A shallow calm now wraps Unguwan Rimi village in Kauru Local Government Area. On Saturday families laid to rest seven victims of a late night massacre that left the community reeling and questions about the state peace strategy unanswered.
The dead, described by local sources as mostly minors, were buried in private ceremonies attended by relatives and religious leaders, a grim counterpoint to the public optimism pushed by state authorities.
Eyewitness accounts and local reporting say the assault began late on Sunday and stretched into the early hours of Monday. Several adults reportedly fled while children and youths were not so lucky.
The attack came only days after another raid in neighbouring Kajuru where armed men killed one person, injured another and abducted six people from Kokob-Bajaga village, further eroding any sense that the peace pact has ended bloodshed.
The killings expose a fracture at the heart of what Kaduna officials call the Kaduna Model. Conceived as a holistic response to a decade of banditry the initiative brokered direct engagement with armed commanders in areas such as Birnin Gwari and Giwa.
Some hardline commanders reportedly laid down arms and about 200 fighters were said to have surrendered and entered state rehabilitation programmes.
Roads once dangerous reopened and people returned to villages. But those gains are now precarious and contested.
Critics say the pact amounts to a political shortcut that marginalises victims and rewards violence.
Christian leaders and community stakeholders privately told reporters they were excluded from negotiations and alarmed that notorious warlords have been offered terms without visible accountability.
The Northwest Governors Forum had previously rejected negotiations with criminals making Kaduna’s unilateral embrace of the pact a sharp policy divergence.
Governor Uba Sani has defended the approach as a carrot and stick strategy insisting that peace must be pursued from a position of strength.
Human rights groups have not been silent. Amnesty International Nigeria condemned the attacks this weekend and called on authorities to bring perpetrators to justice and to tackle the widening bloodshed in southern Kaduna.
The group described the burial of the seven victims on 30 August as a tragic reminder that lives continue to be lost despite state assurances.
What the Kaduna Model has achieved in visible terms is undeniable. A negotiated surrender of fighters and modest infrastructure improvements testify to some tactical success.
But the model’s deeper weakness is structural. It treats surrender as an end rather than an early step in a long accountability and reconciliation process.
Without credible transitional justice measures robust victim participation and transparent reintegration criteria the risk of relapse is high.
The unrest in Unguwan Rimi and Kokob-Bajaga suggests the pact has not yet established effective guarantees for civilian safety.
On the ground the calculus for a farmer or a parent is brutal. Temporary returns to villages do not erase the memory of raids, nor do them guarantee future safety when renegade cells or rival commanders remain at large.
Security sector sources say some bandit elements whose commanders signed up are fracturing with holdouts continuing attacks for spoils or to settle scores.
That splintering dynamic is a predictable hazard of negotiated deals that do not couple disarmament with credible monitoring and community led protections.
For Kaduna the immediate test is twofold. First the state must pursue visible investigations into the Unguwan Rimi attack and the Kokob-Bajaga abductions and bring suspects to court or neutralise manifest threats.
Second the government must rework the engagement framework so that reconciliation is conditional and reversible where violations occur.
Simply welcoming surrendered fighters into programmes without clear benchmarks undermines both justice and deterrence.
Amnesty’s call for justice is therefore not rhetorical. It is a demand that the state convert fragile gains into durable rule.
Policy options are limited but clear. A robust monitoring mechanism with independent civil society representation urgent expansion of local protective deployments and a fast track for prosecutions where credible evidence exists would show that the state values victims as much as it values returns to trafficable roads.
Development promises must be tied to verified disarmament and community consent. Anything less risks turning the Kaduna Model into a headline of convenience for politicians and a chapter of grief for rural families.
The burials in Unguwan Rimi are a painful punctuation mark. They remind us that peace cannot be announced from the capital it must be crafted with victims at the table and guarded by institutions that will not bend to impunity.
Governor Uba Sani’s experiment may yet succeed but the clock is ticking and the next wake may not be so small. The families who buried children on Saturday deserve more than promises. They deserve justice and a safety that can be counted in years not in hours.
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