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Trust is the currency of intelligence. At this stage, we cannot do without trusted human sources. Technology is useful, but technology alone cannot replace human intelligence. Drones may capture movement, but a human source may explain the meaning of that movement. Cameras may show faces, but community intelligence may identify the faces. Phone tracking may reveal communication, but local knowledge may decode relationships. Satellite images may show routes, but residents know who passes through those routes at night. Intelligence must therefore combine technology with human networks.
Another important issue that must be confronted honestly is the welfare of security personnel. We cannot continue to send poorly paid, poorly housed, poorly equipped, and poorly motivated officers to confront well-funded criminal networks and expect miracles. Security work is dangerous. Those who risk their lives daily must be treated with dignity. Their salaries, allowances, insurance, medical care, housing, and family welfare must be urgently improved. It is hypocritical for a nation to demand patriotism from officers while subjecting them to degrading conditions. A hungry officer with access to sensitive information is a security risk. A frustrated officer manning a checkpoint without proper welfare is vulnerable to compromise.
An officer who knows that his family will suffer if he dies in service may not give his best. A poorly motivated operative can easily become an informant for criminals. This is not an excuse for misconduct, but it is a reality we must confront. Except we are pretending, a sizeable number of officers now feed, fester, and even prosper on the activities of criminals. Some compromise operations. Some leak information. Some protect criminal interests. Some collect illegal payments. Some aid the escape of suspects. Some provide weapons while others provide necessaries. Some frustrate investigations. Some have become part of the insecurity industry. This is a bitter truth, but truth remains truth even when it is inconvenient. The insecurity industry has become profitable for many actors. There are criminals who profit from ransom, officials who profit from inflated security contracts, informants who profit from betrayal, negotiators who profit from fear, and compromised officers who profit from the continuation of crisis. If insecurity becomes a source of livelihood for too many people, then the war against insecurity will be deliberately prolonged. This is why the state must not only fight criminals in the bush; it must also fight collaborators in offices, barracks, stations, communities, and corridors of power.
Beyond unveiling such compromised elements, we must be proactive in discouraging compromise through extraordinary welfare packages and strict accountability. Welfare and discipline must go together. Pay officers well, equip them well, insure them well, house them well, protect their families, and then punish betrayal without mercy.
A nation that refuses to care for its security personnel has no moral authority to demand excellence from them. But once adequate welfare is provided, any officer who collaborates with criminals must face the full weight of the law. We must also address the problem of delayed response. Intelligence is useless when it is not acted upon promptly. Citizens often complain that they send distress calls and no help comes. Communities sometimes warn authorities of impending attacks, yet the attacks still occur. In some cases, criminals operate for hours without meaningful intervention. This kind of failure destroys public confidence.
The people begin to ask: is the state absent, helpless, or complicit? There must be a national emergency response framework that links intelligence to swift action. Information must move quickly from source to analyst, from analyst to command, and from command to field response. Bureaucracy must not be allowed to kill people. A distress call from a village under attack should not be trapped in administrative bottlenecks. Technology can help, but only if there is political will, operational discipline, and accountability. Furthermore, the country must strengthen local policing and community security structures within a constitutional and professional framework.
Nigeria’s current centralised policing model is overstretched. It is difficult for officers posted from distant places to understand local languages, terrain, culture, disputes, and criminal patterns. Security is local before it becomes national. Every crime occurs in a place, among people, within a context. If that context is not understood, enforcement becomes shallow. It is in this respect that I congratulate the President on pushing aggressively the realization of state police, and the National Assembly on progress recorded on this. I only hope and that the traction gained does not wither off quickly.This is not a call for lawlessness or proliferation of armed groups. Rather, it is a call for properly regulated, accountable, and intelligence-driven local security collaboration. Community security outfits must be trained, profiled, supervised, and integrated into formal structures.
The state must avoid creating another monster in the name of fighting an existing one. But the reality remains that Abuja cannot hear every whisper in every village. Local intelligence must therefore be institutionalised. The border question must also be addressed. Nigeria’s porous borders continue to worsen internal insecurity. Arms, criminals, and illegal migrants move through weakly monitored routes. Border communities are sometimes abandoned, and criminal networks exploit the vacuum. Immigration, Customs, the military, police, and intelligence agencies must work more closely in border surveillance.
