*Photo:President Bola Tinubu*
Nigeria stands at a pivotal moment in its history, a critical point that future historians will likely categorize as the definitive test of its viability as a nation-state. The recent and terrifying escalation of violence across the country has transcended the boundaries of routine security challenges and entered the realm of an existential emergency. In a span of merely seventy-two hours, the nation has witnessed a coordinated assault on its future: a church in Kwara State was violated by gunmen, and three separate schools in Kebbi, Niger, and Nasarawa states were besieged, resulting in the abduction of hundreds of innocent students.
These are not isolated incidents; they are symptomatic of a collapsing security architecture that has forced the Federal Government to take the drastic measure of temporarily closing all Federal Unity Colleges in the Federal Capital Territory. At the same time, state governments in Plateau and Katsina have followed suit by shuttering their own educational institutions.
When a nation is forced to close its schools to protect its children from being traded as commodities by criminal gangs, it has effectively paused its future.
This grim reality has naturally sparked a fevered debate both within Nigeria and in the international community. The United States Congress and the President of the United States have turned their gaze toward Nigeria, debating definitions of genocide and the potential for intervention. However, while the international community deliberates, Nigeria bleeds. The debates in Washington, though significant, are ultimately a distraction from the visceral reality on the ground. The solution to Nigeria’s insecurity will not be found in the halls of the US Congress, nor will it be discovered in the semantics of international law regarding what constitutes a “failed state” or “genocide.” The solution must be Nigerian, forged in the heat of honest dialogue in Abuja, Kaduna, Enugu, and Port Harcourt.
This article posits that the current crisis is not merely a failure of the incumbent administration, nor is it a burden that President Bola Tinubu can or should bear alone. It is a structural collapse decades in the making, and its resolution requires a radical departure from the winner-takes-all approach of Nigerian politics. We face a binary choice: do we retreat into partisan bickering while the country burns, or do we embrace a “Government of National Competence” and a consensus-driven approach? This is a call for a National Security Summit, a gathering of the country’s best minds across party lines, to save the ship of state.
The Anatomy of the Crisis: Beyond the Headlines
To understand why a national consensus is the only viable path forward, one must first appreciate the multifaceted nature of the threat. Nigeria is no longer fighting a single insurgency in the North East. We are confronting a hydra-headed monster. In the North East, the ideological insurgency of Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) persists, morphing into new forms of asymmetrical warfare. In the North West and North Central regions, what is euphemistically termed “banditry” has evolved into a low-intensity civil war. These are not mere criminals; they are warlords controlling vast swathes of territory, imposing taxes, and displacing local governance.
The recent attacks in Kebbi and Niger states highlight a terrifying evolution in the modus operandi of these groups. They have industrialized kidnapping, targeting the most vulnerable demographic, school children, to extract maximum leverage against the state. The closure of the Unity Schools is a symbolic victory for these terror groups, whose ideological ancestors in Boko Haram explicitly sought the end of Western education. By forcing the state to shut down schools, the terrorists have achieved a strategic objective without firing a shot.
Furthermore, the Middle Belt continues to be a theater of blood, where the clash between herders and farmers has taken on ethnic and religious colorations that threaten to tear the fabric of the nation apart. In the South East, the “sit-at-home” orders and attacks on security installations by non-state actors have created an economy of fear. When one aggregates these theaters of conflict, it becomes clear that the Nigerian military and police are overstretched, under-resourced, and fighting on too many fronts at once. This is why the “kinetic” approach, relying solely on bullets and bombs, has failed to deliver sustainable peace.
The Mercenary Question: A Poisoned Chalice?
In the face of this overwhelming tide of violence, there is a growing chorus of voices suggesting a return to the strategies of the past. Specifically, there are calls to import mercenaries, mirroring the decision made by the Goodluck Jonathan administration in late 2014 and early 2015. At that time, the specialized training and combat support provided by private military contractors like STTEP International, led by Eeben Barlow, yielded significant tactical victories against Boko Haram in the weeks leading up to the general election.
However, we must objectively interrogate this option. While mercenaries can provide a temporary tactical advantage, they cannot offer a strategic solution.
The use of mercenaries in 2015 was a stopgap measure that cleared territory but did not hold it, nor did it address the root causes of the insurgency. Furthermore, relying on foreign contractors for national security compromises sovereignty and creates a dependency syndrome within the national armed forces. It demoralizes the rank and file of the Nigerian military, who are often left wondering why the government is willing to pay exorbitant fees to expatriates. At the same time, their own allowances are delayed, and their equipment remains substandard.
