Why Violence Is Worsening In Nigeria — & What It Really Takes To Stop It
By MAHMOOD MALIK MUSA (M.M.M.) IBRAHIM
NIGERIA’S security collapse is no accident. From Boko Haram and ISWAP in the Northeast to heavily armed forest bandits, organised kidnapping rings and rising communal violence, the country faces an intertwining crisis that has hollowed out farmland, emptied classrooms, shuttered markets and produced millions of internally displaced people. What follows is a forensic look at the drivers, mechanics and policy failures that experts say are feeding the spiral — and a roadmap of hard choices Nigeria must make if it intends to reverse the tide.
The human and economic toll
Insurgency and banditry have shifted from intermittent attacks to a systematic engine of violence. In the North-West and North-Central, criminal networks run kidnapping-for-ransom as a business model; in the Northeast insurgents control territories that deny farmers access to fields and marketplaces. The consequences are visible and severe: collapsing agricultural output, soaring food prices, ruined livelihoods, foreign investment flight, overstretched humanitarian systems and mass displacement.
Security operations that clear territory only to see it reoccupied because police presence is thin have undermined public trust in institutions. Citizens who cannot rely on the state either arm themselves, flee, or turn to local power brokers — decisions that further fragment authority and deepen insecurity.
What security experts identify as root causes
Interviews with leading analysts, retired officers and civic leaders reveal a shared diagnosis: Nigeria’s crises are structural, not episodic. The driving causes cluster into four interlocking categories.
1. Poverty, exclusion and youth vulnerability
Chief Chekwas Okorie stated that the core recruitment pool is economic desperation. “Poverty is arguably the most significant driver,” he said, noting that even in resource-rich regions, multidimensional deprivation is rampant. Large cohorts of unemployed or underemployed young people — educated or not — are prime targets for recruiters who offer instant cash and a sense of belonging. In some zones, banditry has become a lucrative alternative to the wage economy.
Okorie and others point to the Almajiri system in the North as especially vulnerable: children educated outside formal livelihoods who, without meaningful economic pathways, are easily radicalised or co-opted into criminal commerce.
2. Weaponisation and supply chains
Jackson Olalekan-Ojo, a security analyst, stresses that the flood of small arms and light weapons (SALW) has turned grievances into lethal capabilities. These weapons diffuse quickly across porous land and maritime borders, often supplied through smuggling networks or leaked from political conflicts. Once an AK-47 circulates in a community it enables larger-scale kidnappings, ambushes and territorial control — and it generates ransom proceeds that fund further armament in a self-reinforcing cycle.
3. Porous borders and regional spillovers
Nigeria’s 4,000 km of largely unpoliced land borders are repeatedly named as a critical vulnerability. Criminals and insurgents use cross-border corridors to move fighters, weapons and loot beyond the reach of national security forces. Experts assert that the Sahel’s instability — through Niger, Chad and other neighbors — provides channels for training, resupply and refuge.
4. Corruption, political interference and governance failure
Across interviews, corruption is central. Funds meant for development, job creation and security are often embezzled; top-down impunity saps state legitimacy. Former business leader Abdulkarim Daiyabu and analysts cite “internal saboteurs” who either finance, protect or collude with violent groups. Political actors have been accused of deploying militant proxies during elections, then leaving their arsenals to circulate in civilian hands.
Jackson Olalekan-Ojo frames the problem bluntly: “High-level corruption drains public funds that should equip security forces and create jobs. That creates the manpower and motive for violence.”
How state capacity is breaking down
A recurrent theme is the mismatch between the military’s kinetic role and the policing task that follows. The army can clear insurgent camps, but weak police institutions fail to stabilise communities afterward. Without sustained police presence, cleared zones rapidly revert to criminal control.
Border enforcement is fragmented among multiple agencies — immigration, customs, navy, army — often without coordinated intelligence fusion or adequate equipment. The result: smugglers and armed groups exploit institutional blind spots.
