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By William Balat
When Kaduna State governor, Senator Uba Sani, recently declared that bandits cannot be crushed successfully by the use of firearms alone, he was not courting controversy. He was stating a truth that many leaders know but few dare to voice – guns may silence criminals temporarily, but they cannot silence the hunger, despair, and alienation that give rise to crime in the first place.
Earlier, his predecessor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, expressed his ignorance of Sani’s kinetic and non-kinetic approach to making Kaduna safe again. Else, he wouldn’t have balked at the Kaduna Peace Model.
“My position has always been that any repentant bandit is a dead one,” El Rufai had said in an interview.
“Let’s wipe them. Let’s bomb them until they are reduced to nothing”
Sani however, dismissed his predecessor, at the presentation in Kaduna, of a book titled: “Where I Stand’’, written by the late Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi. “Insecurity can’t be resolved solely through the use of firearms,” the governor said, while representing President Bola Tinubu at the event.
“Whoever makes such a claim is only playing politics. We must fear God and stop deceiving the people because that approach will not work.”
For too long, many societies, including Nigeria, have treated insecurity as a purely military problem — deploy more troops, buy more weapons, launch more offensives. Oftentimes, the crisis just deepens. But Sani’s intervention of deploying both kinetic and non-kinetic is refreshing because it insists on a broader view. Security is not only about firepower; it is about creating the social, economic, and political conditions in which peace can take root.
Kaduna has endured many years of violence. We have witnessed mass kidnappings on highways, villages burnt to the ground, schoolchildren held hostage, and farmers chased from their fields. Yet, since taking office on May 29, 2023, Sani has slowly been rewriting that story. His Kaduna Peace Model is not a slogan but a deliberate mix of grassroots vigilance, institutional support, victim rehabilitation, and economic empowerment.
At the heart of this model is the decision to dramatically expand the Kaduna State Vigilante Service (KADVS). From a modest 2,000 personnel, the service has grown to nearly 9,000 under Sani’s watch as governor. This is not a token gesture. It is a recognition that communities must be trusted to defend themselves. Vigilantes drawn from local areas understand the terrain, the language, and the networks. They are not outsiders on temporary assignment; they are neighbours with stakes in their own security. By training and equipping them, Sani has woven security into the social fabric, making it harder for banditry to thrive unchecked.
But Sani does not believe that local vigilantes alone can stop well-armed criminal gangs. He has maintained close cooperation with the military and police and other agencies, providing logistics, intelligence, and moral support. The genius of his strategy is balance: grassroots vigilance on one hand, federal firepower on the other.
But governance is not only about security as the government’s positive impacts are expected to be felt in other aspects of life too. Here too, the Sani-led administration has made visible strides.
Agriculture, the backbone of Kaduna’s economy, has received deliberate attention. Thousands of smallholder farmers have been supplied with seeds, inputs, and training to expand production of maize, ginger, and tomatoes. Over …. Kilometres of roads have been repaired or constructed in rural areas to aid movement of farmers from their farms to the markets. In strengthening rural livelihoods, Sani is addressing one of the root causes of insecurity. Farmers who can feed their families and earn a decent income are less likely to fall prey to criminal recruitment.
Of particular note is Birnin Gwari. The area, renowned for crop and livestock farming, turned desolate for about 10 years when banditry and kidnapping became the order of the day. However, less than two years into the Sani administration, peace, law, order, and commerce have returned there. The farmers are back to their farms and the famous Cattle Market there has reopened. Listen to Sani speak about the place.
“We spent six months trying to understand the root causes of insecurity,” he said.
“We discovered that poverty, unemployment, lack of schools, hospitals, and commerce in rural areas pushed people into crime. We should not deceive our people by saying President Tinubu or National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, is responsible (for insecurity). We should not expect them to go to Giwa, Birnin Gwari, or Dansadau forest to solve the problem for us.”
In education, Sani’s administration has built 62 new secondary schools and more than 2,300 classrooms, while recruiting hundreds of teachers. And with an effective campaign, it has slashed the number of out-of-school children by 300,000. This is no small feat in a state where poverty and insecurity have combined to keep children out of school. The brilliant connection here is that every child in school is one less recruit for criminal gangs.
In terms of technical education, Governor Sani also established vocational centres across the three Senatorial zones in the state, training over 36,000 youths annually in practical skills, from ICT to mechanics, equipping them for self-reliance. This is just as the Panteka Market has been upgraded to include a training of world-class artisans.
To bring healthcare within the reach of Kaduna residents, it rebuilt 12 secondary centres, upgraded 255 primary health centres, and equipped nearly 300 more. His administration also completed the long-abandoned Bola Ahmed Tinubu Specialist Hospital. A healthier population is a more resilient population, one less vulnerable to the despair that fuels crime.
Governor Sani also introduced several initiatives like houses, vehicles and loans for civil servants and compressed natural gas (CNG) buses to ease the pain of fuel subsidy removal.
These are not isolated initiatives but part of a coherent philosophy. As an activist, former lawmaker and now governor, Sani understands that development and security are inseparable. By fusing development with security, he is building resilience into the very structure of society. Little wonder, then, that Kaduna has begun to attract more investment, both local and foreign. From agro-based to mining farms to banks and real estate, there is a boom in every part of the state.
None of this is to say that Kaduna’s insecurity problems have completely disappeared. But what Sani has offered in the Kaduna Peace Model is a coherent, compassionate, and credible pathway forward. Only a leadership that blends force with empathy, urgency with vision, and security with development can deliver lasting peace. That is the lesson from Kaduna today and it is good that other states like Katsina and Zamfara are learning and implementing the same.
Under Sani’s watch, Kaduna’s story is being written with hope. We are reminded that governance is not about rhetoric or flexing of power, but results and selfless service to the people.
