In the past few weeks, the controversial issue has been whether to forgive bandits who willingly submit themselves to the authorities or not to forgive anyone but crush them all.
Those who believe that they shouldn’t be forgiven have argued their position with trenchant – and often valid – reasons. The leader of this camp is Governor El-Rufai of Kaduna State who has been battling with the bandits and kidnappers for years. Many of us have admired Governor El Rufai’s leadership style before he became a governor and since.
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But in a BBC interview, he said the bandits would not leave what they are doing willingly. Someone who earns N100,000 annually after selling his cow, he argued, would not renounce a criminal enterprise that fetches him millions.
The second point from this group is about justice to the victims. My friend and editor with the Daily Trust, Abdulkareem Baba Aminu, said that he wasn’t against negotiating with the bandits but concerned about the victims. ”If the bandits are forgiven,” he said, ”what happens to those they killed, raped, and maimed? Should the government compensate them?”
Their third point is that forgiving the bandits is an incentive, not a disincentive to banditry.
On the other hand, Sheikh Gumi and his supporters argue that fighting between the government and the bandits has not worked. The government has been ”crushing” them for years – except that they have not been crushed.
Accordingly, it appears that the government doesn’t have the strength, will, strategy, or competence to defeat them.
I agree with Gumi’s camp. I will support my understanding from three perspectives of science, religion, and real-world experience.
First, science. Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton of Harvard University Negotiation Project have argued in their works about two paradigms of negotiation. One is the positional stance. Where a party says, this is my position and I will not change because of so and so. As in the case of El-Rufai, he will not change his position because these are hardened criminals who will never change and, because of their past sins. So kill them wherever you find them.
The other is interest-based negotiations. This party seeks the interest of all concerned and desires to come to a common ground. For example, in Nigeria now, what everyone wants is to preserve lives – to stop the killings. That is what Gumi wants, that is what El-Rufai wants and that is what the people want – and from the efforts of Sheikh Gumi so far, even the bandits can be convinced it is in their interest. Submit yourselves to the government and you will not be killed.
The real-life events have shown us that those who throw away the interest-based negotiations and lean towards positional stance, quickly find themselves in trouble. I will give two instances. Let’s first go to South Sudan for a good cause. In the introduction of my book, ”The Social Science of Muhammad (SAW), ” I wrote about how the negotiations between President Salva Kiir and Riek Machar disastrously moved from a thousand people killed to over 300,000 people killed! In almost any country, if so many people died, you’re likely to have a friend, a brother, or neighbor among the fallen. Accordingly, it would take decades for you to heal. How did it start?
On the evening of 15 December 2013, fighting erupted in South Sudan (independent from Sudan for just over two years) between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and the former vice president, Riek Machar, whom Kiir sacked in July of the same year. Immediately, 1,000 people were killed. Nigeria and the United States intervened. Now here’s the interesting part: the opposing parties had two different positions:
Marchar: “My message was let Salva Kiir release my comrades who are under detention and let them be evacuated to Addis Ababa and we can start dialogue straight away because these are the people who would (handle) dialogue.”
President Kiir: Information Minister, Makeui, said on behalf of Kiir: “They are criminals who must be brought to the books, so there is no way we can negotiate with (Machar).”
This was after Kiir had assured the United States that he was ready for peace negotiations without any preconditions.
So these were the dominant positions: One, release my people so that we can talk. Two, no, we wouldn’t do that; we must punish them, but let’s talk anyway.
Remember at this time, although casualties were still high, they were not as scandalous as they’re now even by African standards. The continuous rise in casualties was chiefly due to the positions of the warring factions which stymied the peace efforts and cause the deaths of their people.
Thus, two positions. But did they have the same interest? Or could they have harmonised these positions into one interest that would have served them both and save the lives of their people? Yes.
That is, we should seek to negotiate from a position of interest – not a positional one as the South Sudan people have been doing.
In fact, if the South Sudan leaders had done that, over 10,000 deaths and one million internally displaced people might have been avoided. Indeed, by 2018, over 380,000 people had been killed according to New York Times and the Washington Post.
What about the American war in Afghanistan?
As of 2018, America had recorded 2,372 U.S. military deaths and 16,179 civilians in the War in Afghanistan, and 20,320 wounded. To say nothing about the billions spent. Now they are negotiating with the Taliban. Why didn’t they do it sooner?
Let’s go to religion. Long before Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton of Harvard Negotiation Project advocated interest-focused negotiation instead of a positional one, Muhammad(SAW) lived it. He never allowed emotions to cloud his judgment or positional disposition of an opposing team to provoke anger in him.
An example will make this point clear. In 628 CE, fourteen hundred Muslims led by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) left their base in Medina to perform Hajj in Mecca. Mecca was then controlled by the non- Muslims and they denied the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and his followers, access to it. This dismayed the Muslims and they wanted to fight since Muslims had a superior army; but Prophet Muhammad’s interests were to avoid bloodshed, perform the Islamic rites and visit the city of his birth. A position would have been: “I’m here to perform the Hajj and that’s what I will do!”
Thus he opted to reach a diplomatic agreement with the non-Muslims of Mecca. In the ensuing treaty, Suhail bin Amir, the envoy of the Meccans objected to the reference “Muhammad the messenger of Allah” in the agreement and wanted it removed, because, as far as they were concerned, Muhammad wasn’t a messenger of God. Ali, Prophet Muhammad’s nephew, and secretary didn’t want to remove it, because he believed doing so would undermine the position of the prophet – and he wouldn’t be the person to do that. But instead of taking a position and insisting that he was a messenger (and causing an impasse), the holy Prophet asked Ali to show him (since he was unlettered) where the word “ messenger” was, and personally rubbed it out. The document finally read “Muhammad the son of Abdullah…” But he was rewarded for his patience. Because he made that concession, now millions go on Hajj every year.
In sum, if you examine the history of global conflicts, you would realize that EVENTUALLY, most conflicts are later resolved through negotiations. So why wait until later? The answer to this question is the difference between 1,000 deaths and 380,000 deaths.
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