocal repudiation lends disturbing credibility to the inference that an official imprimatur may hover over this reckless enterprise.
According to him, Nigerians deserve not hollow platitudes but a clear, candid, and constitutionally grounded explanation.
Cruel irony
He described the situation as a cruel irony: while armed insurgents whose hands are stained with the blood of security personnel and defenceless civilians are courted with negotiations and reintegrated into society, thousands of innocent Igbo youths, mothers, and sisters continue to languish in unlawful detention across the country.
Their alleged “offences,” Ejiofor maintained, are unknown to any law, except the misfortune of ethnic profiling and prejudicial categorisation.
He recalled that only days ago, the State Security Service officially confirmed the death of Mrs. Calista Ifedi while in detention at the notorious Wawa Barracks facility in Niger State. Mrs.
Ifedi was arrested on 23 November 2021 alongside her husband, not for any offence recognised by law, but merely on the allegation that they sold food to individuals labelled as IPOB members.
“Throughout their prolonged detention, neither Mrs. Ifedi nor her husband was ever arraigned before a court of competent jurisdiction.
“Instead, they were held at the unfettered discretion of the security authorities alongside numerous other innocent Igbo citizens.
Ejiofor described this as a grave violation of fundamental human rights and a mockery of constitutional democracy.
He noted that it took recent administrative reforms under the current Director-General of the State Security Service, Mr. Tosin A. Ajayi—particularly the profiling of detainees with a view to releasing those unlawfully held—before Mr. Ifedi eventually regained his freedom.
Tragically, he was informed shortly thereafter that his wife had died in detention.
For years, Ejiofor said he has consistently raised alarm over the fate of hundreds of innocent Igbo citizens detained at Wawa Barracks and other facilities, subjected not to open trials but to secretive, pseudo-judicial processes that undermine the rule of law. Yet, he lamented, a deafening silence continues to prevail.
Southeast govs criticized
He criticised South-East political leaders for prioritising 2027 electoral calculations over the immediate suffering of unlawfully detained citizens, while the sponsors of real terror are rewarded with peace deals and freedom.
Ejiofor called urgently on Igbo political leaders, especially South-East governors, to investigate and demand accountability for the continued detention of their people.
He insisted that where culpability is established, prosecution must follow openly and transparently before competent courts.
Warning of broader consequences, Ejiofor said a state that negotiates with terrorists from fear rather than authority is conceding its sovereignty.
History, he cautioned, shows that appeasement does not extinguish terror but emboldens it.
“Nigeria today sits precariously on a keg of gunpowder. If this dangerous path is not halted, the federation risks being ceded, piecemeal, to terror.
“Time, as ever, will be the final arbiter.”
