Insecurity and incompetence of security chiefs
NIGERIA is teetering on the brink. From Niger to Kaduna, Zamfara to Sokoto, Borno to Kwara and Plateau to Benue, Islamic terrorists, bandits, and Fulani herders are painting the landscape with innocent blood. This must stop.
The devastating attacks have intensified in the past month, Nigeria recording a huge human toll. Benue and Plateau are the most vulnerable states.
Apart from their banal rhetoric, the security chiefs appear clueless. Undoubtedly, something needs to give.
It is a bloody replay of the dark days in which Boko Haram slaughtered thousands, captured 27 LGs in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, carried out mass kidnappings and displaced millions.
The Global Terrorism Index ranked Nigeria eighth in 2023 and 2024, and sixth in 2025.
On his return from an 18-day overseas tour this week, President Bola Tinubu told the security chiefs, “Enough is enough.”
This speaks volumes about the incompetence demonstrated so far by the security chiefs.
The Service Chiefs, comprising the Chief of Defence Staff, Chris Musa; the Chief of Army Staff, Olufemi Oluyede; the Chief of Air Staff, Hassan Abubakar; and the Chief of Naval Staff, Emmanuel Ogalla, have a full plate.
This is the same with Kayode Egbetokun, the Inspector-General of Police; Adeola Ajayi, the Director-General of the self-styled Department of State Services; and Mohammed Mohammed, the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency.
Since Tinubu came into office, his security chiefs appear to have lost the real understanding of their roles. It seems they are more concerned with regime protection.
The latest mass killings have claimed nearly 150 lives in Benue, Plateau, and Kwara states. This replicates a similar pattern over the past two decades.
While the massacres in Benue and Plateau are linked to Fulani herdsmen, the atrocities in Kwara and Niger are traced to a new Islamic terror group, Mahmuda. Mahmuda compounds the mix of Boko Haram, ISWAP, Ansaru, Lakurawa, and assorted bandit groups terrorising Nigeria.
Between May 29, 2023, when Tinubu became President, and September 2024, 13,346 Nigerians have died in violence, with 9,207 abducted. Thousands of others have been displaced.
Hundreds of security agents have also lost their lives, and there seems to be no hope in sight that the forces will eventually rout the criminals.
The National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, told reporters after an enlarged security meeting chaired by Tinubu on Wednesday that the President had ordered an end to the killings in Benue, Plateau, Kwara, Borno, and Yobe states. Unfortunately, this is the cliché of Nigerian Presidents.
He said Tinubu directed the security agencies to work closely with state governors, local governments, and community leaders to end the carnage.
It is absurd that security chiefs would have to wait for a briefing from the President before curbing insecurity.
Ribadu had visited Benue on Tuesday, like Egbetokun had some days earlier. Governor Hyacinth Alia had told the NSA that the attackers were foreigners who spoke a strange language.
Though Ribadu downplayed the severity of the situation by asking the people not to politicise the carnage, the involvement of foreigners raises questions about Nigeria’s porous borders and the effectiveness of the security chiefs.
Insecurity seemingly escalated in Nigeria after Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger Republic pulled out of ECOWAS in January 2025 and formed the Alliance of Sahel States.
Security experts have warned that these countries are home to terror groups making inroads into their southern neighbours along the Gulf of Guinea.Relations have soured since a failed attempt by Nigeria to lead an invasion of Niger Republic over the forceful takeover of the democratic government by the military in 2023.
The tension threatens the effective counter-terrorism activities of the Multinational Joint Task Force.
There are reports that the herdsmen behind attacks on Plateau State have driven the inhabitants of some areas away and renamed them. This is a clear land grab, for which the security chiefs lack definite answers.
On the waterways, pirates continue to operate unhindered. Twenty passengers, including a boat operator, were kidnapped by suspected pirates along the Oron-Calabar waterway last Friday. The abductors are demanding N100 million per victim.
The boat, operated by Akwa Cross Boat Management Limited, was seized near Calabar, and more than a week later, no word has been heard from the attackers or security agents.
The highways are also unsafe, with regular kidnappings for ransom. Less than two days after Ribadu visited Benue, herders abducted two busloads of passengers on the Adoka-Naka Road in Gwer West LGA of the state.
The abductions occurred in separate ambushes at the same spot, just three kilometres from Naka town, the headquarters of Gwer West LGA.
One of the vehicles was travelling from Akpa in Kogi State to Makurdi when it ran into an ambush by armed herders, while the other vehicle was en route from Makurdi to Lokoja in Kogi State and fell into the same blockade minutes later.
Bandit leaders, Bello Turji and Ado Alieru, continue to control communities under their grip in the North-West with little resistance from the security forces.
Farmers and fishermen are routinely killed by these terrorists. The gangsters impose heavy taxes on farmers.
This repeats the bloody days under Muhammadu Buhari, Tinubu’s predecessor. No fewer than 53,000 were killed in Buhari’s eight-year tenure, per the Nigerian Security Tracker, a project of the Council on Foreign Relations of the United States.
The Senate had in 2022 raised the alarm over the emergence of a strange terror group in the Kainji area of Niger State. The same group later moved to Kwara State, where it orchestrated killings.
With Mamuda in Kwara, the South-West is also under threat. Though the South-West governors have come together to collaborate on security, there are still threats from illegal occupants of the region’s forests.
In its defence, the military is overstretched as it is handling internal security engagements all over Nigeria. This is because the policing structure is unsuitable for a federal state. A single police force is a recipe for anarchy.
Worse, two-thirds of the force are deployed illegally to guard VIPs, leaving the communities without a security presence. It is not surprising that criminals are taking advantage of this obvious gap.
The security chiefs need to give Nigerians regular updates. They should concentrate on strengthening their capabilities against sundry criminals.
What does competence mean to them? Do they think it is only Tinubu who can determine their competence because they are loyal to him?
That cannot be the case if they hope to continue to receive the support of all Nigerians. Instead of an extension, Tinubu should have allowed the IG to retire in 2024 when he attained the age of 60.
By rehabilitating ex-terrorists, the government is merely postponing the evil day. Terrorists do not repent. They return to inflict bigger damage on Nigerians.
They should be put on trial like the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu.
The Nigerian government has put in so much to get the factional leader of IPOB, Simon Ekpa, extradited from Finland to Nigeria for trial.
Nigerians need to see the same effort invested in putting the leaders of other terror groups on trial.
If the security chiefs can no longer perform, they should retire honourably and save Nigerians the horrors of their gross incompetence.
Culled from Punch Editorial, April 27, 2025.
