Insecurity: Before We Snooze Again

Femi Akintunde-Johnson

In  February 2020, long before “banditry” became a national synonym for grief, I wrote a warning in this same space: “Let’s tread with sense and sobriety; we should not further complicate a complex man-made problem.” It was in response to the now forgotten absurdity of a proposed National Agency for “Education, Rehabilitation, De-radicalisation and Integration of Repentant Insurgents.” The bill was sponsored by a senator representing Yobe East Senatorial District and former governor of Yobe State, Ibrahim Geidam. It sought to establish an agency designed, not for victims of terror, but for the terrorists themselves – complete with schooling, psycho-massage and possible reinsertion into communities still nursing their wounds. At the time, it seemed like another tragicomic episode from the theatre of Abuja. Today, with Nigeria besieged on multiple fronts, it sounds less like satire and more like prophecy ignored.

I had quoted experts then – Andrew Silke of the University of East London, Patrick Dunleavy chronicling Britain’s failed attempt with Usman Khan, the London Bridge attacker who gamed the system and walked out of prison more radical than he walked in. I warned that deradicalisation without a watertight framework was a “dangerous gamble” – the sort of gamble we Nigerians tend to lose spectacularly. Yet our lawmakers flirted with it, seduced by shiny PowerPoints from foreign consultants, and by the delusion that radicalisation is something you can sprinkle with counselling and release like a domesticated parrot.

Four years later, Nigeria is living a grim, unrelenting sequel to that warning. From Plateau to Kaduna, Zamfara to Niger, Taraba to the FCT, we are under siege – not from ghosts or shadows but from organised, well-armed, well-networked terror franchises: insurgents, bandits, jihadists, hybrid kidnappers, encore Boko Haram, and permutation ISWAP. If you throw a stone today, it will hit either a roadblock, a ransom negotiation, or a community in mourning. Our security architecture is stretched thin; our institutional credibility is scraped to the bone. And in the midst of this, some people still ask, “What exactly went wrong?”

Part of what went wrong is what always goes wrong: the refusal to see the obvious until it explodes in our laps. Between 2014 and 2020, Boko Haram and its affiliates morphed from ideological terrorists to full-blown territorial occupiers. Between 2020 and 2024, bandits evolved from cattle thieves to warlords with their own proto-states, judicial systems (yes, they hold court), tax regimes, and the sort of operational intelligence that would make a Hollywood villain blush. Yet we approached the problem with a softness reserved for mischievous nephews: signing secret deals, paying untraceable ransoms, releasing “repentant” fighters back into the wild, and even floating ideas of vocational training – as though terror were a youth development programme.

And now? Well, the monster we refused to confront properly has grown fangs, hooves and GPS coordinates. Communities are raided in daylight. Kidnappings happen in convoys. Terror cells communicate across borders with encrypted ease. Villagers flee; farmers flee; even security operatives, sometimes, withdraw. What we are facing today is the compounded interest of every bad decision, every political flirtation with bandit leaders, every amnesty without accountability, every half-hearted military sweep, and every “soft-soft” approach offered as policy.

But this column is not merely an “I told you so” – tempting as that may be. Beyond the failures of institutions, what can the average Nigerian do? How do regular people survive in a country where danger is no longer a possibility but a probability? Government may be responsible for the macro-defence, but citizens must now embrace the micro-defence toolkit for personal survival.

First: situational awareness is no longer optional. Nigerians must develop the habit of scanning their environment the way Lagosians scan traffic – alert, unsentimental and ready to reverse at a moment’s notice. A strange vehicle parked too long, unfamiliar faces loitering around a building, sudden roadblocks – these are no longer movie cues; they are warnings. Constant communication, especially when travelling, is critical. Share your route, estimated arrival time, and checkpoints with people who can respond if something goes wrong.

Second: avoid predictable behaviour. Most kidnappings succeed because victims are creatures of habit – same road, same hour, same routine. Vary your paths, your departure times, your commuting choices. If your village route has become notorious, stop tempting fate with blind faith. In this era, wisdom is safety; familiarity is danger.

Third: learn and practice rapid-response behaviour. Not “jungle justice,” not vigilante theatrics, but basic defensive instincts. Don’t drive into suspicious gatherings. Don’t stop for “accidents” without verifying legitimacy. Don’t approach abandoned vehicles; don’t answer midnight knocks; don’t negotiate with strangers claiming to be “security men” without proper identification. In this landscape, hesitation can be fatal; prudence can be life-saving.

Fourth: communities must now adopt collective security consciousness. Early-warning systems – simple neighbourhood whistles, digital alert groups, or coordinated watch schedules – can reduce risk drastically. Local intelligence is more effective than any Abuja press conference. Villagers often know the suspicious new settler, the strange cattle movement, the unfamiliar bikes arriving at dusk. Silence is no longer golden; it is gasoline.

Fifth: digital safety. Bandits now track victims through social media oversharing. That innocent post about travelling home for the weekend is intel for someone. Nigerians must learn to post after the fact, not before. The fewer breadcrumbs you leave online, the harder you are to hunt.

Of course, these personal measures do not replace the duty of the State. Government must overhaul its surveillance infrastructure, improve response time, professionalise its security units, and impose real consequences on collaborators within the system. Our borders need technology, not tokenism. Our police need training, not press statements. Our governors need spine, not sirens. And once – just once – we need a terrorism policy that is not shaped by political calculation or ethnic consideration but by national survival.

One hopes the lesson is now clear: you do not pamper terror. You do not incentivise it. You do not “understand” it. You confront it with intelligence, muscle, and moral clarity. You do not, as we once contemplated, send it to school, give it pocket money and hope it becomes a gentleman.

Nigeria is paying today for every soft glove worn in the past. But with citizens more alert, communities more coordinated and government more honest, we may yet stem the bleeding. What we cannot do, however, is continue pretending – pretending that terror is a misunderstanding, pretending that bandits are misunderstood entrepreneurs, pretending that insurgents can be reintegrated overnight, and pretending that warnings from four years ago were just noise.

The noise, as it turns out, was the fire alarm. And now that the building is smouldering, we cannot afford to hit the snooze button again.