Editorial:The War Behind the War

Nigeria is building a bigger army. But if the reports of secret talks with Boko Haram are true, Abuja may be fighting a very different war behind closed doors.

Nigeria is preparing for war.Thirty thousand more soldiers. Four new Army divisions. More troops, more formations, more firepower. The message from Abuja is unmistakable: the insurgency will be crushed. But somewhere behind that declaration of war lies a far more uncomfortable possibility. What if Nigeria is also negotiating with the enemy?

That is the question raised by reports surrounding the release of roughly 360 civilians abducted in Borno State after the attack around Ngoshe. The government has not publicly acknowledged a secret ceasefire with Boko Haram. It has also denied allegations that ransom was paid. Those denials matter. So do the allegations.

Because if the reported arrangement is accurate, Nigeria's counterterrorism strategy may be entering a dangerous new phase—one in which the government fights insurgents in the open while talking to them in the shadows. And that is where the real danger begins.

The price of getting people home

For the families of the abducted, there is no grand strategy. There is only one question:Are they alive?

If negotiations helped bring hundreds of civilians home, families are unlikely to complain about the method. They wanted their husbands, wives, children and relatives back.That is the brutal arithmetic of hostage-taking. But governments cannot afford to think only about the hostage in front of them.They must also think about the hostage who may be taken tomorrow.

The allegation of a ₦5 billion payment, if ever substantiated, would therefore be explosive—not merely because of the money, but because of the precedent. If an armed group discovers that kidnapping civilians can produce cash, concessions or a pause inmilitary operations, kidnapping stops being merely a weapon.It becomes a business model. And Nigeria already has too many kidnappers.

The contradiction at the heart of Abuja's strategy

Here is the paradox. President Bola Tinubu is expanding the machinery of war at precisely the moment reports suggest that government-linked actors may have been talking to Boko Haram.

So which is it? War or negotiation? The uncomfortable answer may be: both. And perhaps that is not necessarily irrational.

Governments negotiate when lives are at stake. They gather intelligence through contacts. They explore defections. They communicate with enemies even while fighting them. Military pressure can strengthen a government's negotiating position. Negotiations can save lives while military operations continue elsewhere.

But there is a line between using talks as a tactical instrument and allowing negotiations to become a substitute for strategy.Nigeria must know where that line is.

The ceasefire question

A temporary halt in fighting sounds harmless until you ask what happens during the silence. Insurgents do not necessarily see a ceasefire as surrender. They can see it as breathing space. Time to move fighters.Time to acquire supplies.Time to recruit.Time to reorganise.Time to recover from military pressure.

In an insurgency, a few quiet months can be worth more than a few square kilometres of territory.

That is why the most important question surrounding the reported Ngoshe arrangement is not simply whether fighting stopped.

It is this:What did Boko Haram do while it stopped? If the group used the pause to regroup, then a humanitarian success may have carried a strategic cost.If it did not, then perhaps the negotiations achieved precisely what they were supposed to achieve. Nigeria deserves to know.

Who was talking?

This may be the biggest unanswered question of all. There is no established evidence that President Tinubu personally negotiated with Boko Haram. Claims of a secret presidential deal should therefore not be presented as fact.

But if government representatives did negotiate a truce, somebody authorised those contacts. Somebody decided that talking was preferable to shooting.

Somebody determined what could be offered—and what could not.That chain of authority matters.Because secrecy may sometimes protect an operation.

It should not become a permanent shield against accountability. The government does not need to publish intelligence that would endanger hostages or expose sources.

But Nigerians have a legitimate right to know whether their government has paid terrorists, granted concessions or entered into ceasefires.

The Army is getting bigger. The questions are getting bigger too.

Tinubu's decision to expand the Army reflects the scale of Nigeria's security crisis.Boko Haram and ISWAP remain threats in the northeast. Banditry and kidnapping continue elsewhere. The military is being asked to fight on multiple fronts across a vast country. Thirty thousand additional soldiers will not, by themselves, solve an insurgency that has survived nearly two decades.

More soldiers can provide manpower.They cannot automatically provide victory. And this is where Abuja must be careful.

A government cannot tell Nigerians that terrorism will be defeated while simultaneously allowing armed groups to believe that kidnapping can open the door to profitable negotiations.

That sends two messages at once. One says:We will fight you. The other whispers:But if you take enough civilians, we may talk. For an insurgent organisation, that distinction can be very profitable.

Boko Haram is not the only player

There is another complication. Even if Abuja could reach a workable understanding with Boko Haram, Nigeria's jihadist problem would not disappear. ISWAP remains a separate and formidable force.

The northeast is not a chessboard with two pieces. It is a shifting battlefield of factions, commanders, rivalries and opportunistic alliances.

An agreement with one group can change the balance with another. An insurgent who signs a ceasefire today may defect tomorrow. A faction that loses influence may become more violent.

There are no guarantees in this kind of war. The danger of teaching terrorists the wrong lesson.This is ultimately what Abuja must worry about. Not simply whether a ransom was paid. Not simply whether a ceasefire happened. But what lesson the entire episode teaches.

If the lesson is that civilians can be kidnapped, government officials can be summoned to negotiations, money can change hands and military pressure can be reduced, then Nigeria risks creating an incentive for more abductions.

The country cannot afford that. Nigeria's kidnapping economy is already too deeply entrenched. Every concession to an armed group carries the possibility of becoming an advertisement for the next one.

Perhaps the hardest truth is this.

After 17 years of insurgency, Nigeria may have to confront a reality that governments have repeatedly resisted:There may be no purely military solution. That does not mean surrender. It does not mean rewarding terrorists.It does not mean abandoning military pressure. It means recognising that insurgencies are political, social and economic conflicts as well as military ones.But if Nigeria chooses negotiation, it must negotiate from strength and with clear objectives.

If it chooses war, it must understand what victory actually means. And if it chooses both, Nigerians deserve to know what the rules are.The shadows cannot govern forever. The reported Ngoshe arrangement may ultimately prove to be something very different from the allegations now circulating.

The ₦5 billion claim remains unproven.The alleged ceasefire has not been publicly established by the Nigerian government.

Those distinctions matter. But unanswered questions matter too. Who negotiated? Who authorised it? Was money paid? What concessions were made? Did Boko Haram use the pause to rebuild? And most importantly, what is Abuja's endgame?

Nigeria cannot fight a 17-year war indefinitely while pretending that every problem can be solved by another battalion, another operation and another military communiqué. Nor can it negotiate in secret indefinitely and expect the public to remain in the dark.

President Tinubu is building a bigger Army.

That may be necessary. But a bigger Army is not the same thing as a clearer strategy. The real test is whether Nigeria can use military power, intelligence, diplomacy and negotiation without allowing any of them to become a reward for terrorism.

Because the most dangerous battlefield may no longer be the one where the guns are firing. It may be the one where, behind closed doors, the price of peace is being negotiated.