By Prof Mike Ozekhome SAN
INTRODUCTION
It was Ronald Reagan, the late American President who once said, “The first duty of government is to protect the lives and property of its citizens. If it fails in that duty, it has failed in everything.”
There are moments in the life of a nation when silence becomes complicity; when to remain unmoved is to be morally vacant. Nigeria, once heralded as the giant of Africa now lies crippled under the unbearable weight of insecurity, poverty, fear, hunger, and betrayal by successive leaderships. Conquered, not through foreign invasion, but by domestic abdication. Though the government has not fallen; yet governance has apparently disappeared. The State has not been overthrown; yet the citizen no longer feels safe and protected.
Not long ago, some law school students of the Yola Campus were easily abducted on their way back to school. The kidnappers demanded 10 million naira ransom for each of them. The recently released students narrated their heart- rending ordeal and trauma. Blood now appears to speak more loudly than ballots. From the north to the middle belt, across sleepy towns and forgotten villages, a grim and ghastly soundtrack has replaced the national anthem with gunfire, wailing, tears, blood, sorrow, pains, pangs, death, and then silence. In Benue State, the Yelwata massacre saw over 100 civilians slaughtered in their homes in a single night. Men were butchered; women raped; and children scattered aimlessly like leaves in the wind. Some years ago, the parents of kidnapped school children in Kaduna were ordered by abductors ( if they wanted their children to continue to be alive) to purchase and drop at a named location, food items such as rice, beans, millet, palm and vegetable oil, salt pepper, tatashe, tarodo, onions, and even garri and yams. This is not war by name, but war by every consequence. The soil of many communities across Nigeria is crimson red with the memory of lives unlived: gaping and unhealed lacerations on body and in heart. Nigeria has been virtually arrested by state captors who possess equal and occasionally more deadly power than the legitimate government. They have seized some swaps of land in Niger and Borno states, planting flags of sovereignty, collecting tax and issuing identity cards and passes to the natives.
But bullets alone are not the only weapons of war as shown by kidnappers, bandits, terrorists and other hoodlums. Hunger, a silent killer, now stalks the land with greater precision than any terrorists. In Katsina State, 652 children died from malnutrition in just six months. A death toll that should shake the heavens, but barely caused a stir among the ruling class. Nigeria is not a poor nation. It is a rich nation governed poorly, where oil flows like wine, yet millions go to bed tasting only sorrow. The minimum wage is a mockery. Dignity has become a luxury for the few. What do rights mean when a bag of rice costs more than the minimum wage? When a man cannot feed his family, his Constitution is a joke. Why do we wash our hands with spittle while living by the banks of a river?
The Nigerian Constitution in section 14 declares the people’s security and welfare as the primary duty of the government; yet that duty has been treated more like a mere campaign slogan, often mouthed during election campaigns, but never honoured in practice. Banditry spearheaded by Boko Haram has swallowed up whole states. ISWAP is no longer a distant threat; it is well organized, armed and expanding. The military bleeds in silence, with over 100 soldiers and 200 civilians lost in the past few months alone. Kidnappers no longer hide to operate, but now openly issue press statements. Terrorists now record documentaries with unveiled faces and release them to a now unshockable nation. And the people? They first hide and then vanish without a whimper.
The violence is not merely physical. It is also economic, mental, psychological and moral. A very tiny few elite cling tightly to obscene ill-gotten national wealth while the vast majority of the masses drown in scarcity and abject penury. The elite fly over the carnage in private jets while farmers are beheaded on their fields. Political leaders promise reforms, yet live like royalty. It is no longer corruption; it is organized looting and grand larceny; no longer negligence; but sanctioned abandonment. While advanced countries of the world plan for the next generation, Nigerian politicians plan for the next election.
To live in Nigeria today is to live in a state of controlled decay and fear. It is to watch one’s rights eroded, not by dictatorships, but by the very structures that were meant to defend them. The right to life, to dignity, to security, to housing and to economic survival are no longer guaranteed. They are gambles. And for many, losing that gamble means death.
This is not the collapse of a system. It is the system itself that is collapsing others. A system in which the powerful eat fat on the prayers of the desperate: where State budgets are shamelessly padded while emergency relief is rationed; where public office is longer service but with little harvest. Political leaders offer cheap speeches. But speeches alone do not stop bullets. Promises alone cannot feed the hungry. Press conferences do not resurrect the dead. Let this not be mistaken: Nigeria is not at peace. It is at war. A war waged not by foreign powers, but by a silent alliance of apathy, greed, corruption and neglect. And in this war, the casualty is not merely the body, it is the very soul of the Nigerian people.
