A Nation of Hot Takes: How Nigeria’s Insecurity Exposes Our Shallow Thinking

[Oyeniyi Bukola Adeyemi]

A Nation of Hot Takes: How Nigeria’s Insecurity Exposes Our Shallow Thinking

Every time insecurity makes the headlines, I go online, and what I see is not analysis—it is a flood of shallow thinking dressed as wisdom. Twitter threads, WhatsApp broadcasts, YouTube gurus, and even mainstream media anchors—people who should know better—are suddenly security experts.

Everyone is shouting. No one is thinking.

I have watched video after video, read comment after comment, and one thing is clear:

Many Nigerians have not taken a single moment to understand the complexity of the insecurity crisis. They just want an emotional outlet, not a solution.

The loudest argument online today is this simplistic and dangerous chorus:

“Why is the government negotiating with terrorists? Why not bomb them all? Why engage? Why dialogue? Why bring Sheik Gumi? Why talk to criminals?”

To everyone making this argument, let me ask a very simple question:

When bombs drop, do they magically separate terrorists from abducted schoolchildren?

Bombs are not surgical tools. They cannot distinguish between a bandit and a 12-year-old girl tied to a tree.

If you bomb a camp where abducted children are held, you kill the children you claim to be fighting for.

Is that the “solution” you want? Is that your grand strategy?

WHO SHOULD KNOW THE TERRAIN? THE SOLDIER OR THE LOCAL LEADER?

Another shallow argument is the idea that:

“The federal government should know where the bandits are.

They should go in. They should find them. They should strike immediately.”

Really?

Let me ask you:

Who knows the forests, footpaths, farmlands, streams, and hideouts? Who lives among these communities year after year? Who mobilizes voters from those same villages? Who visits those communities during campaigns?

It is not the President. It is not soldiers. It is not the federal government. It is the local leaders.

The traditional rulers. The councillors. The local government chairmen. The state government machinery.

These are the people who know the terrain intimately.

But where are they after elections? They disappear with monthly allocations. They abandon the wards they begged for votes from.

They pocket funds meant for rural security, vigilantes, community policing, and intelligence gathering.

Then when chaos erupts, they all turn to Abuja and shout:

“The President must fix it!”

THE TRUTH NO ONE WANTS TO SAY

Before a community becomes unsafe, someone at the local level already knows. Before a camp of bandits forms, ward councillors already know. Before kidnappers settle into a forest, village heads already know. Before terrorists establish a base, traditional rulers already know. Before violence explodes, local government chairmen already know.

So I ask all the social media “experts”:

Why are you not angry at the local leaders who kept silent? Why are you not asking the councillors who know the terrain what they did with that knowledge? Why are you not asking the chairmen who receive billions monthly why they did nothing? Why are you not questioning the state governors who swallow security votes like water? Why is the outrage reserved only for the federal government?

Do you think the President is a spirit? All-seeing? All-knowing?

Omnipresent? A supernatural drone who knows every valley in Zamfara and every cave in Katsina?

This is the shallow thinking I am talking about.

THE HYPOCRISY IS ASTOUNDING

Local leaders know these criminals:

They know their houses. They know their sponsors. They know their markets. They know their movement routes. They know their supply lines. They know the forests inside out.

But instead of demanding answers from those leaders, Nigerians log on to social media to shout:

“Bomb them! Bomb them! Bomb them!”

You want bombs? Fine. But tell me:

Where were your councillors when the terrorists first came? Where were your chairmen? Where were your district heads? Where were your governors? Where were the state intelligence units? Why do you leave them out of the conversation?

THIS IS WHY OUR CONVERSATIONS ARE SHALLOW

Because they are emotional, not intellectual. Reactive, not reflective. Driven by pain, not by understanding.

We make noise, but we don’t ask the right questions. We attack the wrong people. We shout at the President while ignoring the people directly responsible for local safety.

The insecurity crisis did not begin in Abuja.

