The measure of a state’s strength is not how it responds to tragedy, but how effectively it prevents it. Nigeria’s conversation on insecurity is increasingly becoming trapped in politics. As attacks and abductions continue across parts of the country, public debate has shifted toward whether the resurgence of violence is connected to political maneuvering ahead of the 2027 elections. Some government officials and supporters of the current administration have argued that certain security incidents are being amplified, or even orchestrated, to undermine public confidence in government.
While such claims deserve scrutiny, they risk diverting attention from a more fundamental and enduring challenge. The central question confronting Nigeria is not whether insecurity is being politicised. The central question is why, despite constitutional guarantees, multiple security reforms, and unprecedented levels of expenditure, the Nigerian state continues to struggle to provide one of the most basic public goods: security.
The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) is unequivocal on this point. Section 14(2) (b) provides that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.” Equally significant is Section 33, which guarantees every person’s right to life. Taken together, these provisions establish security not merely as a policy aspiration but as a constitutional obligation.
Measured against that standard, recent events should concern us deeply. More than a decade after the abduction of 276 schoolgirls from Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, on 14 April 2014, Nigeria continues to witness attacks on educational institutions and vulnerable communities. The Dapchi abduction of February 2018, the Kankara School kidnapping of December 2020, the attacks in Jangebe and Tegina in 2021, the Kuriga abduction of March 2024, and more recent incidents affecting school communities in Borno and Oyo States reveal a troubling continuity. These incidents occurred under different administrations, different security leaderships, and different political circumstances. Yet the vulnerabilities remain remarkably similar.
This continuity suggests that Nigeria’s insecurity challenge is rooted less in electoral politics than in institutional weaknesses that have proven resistant to reform.
The tendency to frame insecurity primarily through a political lens can therefore be misleading. Politics may influence insecurity. Politicians may exploit insecurity. In some cases, political actors may even contribute to insecurity. Nigerian history certainly provides examples. The political violence that contributed to the collapse of the First Republic, electoral violence during successive democratic transitions, militancy in the Niger Delta, and allegations of political sponsorship of armed groups in different parts of the country all demonstrate that politics and insecurity have often intersected.
However, political explanations alone cannot adequately explain why insecurity has persisted across the administrations of Presidents Goodluck Jonathan, Muhammadu Buhari, and Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Nor can they explain why similar institutional failures continue to recur despite significant investments in security infrastructure.
The more compelling explanation lies in the concept of state capacity. State capacity refers to the ability of public institutions to enforce laws, secure territory, deliver public services, coordinate policy responses, and maintain legitimacy. Countries do not become secure merely because they allocate more money to security agencies. They become secure when institutions possess the competence, coordination, accountability, and adaptability necessary to prevent threats and respond effectively when threats emerge.
This distinction is critical because Nigeria increasingly appears to be confronting what governance scholars describe as a capacity trap. In such situations, institutions expand in size, budgets increase, agencies proliferate, and reforms multiply, yet the state’s ability to deliver meaningful outcomes remains stubbornly weak.
Nigeria’s security sector exhibits several characteristics of this phenomenon.
Over the past decade, federal allocations to defence, intelligence, policing, military operations, and internal security have risen dramatically. The 2026 federal budget allocated over ₦6 trillion to defence and security-related institutions, making security one of the largest areas of public expenditure. Since 2015, cumulative spending on security has run into tens of trillions of naira.
Yet rising expenditure has not consistently translated into corresponding improvements in citizen security. This is not an argument against security spending. Nigeria faces complex threats, including insurgency, banditry, kidnapping, organised criminal networks, communal violence, and separatist agitations. Such threats require substantial investment. The question is whether existing investments are generating measurable improvements in prevention, deterrence, and institutional resilience.
In the private sector, sustained underperformance despite increased investment inevitably prompts rigorous review. Boards investigate. Auditors examine systems. Leadership decisions are scrutinised. Performance metrics are reassessed. Public security institutions often operate under a different logic.
When major security failures occur, investigations are announced, committees are established, reports are prepared, and official statements are issued. Yet the extent to which institutional lessons are learned and implemented remains unclear. Accountability frequently appears episodic rather than systematic.
