Editorial Insecurity -Tinubu's Ledger of Failures

Few responsibilities are more fundamental to government than the protection of life and property. On that measure, Nigeria’s security crisis has graduated from a chronic embarrassment into an existential scandal. President Bola Tinubu arrived in Aso Rock promising competence and a break with the complacency that once let Boko Haram ravage the northeast. Instead, his administration has presided over a worsening of the very calamities it vowed to cure: a surge in terror attacks, a new normal of kidnappings and school raids, and brazen assaults on military formations that expose not only the ferocity of the foes but the fragility of the state’s response. 

 

As political activity gathers pace ahead of the 2027 elections, attacks by insurgents, bandits and kidnappers continue to affect communities across large parts of the country. Numbers matter. The Global Terrorism Index’s recent uptick; a near‑half‑again rise in attacks and deaths year‑on‑year is not an abstract metric for policy wonks. It is a ledger of failure: villages emptied, schools shuttered, livelihoods destroyed, and a mounting body count that the government can no longer paper over with press releases. The Oriire school abduction in Oyo State, with its ransom demands and the grotesque video of a beheading, is not an isolated horror. It is a symptom of a security architecture that is reactive, overstretched and, increasingly, irrelevant.

 

The problem is not new. The Tinubu administration has thrown money and rhetoric at the problem. Ministers promise “intelligence‑led” operations; the police chief assures the electoral commission that the force is ready to secure the 2027 polls. Yet the theatre of readiness has not translated into results on the ground. Troops repel attacks one day and are ambushed the next. Checkpoints are overrun. Militias and jihadists probe, strike and withdraw with impunity. The state’s monopoly on force; the most basic function of government is fraying in broad daylight.

 

There are three blunt explanations for this collapse. First, the security strategy is incoherent. Operations are too often defensive, reactive and localized; they lack the sustained, intelligence‑driven offensives that would deny insurgents safe havens. Second, the security services are under‑resourced in the ways that matter: poor logistics, weak human intelligence networks, and a chronic failure to modernize. Third, governance failures - corruption, politicized appointments, and a reluctance to confront local power brokers - hollow out any tactical gains. Soldiers can be brave; they cannot fight with one hand tied behind their backs.

 

The human cost is compounded by political cost. With elections looming, insecurity is not merely a law‑and‑order problem; it is a democratic one. Voter intimidation, the closure of polling stations, and the displacement of entire communities will skew participation and legitimacy. The government’s insistence that the polls will go ahead as scheduled rings hollow when whole swathes of the country feel unsafe to vote. Promises of “professionalism” from the police are thin comfort when citizens see little evidence of it in practice. Worse still is the administration’s habit of explanation by excuse. Officials sometimes attribute violence to “political motivations” or to the vagaries of criminality, as if the pattern of attacks were a meteorological event rather than the predictable consequence of policy choices. Such evasions are not merely dishonest; they are dangerous. They absolve leadership of responsibility and delay the hard reforms that might actually reduce violence.

 

What would those reforms look like? First, a ruthless prioritization of intelligence. The state must invest in human networks, technical surveillance and inter‑agency coordination so that operations are proactive rather than ceremonial. Second, logistics and welfare: troops must be properly equipped, paid and led; the chronic problems of supply and morale are not incidental but central. Third, legal and institutional reform: community policing, judicial follow‑through on arrests, and transparent accountability for abuses will rebuild the fragile trust between citizens and the state. Fourth, economic and social measures: insecurity feeds on poverty and grievance; schools, jobs and local governance matter as much as bullets. None of this will be cheap or quick. But the alternative - a slow drift into zones of ungoverned violence, with the state reduced to a patchwork of fortified towns and lawless corridors - is far costlier. The Tinubu administration’s current approach, which mixes grandiloquent assurances with episodic crackdowns, is a recipe for that drift.

 

There is also a geopolitical dimension. Nigeria’s instability is not contained within its borders. It bleeds into the Sahel, complicates partnerships with foreign militaries, and deters the investment that the country so desperately needs. If Abuja cannot secure its own territory, it will find fewer friends willing to risk blood or treasure on its behalf. That is a strategic failure with long‑term consequences for national sovereignty. Finally, there is the moral indictment. A government’s first duty is to protect its citizens. When it fails, rhetoric about elections and reform becomes a cynical smokescreen. The people who send their children to school, who tend their farms and who queue at polling stations deserve better than platitudes. They deserve a state that treats their safety as non‑negotiable.

 

Tinubu still has time to change course. It must stop treating security as a public‑relations problem and start treating it as the hard, unglamorous work of governance. That means clear strategy, honest accounting of failures, and the political will to make difficult choices including rooting out corruption and patronage within the security apparatus. Anything less is a betrayal of the social contract. If the government cannot or will not act, the consequences will be severe: a hollowed democracy, a battered economy, and a country where fear, not the ballot, determines the future. That is not the Nigeria that was promised. It is Tinubu’s Nigeria that will be remembered for its squandered chances.