It began in:

villages without governance, forests abandoned by states, wards neglected by councillors, LGAs crippled by corruption, states drowning in stolen security votes, communities living without police presence.

We blame the roof when the foundation has collapsed.

A FINAL WORD TO SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENTATORS

Before you tweet, post, rant, or go on air next time, ask yourself:

Do I actually understand this issue, or am I just loud? Am I thinking, or am I performing anger? Why am I not holding local and state leaders accountable? Why do I expect the President to do a job that the councillor, chairman, and governor failed to do?

Nigeria’s insecurity has exposed the failure of our institutions— but it has also exposed the failure of our thinking. It is time to think with depth. Not with noise. Because noise has never saved a nation—

and it never will.

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Bukola A. Oyeniyi

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Missouri State University

College of Humanities and Public Affairs

History Department

Room 440, Strong Hall,

901 S. National Avenue

Springfield, MO  65897

Email: oyen...@gmail.com

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

                                    Presidential Accountability and Nigeria’s Unfolding Security Catastrophe

                                                               Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                          Abstract

This essay challenges Bukola Oyeniyi’s defence of the current Nigerian administration ( "A Nation of Hot Takes: How Nigeria’s Insecurity Exposes Our Shallow Thinking") by arguing that Nigeria’s deepening security crisis cannot be excused or reframed as a problem beyond presidential responsibility.

Rather, the deterioration of national security is inseparable from presidential policy, political will, and tacit or explicit alliances that embolden violent actors.

Situating the crisis within the legacies of Muhammadu Buhari and the unfolding governance style of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the essay questions the federal government’s inarticulacy, contradictory policies, and worrisome appointments, urging a clear articulation of strategy from the Commander-in-Chief in a nation effectively at war.
 

The Danger of Deflecting Responsibility

Is Bukola Oyeniyi’s intervention not itself a shallow response—an exercise in buck-passing, an attempt to shield a less-than-competent President facing challenges that were evident before he came to power but which he now appears to be inflaming through incompetence or collusion?

The President of Nigeria is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. His policies, directives, appointments, and responses define the success or failure of the state’s reaction to a national security emergency. To suggest otherwise is to dismiss the historical evidence of the last decade.

        Buhari’s Legacy and the Continuation of a Dangerous Trajectory

The escalation of terrorism in Nigeria was significantly enabled by the presidency of Muhammadu Buhari, whose administration consistently normalized, excused, shielded and enabled terrorist Fulani militias and violent Fulani herdsmen. Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s approach, so far, appears to be entrenching this legacy.

 The President's obvious and tacit orientation is the ultimate determinant of whether or not Nigeria will survive this terrorist crisis.The crisis escalated with recurrent massacres by Fulani militia and violent Fulani herdsmen in the Middle Belt, when Buhari came to power,  beginning with the Agatu massacre.

             Silence in the Face of Massacres

The Presidency remained silent and did not speak up until called out by citizens. His most visible comment was blaming the victims in the Middle Belt for being massacred by Fulani militia.

              Miyetti Allah as a De Facto Government and Policies that Reward Terrorism

Miyetti Allah Fulani Socio-Cultural Organization became a parallel govt in Buhari's time, recurrently justifying the massacres, while the Buhari govt protected both Miyetti Allah and the terrorists from prosecution, emboldening them to carry their campaign nationwide and even attempting to  assist them entrench themselves in communities across the nation by proposing nationwide resettlement policies as a Presidential spokesman declared that it is better to surrender one's land than suffer death- an open collusion with terrorism at the highest levels of government. The Presidency did not dissociate itself from that hideous declaration.

             Citizens Resisting Federal Complicity

It took the determined response of citizens particularly from SW governors and stakeholders to defeat that policy of official entrenchment as a reward for terror, the SW declaring they have no land for such dangerous resettlement and founding the Amotekun security outfit for protection against the terrorists, in defiance of the Buhari govt which even withdrew guns from the Nigerian public while empowering the Fulani terrorists internal colonization campaign that proceeded undisturbed under the watch of the heads of security agencies chosen from his religio-ethnic affiliates by Buhari, who also oversaw a policy of integrating supposedly repentant terrorists into the Nigerian army, initiatives making the advancement of Fulani hegemony through political protection for  terrorism Buhari's greatest achievement.

