QUANDARY APPEARS TO be the word that best suits Nigeria’s security situation right now. The country may well proceed from the current state to one of irreversible disintegration. The foundation has been laid. The orchestrators are still at work in their efforts to put an end to the entity called Nigeria. What was predicted to have happened 10 years ago when the “NIGER-AREA” was a century old may well be about to be enacted now. It will be a cumulative outcome of diverse but related events.
Since 2018, up to this 2025, there have been various reports of high profile seizures, by the Nigerian Customs Service, of arms and ammunition in transit, covertly, illegally and unofficially transported, usually concealed in trailers. Although some arrests were reportedly made, it has become obvious that those arrested are mere errand runners. The real sponsors remain largely untouched. Emerging reports implicate serving and retired military officers and high profile politicians linked to illegal importation and smuggling of arms, with police officers as accomplices. All these sound innocuous when taken in isolation. But the destructive impact becomes clear when juxtaposed with outcomes.
Control over these arms becomes challenging once the arms reach the hands of the intended users. Gradually, armed non-state actors have become a nightmare to security officers in the armed forces, paramilitary units and the police. The former groups have repeatedly overpowered those trained to bear arms, especially when the latter are constrained by hierarchical order. The insidious but relentless nature of attacks unleashed against unarmed civilian populace and unprepared soldiers in particular raise particular concerns. Among the military formations as well as civilian communities, avoidable attacks occur as a result of a breakdown of intelligence gathering, often resulting in ambush attacks. These really point to the fact that the attackers usually have informants within the military and in the targeted communities.
Especially worrisome is the fact that apprehended attackers are usually released instead of being punished. The soft landing that has been given to some identified marauders, especially from the violent actors, has turned out to become an incentive to multiply rather than reduce. The absence of punishment for attackers by the official authorities and the perception of weakness on the part of Nigeria’s armed forces have all contributed to the emboldening of these violent armed assailants. Although the Boko Haram terrorists have been operating in north-eastern Nigeria since 2009, the spread of terrorism became wider in 2014.
Emergence of banditry, due to a political strategy in 2014, was aimed at ousting President Goodluck Jonathan. It was not hidden. General Muhammadu Buhari and his supporters engaged foreign mercenaries to bolster their efforts. This has been confirmed by notable members of his team. His infamous threat of what would happen should he lose the 2015 election was also legendary, as he warned that dogs and baboons may be soaked in blood. While in government, Buhari woefully failed to rein in those foreign assailants that were reportedly hired for an anticipated post-election violence. Emphasis shifted from terror predominantly unleashed on north-east military and civilians to the entire country, especially the Middle Belt.
The itinerant armed assailants combing every known forest and community have been linguistically identified as Fulani, although many of them identified were not herdsmen, raising suspicion of a mission so deeply sinister, pointing clearly to a well-coordinated conspiracy between external and internal collaborators. Their concentration on specific places for repeated attacks, especially the villages and farming communities, provided a leeway for analysts to surmise the “land grab” motive. In addition, the concentration on predominantly Christian communities fuelled the suspicion that the attacks also wore a religious cloak. While the one-sided attacks on unarmed villagers and crop farmers continued to be characterised as farmer-herder clashes, the death toll of the farmers was rising. Buhari, the military General as president and Commander-in-Chief, failed to act to bring the situation under control. Rather, it festered. This is in addition to the Boko Haram menace, which has also nearly decimated many predominantly Christian communities, especially in Borno and Yobe states.
In trying to stem insecurity and reduce terrorism, the handlers chose a bad strategy of handling repentant terrorists. Some suggested absorbing them into the military, thus paving way for what is similar to President Omar Al-Bashir’s conversion of the Janjaweed fighters into uniformed Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary formation that has become a thorn in the flesh of Sudan’s military. Instead of complementing the military, it turned out to become adversarial to the extent that it precipitated the protracted on-going war in Sudan, which, since it started on April 15, 2023, has claimed well over 150,000 lives and has displaced about 12 million people.
A semblance of the evolution of something similar to Sudan’s RSF is the fact that the evolving Nigerian terrorists have found good business in mining solid minerals such as gold, lithium and cobalt, all of which fetch huge fortunes. In addition to foreign sponsorship, especially as uncovered in cases involving Chinese nationals who are also funding illegal miners, purchasing the minerals and smuggling them out of Nigeria; proceeds from mining tend to become the major sources of terrorists’ funding, especially for the purchase of arms and ammunition. As Nigeria tethers at the brinks, official narratives tend to muddle up issues, obfuscate facts and conflate the realities.
A lot of attention is currently being paid to explaining the situation rather than dismantling the terrorists and their organisations. It is similar to what a so-called communication “expert” in the World Health Organisation (WHO) once said early in the days of the COVID-19 outbreak. According to her at the time, while rebuking the media for their warning about an impending pandemic, what the world needed was not “infodemic.” She regarded the media coverage as more important than actually dealing with the yet-to-be-understood disease then. Today, local and international commentators are trying to outdo one another in their efforts to explain the terrorism in Nigeria and the associated killings. The error in their efforts entails the simplistic approach with which they handle the communication and material response to the killings.
The inability of a certain set of people to centrally control the narratives on genocide in Nigeria has put spanners in the works of the agenda. First, rather than agreeing and accepting the fact that one killing is too many and undesirable, they run with the defence of unsubstantiated claims aimed at watering down the complaints earlier launched that Christian population is being attacked and killed in what has risen to a genocide scale. Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Minerals, Dele Alake, is one of those who jumped on the bandwagon. He abandoned his primary role of finding out the extent of illegal mining and terror killings going on and chose public relations stunts, debunking the very activities happening right under the nose of his ministry. For instance, he feigned ignorance of the presence of Chinese illegal miners who sponsor and provide arms for the terrorists in exchange for protection. He preferred to characterise the situation differently, to exclude the idea of genocide.
It is therefore understandable if any external agency choses to dismiss or downplay the idea of genocide. It is feared, however, that state actors as well as some influential non-state actors will allow the Nigerian genocide story to spiral out of control, particularly as a result of weak or non-existent political will. There is thus what looks like a pandering to some interests that tend to benefit from the state of terror and insecurity presently ravaging the country. Those who are vehemently opposing the US intervention in curbing terrorism in Nigeria have a lot to explain. They have to explain what they have been doing ever since and why things have to spiral to the point of getting out of control. However, the best way to do it is different; not by denying the obvious or using some esoteric expressions that take attention away from reality.
