BY RITA OYIBOKA
YOU just have to be on the internet for one hour to know that Nigeria is running on borrowed courage. Every fresh headline drips with the same story arc: mass abduction, another community razed, another convoy ambushed, and another parent searching for a child who vanished into the bush under the barrel of an AK-47. And as the incidents escalate, our national response continues to operate like an underfunded start-up pitching old solutions to a problem that has already scaled beyond control.
The killing of Brigadier-General Musa Uba is not just another tragic loss; it’s a red flag that the system can no longer hide behind the “we are on top of the situation” playbook. When ISWAP can abduct, execute, film, and broadcast the death of a senior officer, the message is simple: the centre has lost operational grip. And if the military, the last bastion Nigerians trust to deliver, can be publicly humiliated with such bold efficiency, then average citizens might as well be walking around with targets strapped to their backs.
Kano’s recent descent into violence is another wake-up call. For years, Kano prided itself on being relatively insulated from the worst of northern insecurity. Now, it’s hosting gunfights between troops and bandits, village invasions, and community death tolls that should trouble any leader with a conscience. When the so-called “safer states” begin to crumble, it’s not just a localised crisis; it’s a market-wide disruption in the security architecture.
And then there are the schools, Nigeria’s weakest link in the chain. Two, likely three mass abductions in one week are not a coincidence; it’s a business model. Bandits know the end-users, parents, will pay, even when the state pretends it doesn’t negotiate with criminals. 30, 40, 50 children snatched at once is no longer shock material; it’s a recurring KPI of a well-oiled criminal industry. When hunters and vigilantes become the primary search-and-rescue units, you know the state has quietly exited the chat.
The attack on the CAC church in Kwara State adds another layer to this spiralling crisis. It wasn’t just violent; it was symbolic. Livestreamed terror, worshippers shot at mid-service, a pastor dragged out like a trophy, highways blocked by furious youths, this is not random banditry. It is violence curated to send a message, to shake confidence, to erode trust in the state’s capacity to protect sacred spaces. When churches become theatres of war, the social fabric itself begins to tear.
At the same time, simplifying the crisis into a “Muslims versus Christians” binary is lazy analysis, and lazy analysis breeds bad policy. What we are dealing with is a fragmented security landscape where ideological terrorism, economic criminality, ethnic tensions, and governance decay have converged into one amorphous monster. Nigeria’s insecurity is not a single-story narrative; it’s a portfolio of overlapping risks, and every region carries its own variant.
That’s why the US redesignation of Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” landed like a diplomatic hammer. Washington looked at the numbers, the patterns, the religiously aggravated attacks, and pressed the red button. And while Abuja rejects the “genocide” label, as it should, the government cannot keep gaslighting citizens with the same rehearsed lines about “mere banditry” and “isolated clashes.” When a foreign power identifies what you have refused to address, it’s no longer a perception issue; it’s a performance issue.
This crisis isn’t about Christians versus Muslims. It isn’t about Fulani versus farmers. It isn’t even about Trump’s designation or Tinubu’s reactions. This is about a country with a security architecture stuck in reverse while its threats operate on 5G. It’s about a governance culture that still thinks insecurity can be managed with press statements, “special operations,” and photo-ops in camouflage. Meanwhile, communities are burying their dead at a pace that would bankrupt a small nation.
The emotional fallout is seismic. Parents in northern states send their children to school with the same fear soldiers carry to the front lines. Farmers abandon fertile land because returning home alive is more important than planting. Clergymen preach behind locked doors. Rural communities live like internally displaced people in their own villages. And the military, overstretched and under-resourced, continues to fight multiple wars on multiple fronts with morale that fluctuates between heroic and exhausted.
What Nigeria refuses to admit is that insecurity has become a parallel economy, complete with revenue streams, supply chains, and customer segmentation. Kidnapping is now a growth sector. Banditry is a career path. Terrorism is an investment portfolio with regional investors. And the victims are treated like collateral damage.
Still, the conversation must evolve. We cannot keep reacting to every tragedy with the same template, condemnation, outrage, committee, and silence, repeat. The country needs a strategic pivot. A full-scale audit of the security architecture. A leadership culture that prioritises early warning over damage control. Investment in intelligence, not just firepower. Justice that is visible, not rhetorical. And a national narrative that stops pretending insecurity is “up there in the North” while the rest of the country is “managing.”
The truth is blunt: Nigeria is not just facing insecurity; it is facing a legitimacy crisis. A state that cannot protect its people is a state on the brink of losing the social contract. And no amount of denial, diplomacy, religion, or politics will fix that until the country confronts the crisis head-on, without euphemisms, without excuses, without playing down the pain.
Insecurity in Nigeria is not Christians versus Muslims. It is Nigeria versus a threat that has outpaced its institutions, its politics, and its imagination. And until we match that threat with equal force, clarity, and strategy, the headlines will continue to write themselves, each one darker than the last.
