It is the raw underbelly of Nigerian politics: a toxic cocktail of ethnic entitlement, economic despair, and insecurity sharpened into a political blade.

Between Bola Tinubu and a powerful section of the northern aristocracy, there is no love lost. The economic hardship is brutal, the insecurity unrelenting, but that is not the real grievance. The real wound is older and far more intimate: the northern elite’s centuries-old sense of entitlement  has been punctured.

Kashim Shettima genuinely believed he would be the part of this government. Instead he has become a well-tailored messenger. A vice president in designer suits with little more than ribbon-cutting duties. Tinubu’s Yoruba-centrism is not subtle; it is loud, theatrical, almost defiant. Ministers, board chairs, security chiefs, permanent secretaries. The accents ringing through the corridors of power these days are overwhelmingly ‘ngbati ngbati’. Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, and Oyo. The brazenness is deafening. The North, which prides itself on delivering the decisive bloc vote that dragged Tinubu across the finish line in 2023, now feels like a bride abandoned at the altar — veil in hand, mouth open, head spinning in disbelief.

When a northerner occupies Aso Rock, his kinsmen form a cabal and call it patriotic governance. When a southerner takes the seat, the same northern elite still expect to be courted like kingmakers — flown to Abuja for “consultations,” pampered with juicy contracts, and handed front-row seats at every ceremony. Tinubu has refused to play that script. He is not merely his own man; he is openly erecting a political dynasty in broad daylight and bruising egos with his own arrogance. To the northern power brokers, this does not feel like betrayal. It feels like castration.

For one terrifying moment, the legendary northern gravitas looked fragile — purchasable, almost impotent. In the face of Tinubu’s ruthless consolidation of power, his emasculation of the opposition, and his arbitrary deployment of reward and retribution, the Northern power brokers  appeared helpless. Until now.

Then, as if on cue, Trump threatened and the insecurity exploded.

The country is on its knees. Tinubu is rattled. Insecurity has been rampant for years, but this latest spike feels unnatural . In the last five weeks of November 2025, banditry took on the rhythm of a meticulously rehearsed play. Kidnappings everywhere. Church invasions. School raids. Tinubu can’t be exonerated from gross security incompetence. But with each atrocity arriving with perfect dramatic timing, it seemed as though someone, somewhere, was pulling the strings. Like a clandestine attempt by unseen hands to make the country ungovernable and force a pompous president to capitulate or quit. While Tinubu was scrambling to convince President Trump that there was no Christian genocide on his watch, bandits strolled into churches and schools and harvested human beings like yams. The timing is too perfect to be accidental. It will take significant dishonesty to defend Tinubu’s complacency and deflect blames. His performance has been woeful.  But this surge has a political signature visible from the moon . However, make no mistake: this terror game  neither  serves the interests of the North which it is decimating nor reflects the wishes of the northern people whom it is butchering.  

Remember 2015. Insecurity became the albatross hung around Jonathan’s neck until it dragged him under. Many of us noticed, even then, that some of the worst Boko Haram flare-ups seemed choreographed for maximum embarrassment: bombs timed for the eve of international summits, schoolgirls vanishing while the president was abroad. Jonathan was perhaps clueless. But coincidences piled too high to be coincidence. A section of the northern elite — not necessarily Buhari himself — appeared to enjoy a shadowy, arm’s-length relationship with the insurgents. They could prod, incite, restrain, or unleash at will. The North wanted power back. It got it.

Is history at it again?

Tinubu’s spokesmen have been strangely mute on the possibility. They dare not point fingers northward. Around the north they are timid. The North has become more politically heterogenous and complex than the Sarduana conceived it. But it’s still dreaded by southern politicians. The vote bank, a temperamental behemoth that can still be steered by a single sermon from the right pulpit or whisper from the right palace. Among ordinary southerners, the suspicion is no longer whispered in beer parlours; it is shouted in WhatsApp groups and on the streets. The coincidences are too surreal. Either these terrorists have miraculously developed an independent genius for reading northern political moods and timing their atrocities to enrich themselves while advancing their region’s power brokers’ interests or someone is giving them directions.

And if the recent atrocities were truly spontaneous, why does no one ever hunt the masterminds? Why do hostages keep strolling out of the forest smiling, without a single bandit arrested or killed? Why are “rescues” always achieved through quiet “dialogue” rather than gunfire?

Thirty-eight worshippers taken from Christ Apostolic Church, Eruku, Kwara — released. Just like that. Twenty-five schoolgirls from Maga, Kebbi were abducted and released. Scores of abducted children from the Catholic school in Papiri, Niger are walking out in batches like they were on excursion. No shots fired. No bandits in body bags. Just discreet negotiations and, many suspect, suitcases of taxpayer money changing hands under the noble banner of “non-kinetic approach.”  In Kebbi, the vice-principal was murdered; in Kwara, three parishioners were slaughtered. Yet every single “rescue” has been by dialogue.

This preference for peace deals over confrontation has been the unspoken policy in Katsina, Zamfara, and Kaduna since Tinubu took office. Children now pose for selfies with their captors. Local government chairmen speak of “repentant stakeholders.” Critics call it stupid politics. I call it suicidal self-deception. Many say the government should be honest with the citizens. Though goats  are now eating palm fronds on their heads , they need to know  when taxpayers money  is  used to pay ransoms to bandits. Paying murderers to behave is not strategy. 

There is, however, a colder logic that ties all the loose ends together, including Tinubu’s curious  two and half year literal ‘siddon look’ at insecurity.

Perhaps Tinubu’s government weighed its military capacity, found it woefully inadequate, and concluded that since certain northern elites could switch these bandits on and off like NEPA light, the only realistic option was to outbid the sponsors of terror. Buy the terrorists more generously than disgruntled power brokers can afford. Keep them fat, quiet, and loyal — at least until 2027.

It is the only explanation that makes sense of the government’s complacency and surreal images we see: freed hostages waving cheerfully, bandits flaunting wads of freshly minted naira, government officials taking credit for “successful rescues” that look suspiciously like auctions.

The North simmers. Its power brokers, addicted to hegemony, are now political orphans nursing wounded pride and plotting vengeance. Its streets overflow with unemployed youth who can be mobilised by a single Friday sermon. Its forests shelter private armies that answer to money and mystery. Tinubu came to power boasting he would tame terrorists the way he tamed the Atlantic at Bar Beach. Today the country lies prostrate before terror, and the man who once strutted like a colossus looks rattled, almost timid. Perhaps the intervention of Trump tilted the scale, made Tinubu more vulnerable and detractors jumped in. Perhaps it is  the chickens of his indolence that have come home to roost

He has announced frantic recruitment as many  youths  as possible into the army.  Perhaps 50,000,  if they can find them.  And 20,000 into the police. Finally he has  declared a national security emergency. Good steps, if they are not mere theatre to get Trump off his back. But the army lacks the capacity to train such numbers overnight. The police need a total welfare and doctrinal overhaul. The military needs more boots on the ground but needs technology more. It needs troops umbrellaed by drones . State police and community policing are long overdue, but to stem the profuse bleeding right now, Nigeria needs an immediate pact with a foreign superpower or professional mercenaries who do not play political games with bandits.

Before the spike , terror had already seized the country. So political weaponization or not Nigeria was heading to Somalia. Yet Tinubu still has time to call the bluff of terror  masterminds, sponsors, opportunists, and the bandits only if he rises to the challenge instead of continuing to manage monsters he cannot control. He has to unite the country , fight terror , battle corruption, become a moral example for all and begin to offer transformative leadership.  Otherwise, history will not just rhyme. It will repeat itself, word for word.

Nigeria needs a rebirth.