Uba Sani, Badaru push coordinated regional strategy to tackle Northwest insecurity

Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State and Mohammed Badaru Abubakar, Minister of Defence have jointly advocated a coordinated regional security strategy, emphasising an integrated approach that combines military strength, community engagement, and long-term development to tackle the escalating insecurity in the North West.

Governor Sani also called for the creation of a North West Theatre Command, bringing the Nigerian Army’s 1st and 8th Divisions under a unified command structure.

According to him, “This will accelerate intelligence sharing, enhance coordinated operations, and dismantle cross-state criminal networks more effectively.”

Governor Sani made the suggestions at the Public Hearing of the North West Zonal Security Summit, organised by the Senate Ad-hoc Committee on National Security Summit in Kaduna on Saturday.

He also proposed building strong security partnerships beyond Nigeria’s borders, recommending “the expansion of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), which has achieved notable success around the Lake Chad Basin, to cover our borders with Niger Republic.”

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“This expansion will disrupt arms-trafficking routes, deny criminals cross-border sanctuaries, and weaken the networks that sustain their operations,” he added.

Governor Sani, however, warned that military power alone cannot win the battle, stressing that community trust and participation are indispensable in tackling insecurity.

He proposed the establishment of permanent Security Committees at the state and local government levels, comprising traditional rulers, religious leaders, women’s organisations, youth groups, civil society, and security agencies.

According to him, these committees “will serve as early-warning systems, conflict-resolution platforms, and bridges of trust between citizens and the state.”

The governor also called for the creation of State Police, arguing that Nigeria’s centralised policing model can no longer meet the demands of a nation with over 230 million people and vast ungoverned spaces.

“With fewer than 400,000 police officers nationwide, many rural communities are left without meaningful protection,” he argued.

Speaking on the theme, “Public Hearing: Building Robust Regional Collaborations to Tackle Insecurity, Pathway for Securing the Future,” Mohammed Badaru Abubakar, Minister of Defence, reiterated President Bola Tinubu’s commitment to ending insecurity in the country.

“The President’s directive is to establish a strong yet adaptive national security architecture to eradicate these threats. Accordingly, we are committed to ensuring that such violations of the rights of our children and threats to our development goals do not occur again,” he said.

The minister noted that despite the challenges, the present administration has recorded progress compared to the situation before it came into office.

“Joint operations across Kaduna, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, and Kebbi have reopened key routes. Movement on Kaduna-Kachia, Kaduna-Birnin Gwari, Jibia-Gurbin Baure, and parts of the Sokoto-Illela corridor has improved.

“Markets in Kaura Namoda, Shinkafi, Batsari, Giwa, and Kajuru now record higher activity,” he added, noting that many villages displaced in earlier years have returned.

“In the last two years before the recent incidents, many schools that closed due to insecurity resumed academic activity under strengthened protection.

“Likewise, farmers in many affected communities are back on their fields with better security support,” the Minister of Defence further stated.

He, however, acknowledged “that the North West continues to face lingering threats from bandits, terror cells, and organised criminal networks despite the relentless efforts of our troops and other agencies.”

In his keynote presentation, Muhammad Kabir Isa said the current strategies toward ending insecurity have continued to fail because they are limited.

He explained that the strategies are constrained by fragmentation, inadequate coordination, overstretched security institutions, inconsistent state policies, weak intelligence systems, humanitarian constraints, and the absence of a comprehensive regional architecture.

According to the Professor of Public Administration at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, “Even where tactical gains occur, they fail to translate into sustainable peace because structural drivers of insecurity remain unaddressed.”

“These limitations underscore the necessity of building a robust regional collaboration platform capable of harmonising strategies, integrating multi-level actors, and addressing both immediate threats and long-term governance and development challenges,” he added.

Isa called for regional collaboration to address the mobility of armed groups, the dispersion of bandit enclaves across forest belts, inconsistent policy environments, fragmented community-security structures, and the complexity of humanitarian and development spillovers.

In his welcome address, Senator Babangida Hussaini, Chairman of the Organising Committee of the summit, recalled that the summit was convened “to bring together stakeholders in the zone to frankly discuss the increasing and alarming rates of insecurity in our zone and the nation at large.”

He noted that a National Security Summit will take place in Abuja on 1 December “to provide a platform for collating the aggregate views of Nigerians on the pathways for securing our people and the country.”

According to him, the forthcoming National Security Summit “is a testament that Mr President is not leaving any stone unturned in the search for actionable solutions to this national emergency.”

Senator Hussaini stated that the upper legislative chamber convened the summit “to holistically examine the cross-cutting issues responsible for our peculiar security challenges and to suggest practical solutions to the problems.”

He thanked Governor Sani for the overwhelming support for the success of the historic summit, through personal and official involvement, describing it as unprecedented.

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