The controversy surrounding the school kidnapping in Kebbi State illustrates this challenge. Governor Nasir Idris publicly alleged that security personnel assigned to the affected school had been withdrawn before the attack occurred. If accurate, such an allegation points to a preventable security lapse. If inaccurate, it required immediate clarification. Either way, it raised important questions about decision-making, risk assessment, and accountability. The public deserved answers.
Instead, the issue largely faded from national attention without a transparent resolution.
This pattern matters because accountability is not merely a democratic virtue; it is an operational necessity. Security institutions improve when failures are investigated honestly, responsibility is assigned appropriately, and corrective measures are implemented consistently. Without accountability, institutional learning becomes difficult, and vulnerabilities persist.
School kidnappings provide a particularly revealing lens through which to examine this challenge. Following the Chibok abduction, the Safe Schools Initiative was launched with support from government, development partners, and the private sector. Subsequent years witnessed additional interventions, including school protection frameworks and coordination mechanisms designed to improve safety in educational institutions. Yet attacks on schools continued.
The policy question is therefore not whether reforms were introduced. The question is why those reforms have struggled to produce consistently measurable outcomes.
The answer may lie partly in broader structural weaknesses within Nigeria’s governance architecture. One example is the persistent tension between a centralised policing framework and highly localised security threats. While insecurity is experienced within communities, constitutional responsibility for policing remains overwhelmingly concentrated at the federal level. This often creates a disconnect between local intelligence, local accountability, and operational authority.
A farming community in Benue faces different security risks from a border settlement in Sokoto or a school community in Kaduna. Yet responses frequently emerge from a centralised structure that may not always possess the flexibility or local knowledge required for effective prevention.
This does not automatically resolve the debate over state police or broader security decentralisation. However, it highlights the need for a serious national conversation about whether existing institutional arrangements are adequately aligned with contemporary security realities.
Perhaps the most damaging consequence of recurring insecurity is not only the immediate loss of life, property, or opportunity. It is the gradual erosion of public confidence in formal institutions. Citizens who lose faith in the state’s ability to protect them increasingly turn to informal alternatives, including vigilante groups, ethnic militias, and self-help arrangements.
While some of these mechanisms emerge from legitimate community concerns, their proliferation can further complicate security governance and weaken the state’s monopoly over the legitimate use of force.
This is why the normalisation of insecurity represents a deeper threat than insecurity itself. Many countries have experienced periods of significant violence and instability. What distinguishes successful recoveries is the refusal to accept insecurity as inevitable. When abductions become routine headlines, when investigations produce few visible consequences, and when institutional failures generate more explanations than reforms, public expectations begin to decline.
That decline in expectations is dangerous. A state does not lose legitimacy only when it loses territory. It also loses legitimacy when citizens cease to believe it can fulfill its most fundamental obligations.
The debate over whether insecurity is politically motivated ahead of 2027 may therefore be politically attractive, but it is analytically insufficient. Even if political actors are exploiting insecurity, that does not explain the persistence of institutional vulnerabilities across multiple administrations, repeated reforms, and rising expenditure.
The more important question is not who benefits from insecurity. The more important question is why the Nigerian state continues to struggle to prevent it.
More than a decade after Chibok, Nigeria does not suffer from a shortage of laws, strategies, committees, institutions, or budgetary allocations. It suffers from a persistent gap between constitutional promises and institutional performance.
Closing that gap will require more than rhetoric. It will require stronger intelligence systems, better coordination among agencies, clearer lines of accountability, deeper community engagement, measurable performance standards, and reforms that align authority with responsibility.
Until those institutional questions are addressed, Nigeria will continue to debate the politics of insecurity while the deeper challenge, a crisis of state capacity, remains unresolved.
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John Onyeukwu, is a lawyer and public policy analyst with interdisciplinary expertise in law, governance, and institutional reform. He holds an LL.B (Hons) from Obafemi Awolowo University, an LL.M from the University of Lagos, and dual master’s degrees in Public Policy from the University of York and Central European University. He also earned a Mini-MBA. John has managed development projects on governance, public finance, civic engagement, and service delivery. He can be reached on john@apexlegal.com.ng