National security does not begin only after criminals enter the country; it begins at the point of entry. Equally important is the need to attack the financial foundations of insecurity. Criminal operations require money. Bandits need food, fuel, drugs, arms, motorcycles, communication devices, and logistics. Kidnappers collect ransom. Terrorists move funds. Illegal miners finance violence. Cattle rustling, arms trafficking, and ransom payments are all connected to financial networks. Intelligence must therefore follow the money. Anyone who receives, transfers, stores, negotiates, or launders proceeds of criminality must be tracked and prosecuted. The judiciary also has a role to play. Arresting suspects is one thing; securing convictions is another. Where criminal cases drag endlessly, deterrence suffers. Where suspects return to society without consequence, citizens lose faith.
While the idea of deradicalization may be appealing, it needs to be safeguarded and executed with extreme caution. So far, there is no credible evidence that the scheme has positively impacted our security system. Specialised and fast-track mechanisms may be required for serious security-related offences, subject always to fair hearing and constitutional safeguards. Justice must be firm, swift, and credible.
Again, I must commend the judiciary for the special arrangements under which arrested bandits are tried expeditiously. The framework must be strengthened and institutionalized quickly. Political leadership must also speak with sincerity. Insecurity should not be reduced to propaganda. Government must stop celebrating token arrests while communities remain unsafe. Opposition must also avoid exploiting tragedy merely for political gains. Security is not APC, PDP, Labour Party, or any other party. It is Nigerian.
A bullet does not ask for party membership before killing. A kidnapper does not ask for ideology before abducting. Hunger, fear, death, and displacement do not discriminate. There must be a national consensus on security. The President, governors, local government authorities, traditional institutions, religious bodies, civil society, professional associations, and citizens must all accept that insecurity is a common enemy. We must abandon denial. We must abandon blame games. We must abandon cosmetic responses. A house on fire does not need grammar; it needs water. At the same time, government must address the social and economic conditions that feed insecurity. Poverty, unemployment, drug abuse, illiteracy, injustice, land disputes, corruption, and exclusion, all create fertile ground for criminal recruitment. While no hardship justifies crime, a society that abandons its youth should not be surprised when criminal networks recruit them. An idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Security must therefore be both hard and soft: hard on criminals, soft in rebuilding society.
Education, employment, rural development, social justice, and credible governance are long-term security investments. A hungry and hopeless population is easily manipulated. A neglected community becomes vulnerable. A youth without purpose may become a tool in the hands of violent men. Therefore, while intelligence and enforcement are urgent, governance reform is indispensable. In all of this, the central message remains clear: Nigeria must move from reactive combat to proactive intelligence. We must stop waiting for attacks before responding. We must know before they strike. We must infiltrate before they mobilise. We must track before they disappear. We must disrupt before they attack. We must dismantle networks, not merely chase foot soldiers. The present security reality demands courage, honesty, and innovation. It is not enough to hold meetings. It is not enough to issue statements. It is not enough to deploy troops after tragedy.
It is not enough to buy equipment without intelligence. We need a complete overhaul of thinking. Let the state invest massively in intelligence. Let all intelligence units of security agencies be coordinated. Let credible citizens be incorporated into the intelligence network. Let whistleblowers be protected. Let security personnel be properly remunerated. Let compromised officers be exposed and punished. Let technology be deployed intelligently. Let local knowledge be respected. Let borders be secured. Let criminal financing be disrupted. Let justice be swift. Let leadership be sincere.
This is my brief intervention to the leadership today. Nigeria cannot shoot its way out of insecurity without first thinking its way through it. Intelligence is the brain of security; combat is only the hand. When the brain is weak, the hand will strike wrongly. When intelligence is strong, even limited force can achieve maximum impact. The time to act is now. The people are tired of condolences. They are tired of promises. They are tired of press releases. They want safety. They want peace. They want to travel without fear, farm without death, sleep without anxiety, and live without ransom calls. That is not too much to ask from a state. May wisdom guide those in authority, and may Nigeria find the courage to confront insecurity not with noise, but with knowledge, sincerity, discipline, and intelligence. May the souls of all those that have passed due to insecurity continue to rest in peace while God grants the respective affected families the fortitude to bear the irreparable loss.