That is evidence of the power of a President in such a situation, a power Oyeniyi is dismissing against all historical evidence.

In the midst of that national crisis, Tinubu, the most powerful SW politician,  was careful to maintain silence so as not to disrupt his pact with Buhari of succeeding him and so as not to upset the Northern Muslim and particularly Fulani power brokers who are sympathetic to the cause of Fulani expansionism and so as not to alienate the Northern Muslim populace, a confused group of people effectively used against their own interests by selfish leaders invoking religion and ethnicity while exposing their region to terrorism.

Tinubu’s Inarticulacy and the Expanding Territory of Terror

Now that he has at last entered the coveted office of President, what exactly is Tinubu saying and his government doing about the ongoing strategy of communities surrendering to the demands of terrorists in states like Katsina, paying huge sums and goods as tribute to them?

Even with those so-called peace deals better understood as terms of surrender, the communities are still attacked by terrorists.

Is Nigeria to cede those zones as conquered areas now under the control of terrorists?

Compromised Policies, Conflicting Voices

Has President Tinubu articulated any coherent national strategy that departs from the dangerous rhetoric of terrorism apologists such as Sheikh Gumi or the leader of the Arewa Consultative Forum, who advocate pardons and economic empowerment for terrorists on the grounds of “disadvantage”?

Are the rest of us without regular electricity, water, good roads, social security, suffering high inflation and low purchasing power to also take up arms so we may be compensated, ''rehabilitated'' by being placed under the federal budget as Gumi is quoted as arguing for the terrorists?

Should graduates who have toiled for years in school and have no jobs years after leaving school to do the same? 

Is it true that Gumi is more visible and vocal than  Tinubu on this subject and is therefore better understood as a President alongside Tinubu?

Networks of Enablement: Why Are They Not Being Dismantled?

If it's true that the local authorities are complicit, which is not necessarily the case since the terrorists operate by surprise attacks, what directives exist to dismantle networks of enablement?

Terrorist groups extort communities, collect taxes, and negotiate ransoms through normal communication channels. They are not ghosts. Their digital and physical footprints are traceable.

Why are these networks not being systematically dismantled?

Is it believable that all terrorist enclaves lack non-complicit civilians? What intelligence is being gathered? What strategy exists to disrupt internal and external support systems?

Is it true that all the terrorist communities have non-complicit civilians among them?

What is being done to find out?
What strategy is being used to avoid surrendering the country to those murderous parasites in the name of ''dialogue'' and the peace of surrender?

Troubling Appointments and Their Implications

Why is Tinubu working so closely with public figures whose histories raise serious concerns?

• VP Kashim Shettima,   the same man who kept the Chibok school open against the orders of the fed govt thereby enabling the Chibok kidnapping?
• Bello Matawalle, Minister of Defence—whose state was deeply compromised during his governorship, amid allegations of collaboration with terrorist actors.

Has Tinubu struck dangerous political bargains in his path to the presidency—bargains that now compromise national security?

I suspect Tinubu has signed a pact with the devil in the search for the Presidency, beginning with helping a known terrorism sympathiser Buhari ( ''the war against Boko Haram is war against the North'') become President in the name of paving the way for himself to become President after Buhari.

The Catalyst of Trump

It took the insightful  even if inadequately representative outcry of Trump for the Presidency to respond visibly to this crisis. Why should another country's President be the jolt to our country's government and President?

The Crisis Has Arrived Everywhere: What Is the President’s Vision?

The time for campaigning is over.
The terrorists have entered the South-West.
The North is engulfed in crisis.
The South is increasingly unsafe.

Nigeria is effectively at war—against terrorists and against the structures that enable them.

