On 10 July, after fifty-six days in captivity, the surviving schoolchildren and teachers abducted from three schools in Oriire Local Government Area regained their freedom. Thirteen days later, the Federal High Court in Abuja sentenced three men linked to the case to life imprisonment. The rescue brought relief. The convictions brought a measure of accountability. Yet between the jubilation of 10 July and the thunder of the sentences lies a troubling space which the government must fill with facts.

Abdulrazak Umar, Yunusa Musa and Shamsu Adamu Sani faced ten charges. All three pleaded guilty to count four, which accused them of concealing information about three men alleged to have masterminded the abduction, and count six, which accused them of professing membership of Darul Salam, described by prosecutors as an affiliate of the proscribed Ansaru organisation. Umar also admitted four further counts concerning terrorist training, incitement through a WhatsApp group and unlawful mining.

All three received life imprisonment for the membership offence and twenty-five years for concealing information. Yet they denied counts one, two and three, which allege conspiracy in and assistance with the kidnapping. They also denied count five, which alleges failure to report prior knowledge of the planned attack. Trial on those disputed counts is scheduled for September. The three alleged masterminds named by prosecutors, Muhammad Sani, Jibril Mohammed and Ibrahim Khabab, are said to remain at large.

A prison door can close with a mighty clang and still leave the central case wide open. The admitted offences are grave. Membership of a terrorist organisation is no innocent association. Deliberately withholding information about terrorists can expose entire communities to abduction, murder and ruin. No serious person should minimise such conduct. But membership is not automatically conspiracy. Concealment is not necessarily participation. Knowing a criminal is not the same thing as joining him in a particular crime. The law may punish all these forms of conduct severely, but justice must still establish what each accused person did.

Nigeria’s Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022 has iron enough for that purpose. Section 16 prescribes a minimum of twenty years for withholding information that could assist in preventing terrorism or apprehending those responsible. Section 25 provides between twenty years and life imprisonment for membership, or professed membership, of a terrorist group. The life sentences imposed on count six were therefore within the law.

Section 24 speaks more directly to hostage taking. It applies to anyone proved to have seized or detained a person in order to compel a third party to act, threatened to kill or continue detaining the hostage for that purpose, or imposed a condition for the hostage’s release. The provision then states that a person convicted of that offence is liable, “where death does not result from the act, to life imprisonment; or where death results from the act, to a death sentence.” Section 26 adds that a conspirator may receive the same punishment prescribed for the underlying offence. It also extends liability to anyone proved to have knowingly aided, instructed, counselled or procured the terrorist act.

The law is therefore severe, but it is also exact. The death penalty does not arise merely because death occurred somewhere within the wider tragedy. It follows conviction for fatal hostage taking, or for conspiracy or assistance legally tied to that offence. The prosecution must build the bridge between the accused and the deaths. The horror waiting on the other side cannot substitute for that bridge.

This is why the response of the Department of State Services has introduced a new and rather perplexing diversion. The agency announced that it would appeal the life sentences because two teachers were killed, contending that the crime should attract capital punishment. The outrage over those killings is entirely justified. Michael Oyedokun was beheaded, another teacher was killed in captivity, and three security personnel also lost their lives during the operations. But the legal basis of the proposed appeal remains obscure because the defendants have not yet been convicted on the counts alleging that they conspired in or assisted the kidnapping.

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Indeed, in the present circumstances, the reported appeal by DSS comes across, whether by calculation or merely by effect, as something of a sideshow. It moves public attention from the unfinished work of proof to the easier theatre of punishment. Nigerians are being invited to debate whether life imprisonment is sufficiently severe for the admitted crimes for which the maximum sentence is life imprisonment. And the appeal is being launched before the prosecution has completed the trial intended to establish whether these men bear legal responsibility for the kidnapping, the resulting deaths- and the harsher punishment prescribed under the law.

The gaping hole in the account is not the distance between life imprisonment and death. It is the missing chain of responsibility. Why appeal sentences imposed for offences carrying life imprisonment while the charges capable of establishing liability for the deaths remain pending? If prosecutors possess evidence connecting these defendants to the planning, execution and fatal consequences of the abduction, that evidence belongs in the September trial.

