By Ahmad Salkida
I have followed Nigeria’s insecurity more closely than many Nigerians. I come from a state devastated by insurgency. I have built much of my career reporting conflict, accessing non-state actors and places where state authority barely exists, interacting with successive security leaders, and mediating crises, many of which will remain untold.
My conclusion after all these years is uncomfortable: many of the solutions are already at the doorstep of our security leaders.
We are better equipped, better educated, better resourced and possess far greater intelligence capabilities than every terrorist, insurgent, bandit, kidnapper or separatist organisation confronting the Nigerian state. Yet men in the underground repeatedly stay ahead of us.
They organise. They observe us. They listen. They learn. They adapt. Then they strike where and when we least expect them.
Our institutions too often fail to do the same.
Part of the problem is consequence. When mass abductions happen, communities are massacred or intelligence failures cost lives, who answers for failure? Too often, commanders change, governments condemn the attack, committees are constituted, and the country moves on. We have gradually normalised what should be intolerable.
There is also a deeper societal problem. We have conditioned ourselves to believe that only God solves our problems, that somehow we do not have to work hard enough at solving them, we only need to pray harder. I am a person of faith. I believe profoundly in prayer. But faith cannot become an alibi for human failure. God has given us intellect, knowledge, agency and responsibility. Prayer should strengthen our resolve to act, not relieve us of the obligation to act.
Nigeria needs to institutionalise security away from personalities and informal relationships. We must discard transactional security management, preserve institutional memory, reward competence and impose consequences for failure, especially when human lives are lost.
And our leaders must become adaptive. Terrorism in Borno is not armed violence in Zamfara. Kidnapping in the North-Central is not separatist violence in the South-East or organised predation in our cities. Different threats require different intelligence, policing, political and socio-economic responses.
Nigeria does not lack brave people, intelligence or solutions. We have failed to organise, observe, listen, trust and invest in ourselves sufficiently to stay ahead of those trying to destroy us.
That is a failure within our power to correct.
