Recently, after the mass killing in Jos, Plateau State, President Bola Tinubu said he was not elected “to comfort and create widows and widowers”. Yet since he became president barely three years ago, his administration has overseen the creation of thousands of widows, widowers and orphans whose husbands, wives and parents were killed in terrorist attacks. After each attack, President Tinubu would mourn the dead, console their widows and widowers and then authoritatively declare, as if issuing the irreversible law of the Medes and Persians: “This experience won’t repeat itself”! 

But such pronouncements are perfunctory; they are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. For instance, after the Jos killings on March 30, Tinubu vowed that “this won’t happen again”. Yet, just a few days later, there were deadly attacks in Benue State, killing 17 people, and in Kaduna State where several citizens were massacred in a church, while fresh killings occurred in Jos. In a sharp rebuke, Amnesty International accused President Tinubu of “issuing turgid statements condemning the attacks”, while “failing to protect lives”.

To be sure, President Tinubu inherited the hydra-headed monster called terrorism. However, insecurity in Nigeria usually gets progressively worse, with more lives lost and more people abducted under each government than under its predecessor. As many will remember, President Goodluck Jonathan presided over a state of mayhem, culminating in Boko Haram’s kidnap of 276 Chibok schoolgirls in 2014. Insecurity largely cost Jonathan his re-election in 2015. General Muhammadu Buhari and his party, APC, seized on the dreadful security situation to portray Jonathan as utterly weak, and vowed to defeat terrorism in Nigeria if elected. Brandishing his experience as a retired General, Buhari said his government would do “everything in its power” to defeat insurgency in Nigeria. 

Indeed, in power, Buhari initially acted as if he was on to something transformative. He fired the military commanders and replaced them with those widely regarded as “first-class officers”. He promised to boost morale in the military through investment in equipment and in the training and welfare of soldiers. He said he would work tirelessly to build a strong regional alliance against terrorism in Nigeria and reach out to the wider international community for help. Yet, despite these “efforts”, Buhari failed woefully. In 2018, nearly four years in power, President Buhari took $1 billion from the Excess Crude Account to “fight the rising spate of insecurity across the country”, an admission that his prior anti-insurgency “efforts” had failed. By the time Buhari left office in 2023, more Nigerians had died from terrorism, insurgency, banditry, etc, under his government than under the administration of President Jonathan! Under Buhari, Nigeria ranked as the world’s fifth most dangerous country, according to the Legatum Prosperity Index for Safety and Security.

That was the appalling security environment President Tinubu inherited on May 29, 2023. But things always get progressively worse, not better, in Nigeria. As such, it has taken Tinubu less than three years in office to achieve a worse security situation than Buhari did in eight years in power. In May 2025, Amnesty International said at least 10,217 people were killed in the first two years of Tinubu’s administration. Since then, the figure has reached about 18,000, according to one security analyst. What’s more, Nigeria ranked fourth in the 2026 global terrorism index, recently published by the Institute for Economics and Peace, recording a 46 per cent increase in deaths from terrorism in 2025.

Like Buhari, Tinubu has taken performative actions that have not moved the needle on insecurity in Nigeria. He, too, sacked service chiefs and replaced them with acclaimed “first-class officers”, but what have they achieved to date? Tinubu’s National Security Adviser, Nuru Ribadu, has made little difference in that role. The new Minister of Defence, General Christoper Musa (rtd), the immediate past chief of defence staff, has also failed to get to grips with the security challenge. Their appointments were motivated by political considerations, not expectations of tangible outcomes. 

In November last year, President Tinubu declared a “nationwide security emergency”. He ordered the army and the police to recruit more personnel and called for expedited action on state police. Sadly, hardly anyone, not even the president, considers the great danger that well-armed terrorists, insurgents and bandits, who often scare the daylights out of demoralised soldiers, would have a field day killing ramshackle state police officers like chickens. Still performative, President Tinubu ordered the purchase of 5,000 surveillance cameras in Plateau State after the Jos massacre. One must wonder, why did the idea of installing CCTV cameras in trouble spots just occur to the president, nearly three years in office, only after yet another round of bloodbath?

Of course, the dire security situation in Nigeria is a fundamental failure of governance. Throughout the history of human government, it’s been universally recognised that the first duty of any government is to protect the lives and property of its citizens. That’s the irreducible core of the “social contract”, a concept established by great philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. In one report, the UK House of Lords said: “It is the first responsibility of a government in a democratic society to protect and safeguard the lives of its citizens. This is where the public interest lies. It is essential to the preservation of democracy.” So, why have successive Nigerian governments shirked this fundamental duty? Or why have the “efforts” of successive governments failed to tackle the acute and chronic insecurity in Nigeria? 

Well, the answer is twofold. First, Nigeria is a deeply fragile state. Second, Nigeria is a deeply fractured state. Take the fragility first. In their seminal report titled “Escaping the fragility trap”, Professors Paul Collier and Tim Besley identified “security threats from organised non-state violence” as a major symptom of state fragility. All countries face security challenges, but fragile states lack the capacity to respond effectively to them. One of the key features of a strong state is a monopoly on the use of organised violence within its territory. But the Nigerian state lacks a monopoly of violence; organised non-state violence often trumps organised state violence. Nigerian soldiers are so poorly trained, equipped and remunerated that they are often outgunned and outsmarted by better equipped and more motivated terrorists and bandits. For a country that has weak capacity for essential functions, such as the provision of basic amenities, Nigeria’s lack of state capacity is a major reason it can’t guarantee the safety and security of its citizens.

The second reason is that Nigeria is a deeply fractured society, where religious and ethnic polarisations are high, and where abuse of power and lack of accountable leadership have deepened distrust between the government and the governed. Empirical studies have shown any country with such characteristics will always have acute security challenges. Think about it. Organised non-state violence in Nigeria is either religiously or ethnically motivated, often driven by long-standing grievances between groups. Furthermore, they are fuelled by selfish politicians. In 2018, a former senator, Naj’atu Muhammed said that “terrorism has become a multi-billion-dollar industry in Nigeria”. But if terrorism is such a flourishing industry, some people must be funding and profiting from it. In 2020, Dr Obadiah Mailafia said that some unnamed Northern governors were sponsors of Boko Haram. He was hounded until his death. Yet, Dr Mailafia was right: terrorism, insurgency and banditry in Nigeria have powerful political sponsors, who remain untouchable. 

Truth is, Nigeria is a weak state; it’s also an abusive, utterly divided state. No country with those characteristics can handle security challenges effectively. Until Nigeria tackles its weak state capacity, until it achieves true nationhood and until it holds its leaders accountable and punishes perpetrators of the heinous crimes of terrorism, insurgency and banditry, instead of kid-gloving them, it will never be a safe, secure and stable country, whatever the performative “efforts” of the government!  

*Dr Fasan is the author of ‘In The National Interest: The Road to Nigeria’s Political, Economic and Social Transformation’, available at RovingHeights bookstores.