What, then, has the prosecution publicly shown? A DSS officer reportedly testified that the defendants’ confessions were voluntary and made in the presence of their lawyers. The agency’s investigation report was tendered. But the public has not been shown the substance of any telephone records, financial trails, location evidence, messages or forensic findings connecting the defendants to the planning or physical execution of the Oriire attack. This does not prove that such evidence does not exist. It means only that the public account remains incomplete.

Of course, some evidence must properly remain confidential. Intelligence sources, investigative methods and witnesses may require protection. But secrecy about methods does not require confusion about conclusions. The government can protect sensitive intelligence while explaining the basic architecture of its case: who planned the abduction, who entered the schools, who guarded the captives, who supplied the operation, who negotiated, who killed the teachers, who was arrested and who remains at large.

The law must not merely thunder. It must illuminate. The wider official narrative contains further loose ends. The Presidency announced after the rescue that eight suspected abductors had been arrested and several others killed. It also stated that there had been no exchange or concession to the kidnappers. Yet public reporting has not clarified whether the three convicted men are among those eight, who the other detainees are, or whether anyone now in custody was among the armed men who entered the schools and held the victims in the forest.

Who, then, are the eight? Who has been charged? Who entered the schools? Who led the captives into the forest? Who killed Michael Oyedokun and John Olaleye? Where are the three alleged masterminds named in the charge? Until those questions receive coherent answers, Nigerians cannot know whether the state has captured the centre of the criminal operation or merely some figures around its edges.

Into this vacuum has entered a damaging rumour. One account circulating on social media is that the rescue involved undisclosed arrangements which allowed the principal perpetrators to escape, while lesser associates became the visible defendants through whom the authorities could demonstrate action and claim closure. There is presently no publicly available evidence sufficient to establish that allegation. It must therefore not be repeated as fact.

But neither should the government pretend that the rumour can be defeated by official indignation alone.

The Presidency expressly stated that there was “no quid pro quo” and said that eight kidnappers were arrested, others were killed and a gang leader whose release had been demanded remained in custody. It also promised that the security agencies would provide a full account. Separately, reports based on security sources claimed that the arrest of some kidnappers’ wives and children altered negotiations, after which the abductors proposed releasing the captives in exchange for their relatives and guarantees of safe passage. Those sources maintained that the proposal was rejected and that the final release resulted from sustained pressure and a coordinated assault

The government should clarify the identity and status of the eight reported arrests, the role attributed to each defendant and the efforts to apprehend the alleged masterminds. It should publish the final charge sheet and the court’s sentencing reasons, subject to legitimate security protections. It should also explain why an appeal seeking death sentences has been announced before the trial of the charges most directly connecting the defendants with the fatal kidnapping.

Public trust is not a decorative benefit of national security. It is part of its working infrastructure. Security agencies need citizens to report strange movements, expose informants, identify suspicious transactions and resist intimidation. The state cannot continually ask the public for intelligence while returning ambiguity. Every unexplained contradiction makes the next witness more hesitant and the next rumour easier to believe.

Transparency is not softness towards terror. The terrorist ecosystem contains ideologues, financiers, informants, transporters, trainers, negotiators, captors, commanders and killers. Effective justice identifies each role and proves it. It does not gather every shadow into one silhouette and declare the portrait complete.

The surviving children have emerged from the forest. The truth must not be left behind among the trees.

If these three men planned or assisted the Oriire atrocity, the prosecution should prove it and secure the punishment prescribed by law. If they are guilty only of membership, concealment and the other admitted offences, they must serve those grave sentences while the hunt for the planners, captors and killers continues. What Nigeria cannot afford is a performance of severity that leaves the architects of terror beyond the reach of justice.

Justice against terror must carry iron in its hand and light on its face. Without the iron, impunity survives. Without the light, public trust dies. And when trust dies, even a celebrated rescue begins to resemble a bargain concluded in the dark.