Where, then, is the vision, the policy, the strategy of the Commander-in-Chief?
What is the federal roadmap for national survival?

 A Nation Demanding Leadership

Nigeria stands on the edge of a precipice. History has already shown the catastrophic consequences of presidential silence, indecision, or complicity. To downplay presidential responsibility is not only intellectually dishonest—it is dangerous.

The country requires clarity, honesty, courage, and decisive action. Anything less is an invitation to permanent national disintegration.

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[Oyeniyi Bukola Adeyemi]

Vincent,

Thank you for a searching and necessary set of questions. Your challenge sharpens the conversation; it also gives me the opportunity to restate my argument more precisely: I never sought to absolve the Federal Government of blame. My contention is forensic and structural rather than exculpatory. I argued for an all-of-government diagnosis and response because the evidence — historical, institutional, and empirical — points to multiple loci of failure across Nigeria’s federal, state and local tiers. We cannot understand why insurgent networks endure unless we interrogate where authority, resources, and accountability actually reside on the ground.

First: on culpability. To say the federal level matters is obvious; to say it is the only locus of responsibility is analytically weak. The Constitution vests many day-to-day security functions — policing presence, local order maintenance, and immediate community protection — in state and local institutions and practices. Where those institutions are hollow, captured, or poorly resourced, insurgents find vacuums to exploit. This is not conjecture: scholarship and policy analyses of Nigeria’s security architecture repeatedly show how opaque and unaccountable “security votes,” weak oversight, and misdirected local expenditure have hollowed out effective local security provisioning. That institutional pathology helps explain how violent groups can embed themselves in communities.

Second: on networks and enablement. I agree with you that terrorists leave footprints — social, financial, and digital — and that extortion, taxation, and negotiated ransoms are not acts of pure “ghosts.” My critique is methodological: as a historian and an evidence-driven analyst I insist that claims about systematic complicity require systematic proof. Where are the documented cases of collusion? Where are the chain-of-evidence reports that link named officials to named facilitation networks? We ought to demand those investigations and make them public. At the same time, the literature on counter-insurgency demonstrates that dismantling networks requires more than kinetic raids: it requires population-centric strategies that secure, protect, and legitimise state institutions in communities so civilians will cooperate rather than fear reprisals. That is an empirical lesson from modern COIN theory.

Third: on intelligence and strategy. You rightly ask what intelligence is being gathered and what strategy exists to disrupt external and internal support systems. The answer is: partial, fragmented, and often compartmentalised. Security-sector reform studies of Nigeria point to weak coordination between intelligence, police, and state-level security actors; opaque procurement and budgeting; and political incentives that favour short-term visibility over sustained, accountable domestic intelligence work. These structural weaknesses undercut the capacity to trace extortion networks, to prosecute those who enable them, and to protect non-complicit civilians in insurgent-affected communities. A credible national roadmap must therefore combine federal direction with devolved operational responsibility, transparent budgets, and joint accountability mechanisms.

Fourth: on community presence and policing. Your rhetorical question — “Is it believable that all terrorist enclaves lack non-complicit civilians?” — is important. The answer is emphatically no: insurgent zones contain a spectrum of civilian relationships, from coerced collaboration to active resistance. This complexity is precisely why community policing, local accountability, and the restoration of legitimate local governance are indispensable. Empirical studies of community policing in Nigeria show measurable benefits where it is properly implemented, but also show recurrent failures where political will, funding, and institutional integrity are absent. Thus, calls to dismantle networks must be paired with investments in community-centred policing and protections for informants and victims.

Fifth: on appointments, political bargains and presidential responsibility. I will not minimise the symbolic and operational importance of senior appointments — ministers, vice-presidents, service chiefs — to national confidence and strategy. Where those appointments are perceived as compromised, they erode trust and make coordination harder. That said, the problem of poor appointments or political bargains is a political diagnosis that coexists with the administrative one: even the best-intentioned presidency must work through governors, local executives, and local police commanders to secure communities. In a democratic federation, the Federal Government can set strategy and supply resources; states and LGAs must deliver presence, oversight, and implementation. When they do not, dreams from Abuja remain dreams. Chatham House and other analysts have argued that banning corrupting practices such as opaque security votes and strengthening oversight is a necessary step to restore operational capacity.