Similarly, the suggestion of inviting direct military intervention from the United States or other Western powers is fraught with peril. As the President of the United States (POTUS) has indicated, the US is watching, but direct intervention carries the baggage of geopolitics. We have seen the outcomes of US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. While technical assistance, intelligence sharing, and technological support are welcome, “boots on the ground” would likely internationalize the conflict, turning Nigeria into a proxy battleground for global powers. Nigeria must avoid the temptation of outsourcing its survival. We do not need foreign saviours; we need domestic cohesion.
Historical Precedents for National Unity
If we reject the mercenary option and the path of foreign intervention, what remains? The answer lies in history. Across the globe, when nations have faced existential threats, they have suspended the usual rules of political engagement to forge a united front.
Consider the United Kingdom during the darkest days of World War II. The existential threat posed by Nazi Germany was not a “Conservative Party problem” or a “Labour Party problem”; it was a British problem.
Recognizing this, the political class formed a National Unity Government. Winston Churchill, a staunch Conservative, led a war cabinet that included his fiercest political rivals, including Labour leader Clement Attlee. They did not agree on tax policy or healthcare, but they decided that Britain must survive. This supreme national unity allowed the UK to mobilize its entire population and economy for the war effort, ultimately leading to victory.
Across the Atlantic, the United States, a nation often defined by its sharp partisan divides, offers another model. During the Cold War, the doctrine that “politics stops at the water’s edge” created a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy and national security. Democrats and Republicans fought bitterly over domestic issues, but they presented a united front against the Soviet Union. More recently, the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001, forged an immediate moment of profound national unity. The legislative support for creating the Department of Homeland Security and for authorizing the use of military force was overwhelmingly bipartisan. The threat was common, and therefore, the response had to be unified.
Perhaps the most potent and culturally relevant example for Nigeria comes from within our own continent: South Africa. In the early 1990s, South Africa was on the brink of a racial civil war that promised to be bloodier than anything the continent had seen. The apartheid system was crumbling, but the transition to democracy was fraught with violence and mistrust. Yet, the leadership of the National Party, representing the white minority regime, and the African National Congress (ANC), representing the liberation movement, chose dialogue over destruction. The result was the 1994 Government of National Unity (GNU). This arrangement forced sworn enemies to sit at the same cabinet table. It was an act of supreme patriotism. Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk did not just share a Nobel Peace Prize; they shared the burden of steering a fragile nation away from the precipice. They prioritized the survival of the state over the triumph of their respective parties.
The Proposition: A National Security Summit
Nigeria is currently at a similar crossroads. The bandit’s bullet does not check party affiliation. A kidnapper does not ask for a voter’s card before abducting a child. The insecurity ravaging our land does not discriminate between the Broom of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Umbrella of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). It consumes the rich and the poor, the Northerner and the Southerner, the Christian and the Muslim alike.
Therefore, it is time to lift these issues beyond the purview of politicking. We are under intense pressure to put aside our differences and take a united stance. The President of the Federal Republic, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has an onerous responsibility to lead this charge. But he cannot do it alone, and he should not try to. This is not a sign of weakness; it is a hallmark of statesmanship.
We propose an urgent National Security Summit—not a jamboree or a talk shop, but a strategic conclave with a clear mandate to develop a bipartisan, holistic strategy for national survival. This roundtable must include specific stakeholder categories that hold the keys to different aspects of the solution.
First and foremost, the President must invite the very political leaders he defeated in the last general election. Figures such as Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, Peter Obi of the Labour Party, and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP represent significant constituencies and millions of Nigerians. Bringing them to the table sends a powerful signal to the terrorists and criminals: the political class is no longer divided on the issue of security. It deprives these non-state actors of the ability to exploit political fissures. These opposition leaders should not be there for a photo opportunity but to contribute their ideas and to mobilize their supporters behind a national security agenda.
Secondly, the summit must include the 36 state governors. As the chief security officers of their respective states, they are on the frontlines. However, the current structure often leaves them feeling helpless, caught between federal control of the security agencies and the local reality of violence. A national consensus is needed to address the thorny issue of state policing and the coordination between federal forces and local vigilante groups.
The Role of Traditional and Religious Institutions
No security strategy in Nigeria can succeed without the deep involvement of traditional and religious institutions. These are the custodians of culture and the primary influencers of social behavior at the grassroots level.
The great royal fathers, the Sultan of Sokoto, the Ooni of Ife, the Emir of Kano, the Obi of Onitsha, the Shehu of Borno, and others, possess a network of intelligence and influence that the Nigerian state lacks. In many rural communities where the Nigerian Police Force is absent, the Emir’s or the King’s word is law. These monarchs know their domains; they know who the strangers are, and they know the geography of the forests where bandits hide. They must be empowered and integrated into the national security architecture, not just as ceremonial figures but as active partners in intelligence gathering and conflict resolution.