Evidence of sabotage and complicity
Several commentators and official sources allege that parts of the problem are internal and deliberate: financiers, sympathetic clerics and local power brokers sometimes tacitly or actively support criminal entrepreneurs. Okorie cites instances where lists of suspected financiers were provided by foreign partners but not pursued aggressively by Nigerian authorities — an allegation that, if true, points to political constraints on enforcement.
Short-term and structural solutions experts advocate
Security experts insist there is no single “silver bullet.” The remedies must be layered, precise and sustained.
Immediate operational fixes
• Create and resource specialised police forest units. Experts argue for police detachments trained and equipped to hold liberated territory long-term, not just rely on the military’s transient clearance operations.
• Strengthen border control with intelligence fusion. Coherent multi-agency command centres that fuse military, customs, immigration and police data can close cross-border pipelines.
• Target finance and weapons flows. Financial investigations, asset tracing and sanctions against suspected financiers — domestically and in collaboration with international partners — are essential.
• Scale maritime interdiction. For the Niger Delta and southern waterways, enhanced naval and river patrols can stop smuggling routes that sustain violent groups.
Medium-term institutional reforms
• State and community policing. Okorie presses for constitutional reform to permit state police and fully funded community policing schemes that pay and integrate local watchers into formal command structures — a change proponents say will close “ungoverned spaces.”
• Rebuild police capacity. Professionalisation, better equipment, performance oversight and rapid prosecutorial follow-through would prevent cleared areas from relapsing into criminal control.
• Robust arms control and tracing. National and regional cooperation to stem SALW trafficking, accompanied by disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) where feasible.
Socioeconomic measures to break recruitment cycles
• Large-scale youth employment and livelihoods programmes. Cash-for-work, agricultural protection for farmers in high-risk areas, vocational training and apprenticeship schemes would offer alternatives to criminal earnings.
• Almajiri and civic education reform. Integrate vulnerable children into schooling and livelihood programmes so the pool of easily co-opted recruits shrinks.
• Targeted social safety nets. Conditional transfers, agricultural inputs, and market access can help blunt the economic incentives for criminality.
Governance and accountability
• Judicial commissions and prosecutions. Calls by figures like Abdulkarim Daiyabu for commissions of inquiry reflect public demand for accountability; experts urge that such processes be credible, evidence-based and lead to prosecutions where warranted.
• Sanctions and asset forfeiture. Prosecute financiers and politically exposed persons who fund violence; seize and repurpose illicit assets for rehabilitation and community recovery.
Political obstacles and the politics of reform
Implementing reforms will be politically fraught. State police proposals touch on federal–state power balances; targeting financiers may threaten political backers; and asset recovery initiatives require sustained political will. Yet analysts warn that failing to act politically is a recipe for further state decay.
Jackson Olalekan-Ojo emphasises the necessity of confronting elite complicity: “Without accountability for those who supply arms and money, we will only tinker at the margins.”
What success would look like
Security specialists describe a successful intervention as layered: fewer weapons in circulation, closed smuggling routes, reliable local policing infrastructure, sustained economic opportunities for youth, and a transparent legal process that punishes financiers and protectors of violence. Only then, they say, will cleared areas remain peaceful and communities begin to rebuild.
The final imperative: prioritise prevention and trust-building
Nigeria’s current trajectory demonstrates that military victories alone cannot secure long-term peace. Prevention — shrinking recruitment pools through jobs and education, cutting finances and arms flows, and rebuilding community trust in policing and the courts — is the decisive front.
As one frontline soldier put it bluntly to Sunday Sun: “The dry season will bring a resurgence if we do not change our approach.” The message from experts is equally stark: Nigeria has the tools to respond; what it lacks is a coherent political strategy that aligns resources, prosecutes financiers, reforms institutions and invests in the social contracts that make violence unattractive.
If policymakers commit to a coordinated, multi-year programme that marries security operations with governance reforms and socioeconomic investments, the cycle that has turned kidnapping and banditry into a business model can be broken. If they do not, the cost — in lives, livelihoods and national cohesion — will keep rising.