Sixth: on evidence, historiography, and tone. As a historian I operate by claims I can substantiate. That means distinguishing documented collusion from plausible hypothesis; naming events, actors, and chains of evidence rather than indulging in broad conspiratorial narratives. To advocate for rigorous, public investigations into alleged complicity is not to deny presidential responsibility; it is to insist that when we accuse, we must do so with the standards of proof that allow prosecution, reform, and institutional recovery. This is the professional ethic of historical method and it is what undergirds credible public policy.

Finally: what a credible way forward looks like. Drawing together the scholarly literature and policy practice, a pragmatic, evidence-based roadmap ought to include the following simultaneous measures: transparent auditing and abolition of corrupt security-vote practices; strengthened federal–state intelligence fusion centers; legally protected channels for civilian cooperation and witness protection; systematic community-policing rollouts with measurable performance metrics; and a national SSR (security-sector reform) framework that ties budgetary transparency to operational accountability. These are not platitudes — they are the working levers that international and domestic analysts recommend for durable security gains.

Vincent, your anxieties about timidity and silence in the face of an existential threat are entirely justified. My intervention aims to sharpen the response, not to soften it: hold the President to account, but also hold governors, local councillors, police commanders, and budgetary processes to account. If we want to stop surrendering territory to violence, we must fuse a federal vision with state and local capacity, and we must insist that every charge of complicity be accompanied by documentary evidence and a prosecutorial pathway. That is how policy becomes reform and rhetoric becomes result.

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Bukola A. Oyeniyi

*****************************************************************************************************

Missouri State University

College of Humanities and Public Affairs

History Department

Room 440, Strong Hall,

901 S. National Avenue

Springfield, MO  65897

Email: oyen...@gmail.com

***********************************************************

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Magnificent response, Oyeniyi. Im honoured. Your piece is classic. Why not make it a stand alone essay after editing it? It needs to be kept as a vital record in relation to this point in our history.

Thanks 

Toyin 

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[Oyeniyi Bukola Adeyemi]

Vincent,

I am deeply grateful for your generous words and the seriousness with which you have engaged this conversation. Your affirmation means a great deal, not only because of your longstanding commitment to clarity in public discourse, but also because you consistently push the rest of us to think with greater precision.

I should mention that I currently have an article with African Identities, now in its final stages of acceptance and publication, in which I examine in detail the Buhari administration’s tolerance of herders and the profound damage that permissive posture inflicted—how a pastoralist culture once symbolized by the wooden staff (sanda) was gradually displaced by the cold menace of the AK-47. Because I do not wish to preempt or complicate the journal’s publication process, I intentionally refrained from dwelling too heavily on that dimension in my earlier response.

Your suggestion to craft a standalone essay on the present crisis is both timely and invigorating. In fact, I spent the better part of the Thanksgiving break writing precisely such a piece, and what I shared on the Dialogue listserv was distilled from that longer manuscript. Our exchange has sharpened my thinking in ways I did not anticipate, and I intend to incorporate elements of this dialogue into the essay. Your probing questions and insights have helped me see angles that were absent in the original draft.

Thank you again for your encouragement, your intellectual generosity, and your commitment to ensuring that we document this moment with the seriousness it deserves.

Warm regards,

OBA

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Bukola A. Oyeniyi

*****************************************************************************************************

Missouri State University

College of Humanities and Public Affairs

History Department

Room 440, Strong Hall,

901 S. National Avenue

Springfield, MO  65897

Email: oyen...@gmail.com

***********************************************************

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CACMz5zmRY%2BDZprGxVT7enkBRuOQ07ET8S5UMLGKZNoDMz2pe6A%40mail.gmail.com.