Similarly, the religious leadership, the heads of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), must be central to this summit. The rhetoric that fuels division often emanates from the pulpit and the minbar. By bringing these leaders to the table, the state can secure a commitment to de-escalate religious tensions. Furthermore, religious leaders play a critical role in the de-radicalization of insurgents. They are the only ones with the theological authority to counter the twisted narratives of groups like Boko Haram and ISWAP.
Mobilizing Civil Society and Academia
The kinetic solution, military force, is only one side of the coin. The root causes of Nigeria’s insecurity are deep-seated and structural: poverty, unemployment, lack of education, and the existential pressure of climate change. This is where the academia and civil society organizations (CSOs) come in.
Experts who have studied these conflicts for decades must be engaged to help brainstorm solutions that go beyond the gun. For instance, the conflict in the Middle Belt is fundamentally a resource war exacerbated by the drying up of Lake Chad and the encroachment of the desert. No amount of bullets will solve desertification. We need the intellectual power of our universities and research institutes to design policy frameworks for grazing reserves, ranching, and environmental reclamation.
Civil society organizations, with their ear to the ground, can provide independent monitoring and evaluation of security interventions, ensuring that funds meant for security are not diverted and that human rights abuses by security forces, which often fuel recruitment into insurgent groups, are minimized.
Economic Diplomacy and Internal Security
The relationship between the economy and security cannot be overstated. A hungry man is an angry man, and a hopeless youth is a prime recruit for banditry. The current economic hardship, exacerbated by the removal of fuel subsidies and the floating of the naira, has increased the desperate pool from which criminal gangs recruit.
The National Security Summit must therefore also be an Economic Emergency Summit. The captains of industry, the Organized Private Sector (OPS), must be involved. We need to answer a critical question: how do we create an economy that works for the youth of Zamfara, the creek dwellers of the Niger Delta, and the street traders of Lagos? Suppose the economy does not expand to absorb the millions of young people entering the labor market every year. In that case, no army in the world will be able to contain the ensuing chaos.
This brings us back to the role of innovative diplomacy. While we reject foreign military intervention, we must leverage economic diplomacy to attract the kind of investment that creates jobs. However, investment flees from insecurity. It is a chicken-and-egg situation. By showing the world that the Nigerian political elite has united to tackle insecurity, we send the strongest possible signal to international investors. A stable, united political front de-risks the investment climate more effectively than any roadshow.
A Framework for Action: From Summit to Strategy
For this proposed summit to be more than a talk shop, it must result in a binding “National Security Charter.” This charter would be a bipartisan agreement on minimum security standards, funding mechanisms, and rules of engagement. It would outline a 10-year strategic plan that survives the tenure of any single administration.
This charter should address the decentralization of policing, creating a framework that allows state and community policing to coexist with federal forces. It should establish a “Security Trust Fund” managed transparently by a board comprising private-sector leaders, ensuring that our troops are well-equipped and that their welfare is prioritized.
Furthermore, the charter must include a non-kinetic strategy for amnesty and rehabilitation. While the hardcore ideologues of Boko Haram may be beyond redemption, many “bandits” are economic combatants. A clearly defined, time-bound amnesty program, coupled with genuine economic alternatives, could strip the warlords of their foot soldiers.
The Imperative of Patriotism
The path from the precipice is steep and treacherous, but it is climbable. The closure of schools in Abuja, Plateau, and Katsina is a wake-up call that we can no longer hit the snooze button on. The kidnapping of our children is an assault on our collective soul.
We must reject the false comfort of foreign mercenaries and the dangerous allure of external military intervention. The United States has its own challenges; it cannot and will not save us. The “genocide” label, while a subject of intense debate in international circles, ultimately changes nothing for the mother in Kebbi waiting for her child to return from captivity.
What will save Nigeria is Nigerians. It is the spirit of the 1994 South African transition, the resolve of the 1940 British War Cabinet, and the unity of the post-9/11 American Congress. It is the realization that before we are APC or PDP, before we are Northerners or Southerners, before we are Christians or Muslims, we are Nigerians.
We call on President Tinubu to rise to this historic occasion. Invite your rivals. Empower the traditional rulers. Engage the clerics. Listen to the scholars. Form a united front that tells the bandits, the terrorists, and the world that Nigeria is not a failed state, but a nation waking from its slumber to reclaim its destiny. The alternative is a descent into anarchy that will consume us all. The time for unity is now. The time for a national consensus is yesterday.
Let us secure our schools, our roads, and our future, together.