THE CHALLENGE AND SCOPE OF INSECURITY IN NIGERIA
Having established the conceptual framework, the next task is to contextualize it within the Nigerian reality. Insecurity in Nigeria is multi-dimensional, taking forms such as political, health, economic/financial, food, educational, and social insecurity. Insecurity is simply the absence of security. However for our purposes, it is the political, physical and economic aspects of insecurity that will be the facts of this paper.
The key questions are: To what extent do these ills plague us? Are they existential? Have they always been part of our history, or have they worsened over time? The best way to examine this is to break it into its component parts, beginning with political insecurity.
Political Insecurity
Control of political power, especially at the centre, has always been fiercely contested in Nigeria, often resulting in violence and loss of life. Campaign rhetoric ahead of the 2025 general elections suggests a risk of history repeating itself, possibly in a worse form.
Political violence, starting with inflammatory speech, can quickly escalate to physical violence. This danger is compounded by ongoing insurgency from Boko Haram (now ISWAP), secessionist agitation by IPOB, politically-motivated shootings, and kidnapping for ransom. While kidnappings often have economic motives, they also feed political instability.
Economic Insecurity
Nigeria’s worsening poverty has earned it the label of the “poverty capital of the world.” This fuels political insecurity as unemployed youths are recruited by politicians for violent purposes. Economic hardship also drives vote-buying, where voters sell their ballots for minimal sums, leading to flawed electoral outcomes. This cycle is entrenched and unlikely to be broken before the 2027 elections.
Physical Insecurity
Pipeline vandalism and crude oil theft linked to economic insecurity have reached alarming levels, with allegations of involvement by security agencies. The loss in revenue forced the government to contract former militant leader Government Ekpemupolo (“Tompolo”) to help curb the menace.
Non-State Actors control territories in parts of the North-West, North-East, and North-Central, collecting taxes, issuing passes, planting flags and acting as parallel sovereign authorities. These areas are effectively beyond the reach of the Nigerian State.
The Constitutional Framework For Right to Life in Nigeria
A Constitution is not merely a collection of legal clauses. It is a nation’s vow, its solemn oath to the governed. It is the architecture of civil order, the map by which a society charts the moral boundaries of power. But when the Constitution becomes an artifact of aspiration rather than a living force of justice, it ceases to protect; it begins to mock. That is the Nigerian tragedy. For here is a nation that proclaims rights with poetic fervour, but practises repression with clinical precision.
Let us begin with the most sacred right of all the right to life, enshrined in section 33(1) of the 1999 Constitution. It declares without ambiguity that “every person has a right to life, and no one shall be deprived intentionally of his life.” This has been given judicial imprimatur and affirmed by Nigerian court, in several cases viz: Esabunor v Faweya, Ndubuisi v State, Azuogu v State. But what weight does this right carry in a country where a man may be shot by a bandit while returning from market; a child and mother killed in their home through a herder invasion; a villager executed by terrorists; no one is arrested; no one is prosecuted; no justice is served? The Constitution grants the right, yes, but the State withholds the protection. What use is a right to life in a terrain of death?
Each corpse buried without justice is a clause of the Constitution burned in effigy.
And consider Section 34(1) a guarantee that “every individual is entitled to respect for the dignity of his person.” It forbids torture, inhuman and degrading treatment. Yet across Nigeria’s vast terrain, dignity has become a vanishing dream. Men are paraded naked in front of cameras by vigilante groups; women stripped and whipped for so-called ‘moral offences’ by religious fanatics, citizens forced to pay ransoms for abducted relatives, while the State looks on, passive and paralyzed. Where is dignity when a woman has to sell her body to feed her children? Where is dignity when a man works six days a week and cannot afford bread?
The betrayal deepens when we examine section 14(2)(b), which declares- no, insists, that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.” This is not a metaphor. It is the constitutional essence of statehood. A government that fails to secure and provide for its people ceases, by legal definition, to be legitimate. Yet, in Nigeria today, security is a luxury. In Zamfara, Niger, Katsina, Plateau State and even more recently, Edo, entire communities live in fear and under the reign of warlords, bandits and terrorist groups. In the South-East, armed separatist groups extort, maim, kill and burn. In the South-South, pirates rule the creeks. And all the while, Abuja issues banal statements, not solutions. (To be continued).
Thought for the week
“Laws must be clear, precise, and uniform for all citizens” – Marquis de Lafayette
