Nigeria’s insecurity has become an existential threat that could trigger regional and global instability if not urgently addressed, Richard Ikiebe, president of iNSDEC.Nig and director at PSJ-UK, warned on Monday at the National Symposium on Digital Innovations in Crisis Communication held at the National Defence College, Abuja.

Highlighting the findings of the Unravelling Nigeria’s Insecurity Crisis report, Ikiebe said the country is now “trapped in a spiral of violence,” citing data showing that “over 1,000 people were killed and nearly 500 abducted in the opening months of 2024 alone,” following almost 3,000 violent deaths recorded in 2023.

Describing the situation as systemic rather than episodic, he told participants that insecurity is now “pervasive, multi-dimensional, and existential,” with vast rural and peri-urban territories falling outside government control.

“Whole rural areas, highways, and some peri-urban zones are effectively under the control of criminal or extremist actors,” Ikiebe said, noting that the phenomenon is not confined to one region.

The board chair at BusinessDay pointed to the severity of territorial loss, revealing that “Zamfara alone once hosted tens of thousands of bandits in over 100 camps and Niger State lost about 9% of its landmass to terrorist groups.”

Ikiebe said at least 23 states and the Federal Capital Territory now contain ungoverned or poorly governed spaces that serve as sanctuaries, training grounds, and economic hubs for armed groups.

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“These zones have turned major routes into ‘no-go corridors’,” he said, a development that is crippling trade, agriculture, and movement across the federation.

The implications, he warned, stretch far beyond Nigeria’s borders. “A collapse or major destabilisation of Nigeria would have catastrophic spillovers,” Ikiebe said, projecting that even a modest displacement of Nigeria’s population could overwhelm West African states and destabilise Europe’s near neighbourhood.

At the heart of the crisis, Ikiebe said, is governance failure. He quoted the report as concluding that corruption, politicisation of security institutions, and mismanagement of diversity are “not peripheral factors but lie at the core of the insecurity ecosystem.” He added that armed groups “routinely outmanoeuvre security forces,” exploiting weak state presence and public distrust.

He stressed that the crisis cannot be solved through military action alone. “The crisis cannot be resolved by military means alone, nor by episodic peace conferences or donor-driven projects,” Ikiebe told the symposium, urging policymakers to rethink the country’s security architecture.

The human cost, he said, is troubling. More than 1,500 schools have been shut down, 18.5 million children remain out of school, and agricultural productivity has plummeted by as much as one-third in conflict-affected regions.

Ikiebe called for immediate political ownership of the crisis and a coordinated national response grounded in governance reform, region-specific strategies, state and community policing, and the adoption of digital technologies for surveillance, intelligence, and early warning. (BusinessDay)

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