Nigeria’s Security Crisis: Why Military Solutions Keep Failing

Nigeria has deployed soldiers to nearly every region of the country. Insecurity has only deepened. The problem is not the army. It is the strategy.

In December 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari stood before the nation and declared that Boko Haram had been technically defeated. Ten years later, the group and its splinter faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province, are overrunning military bases, executing a brigadier general, and conducting coordinated offensives across Borno State.[1] The claim of victory was not just wrong. It was a pattern. Each successive Nigerian administration has claimed progress on security while the violence has spread geographically, intensified in lethality, and diversified in the range of armed groups carrying it out.

This is not a failure of the Nigerian military’s courage or its personnel. It is a failure of political strategy, governance, and the fundamental willingness to address the conditions that make violence economically and socially rational for those who practise it.

The Scale of the Problem in 2025 and 2026

The numbers are not abstract. In May 2025 alone, Nigeria recorded at least 365 violent incidents, the highest single-month total for any country in Africa.[1] At least 635 people were killed and 182 abducted in that month. In the first quarter of 2025, over 2,000 people were killed by armed groups across the country. In November 2025, at least 402 people were kidnapped across four northern states in a single wave of abductions, surpassing even the scale of the 2014 Chibok girls kidnapping.[2]

2,000+  Nigerians killed by armed groups in Q1 2025
 SBM Intelligence, cited in Wiley Political Quarterly 2025. Borno and Zamfara among worst affected states

2,938  People kidnapped in the Northwest (Jul 2024 to Jun 2025)
 SBM Intelligence cited in HRW World Report 2026. Ransom payments now entrenching a criminal economy

5th  Nigeria’s conflict extremity ranking globally (ACLED, Dec 2024)
 Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. Seven in ten Nigerians describe security as dreadful.

ISWAP intensified operations significantly from January 2025, launching at least twelve coordinated attacks on military bases and infrastructure across Borno State in the first three months of the year.[3] In March 2025, triple suicide bombings struck the Borno State capital, Maiduguri, killing 26 people and wounding 108 in the most serious breach of that city’s relative peace since 2021.[4] Boko Haram ambushed and killed Brigadier General Musa Uba, Commander of the 25 Task Force Brigade, in November 2025, after reportedly tracking his convoy’s movements using human intelligence networks and booby-trapping the route.[5]

The violence is no longer confined to the northeast and northwest. Attacks have expanded into Kwara State and the northcentral region, areas that were previously largely spared. In February 2026, armed groups attacked two Muslim-majority villages in Kwara State, killing over 160 people and abducting dozens.[2]

Why the Military Approach Keeps Falling Short

Nigeria’s response to its security crisis has been, almost by default, a military one. Troops deployed. Operations launched. Airstrikes conducted. Emergency declarations issued. The November 2025 national security emergency announcement by President Tinubu ordered the recruitment of 20,000 additional police officers, bringing planned 2025 recruitment to 50,000, which is still only a fraction of the 190,000 officers that the Inspector-General of Police has recommended as necessary.[5]

ISS Africa’s December 2025 analysis of the national security emergency makes the structural argument plainly: investing in more security personnel without addressing intelligence failures, technology gaps, and community relationships will not solve the problem.[5] The Boko Haram ambush that killed Brigadier General Uba demonstrated a specific failure pattern. Security forces had no advance intelligence that the convoy was being tracked. They communicated via commercial mobile phones and WhatsApp during the operation, making interception straightforward. They had no reinforcement available when the ambush was sprung. These are not resource problems. They are doctrinal and institutional ones.

"The US airstrikes are unlikely to halt the multi-faceted violence in different parts of Nigeria that is driven largely by failures of governance." - International Crisis Group, December 2025

The International Crisis Group’s verdict, issued in December 2025 following US airstrikes in northwestern Sokoto State, is unambiguous: external military intervention cannot fix a problem that is fundamentally political and economic in origin.[4] Boko Haram overran more than 15 military outposts in 2025. ISWAP has adopted kinetic drone capabilities and is receiving foreign fighters with higher tactical sophistication. These adversaries are adapting. Nigeria’s security establishment is largely responding with the same doctrines that have failed for fifteen years.

The regional dimension compounds the domestic failure. Niger’s withdrawal from the Multinational Joint Task Force in March 2025, following its 2023 coup, disrupted joint military operations and intelligence sharing across the Lake Chad Basin.[3] Chad also threatened to leave the coalition in 2024. The operational vacuum created along Nigeria’s northern borders has been exploited by ISWAP and criminal groups with speed and effectiveness.

The Governance Root: What the Violence Is Actually About

The peer-reviewed academic literature on Nigeria’s security crisis reaches a consistent conclusion that the political narrative rarely acknowledges: armed groups flourish where the state has failed to provide the conditions for decent livelihoods, basic services, and meaningful justice.

The Wiley Political Quarterly’s 2025 analysis identifies the core drivers as weak state capacity, porous borders, socioeconomic deprivation, and deteriorating trust in government.[1] Bandits in the northwest extract levies from captive communities. They confiscate farmland. They force farmers to cultivate crops and return the proceeds. The ScienceDirect 2025 analysis on banditry and modern slavery documents communities that are essentially held hostage, their lives dictated by armed groups that the state cannot reach or discipline.[6]

The economics of kidnapping have become self-sustaining. International Crisis Group’s assessment from August 2024 notes that the willingness to pay ransoms has turned mass kidnapping into arguably the most lucrative criminal enterprise in the northwest.[4] Every ransom paid funds the next operation. Every unanswered kidnapping demonstrates that the state cannot protect its citizens. The cycle feeds itself.

Human Rights Watch’s 2025 and 2026 World Reports document a parallel problem: Nigerian security forces themselves have been implicated in gross abuses, including indiscriminate airstrikes that have killed hundreds of civilians since 2017.[7] The ICC’s preliminary examination concluded in 2020 that there were reasonable grounds to believe both Boko Haram and Nigerian security forces had committed war crimes. When military operations themselves erode civilian trust and create grievances, they make sustainable security harder to achieve, not easier.

What Would Actually Work

The analysis from ISS Africa, International Crisis Group, and academic researchers points toward a consistent set of measures that would complement, rather than replace, military action.

Community intelligence and trust. The Boko Haram attack that killed Brigadier General Uba succeeded because the group had better human intelligence than the military. Building relationships with affected communities so that civilians report armed group movements is not soft policy. It is a force multiplier that no drone or airstrike can replace.

Technology investment in the security forces. ISWAP is using modified commercial drones for reconnaissance and strikes. Nigeria’s military still relies on commercial WhatsApp for operational communication in active theatres.[5] Closing that technology gap is a legitimate security investment.

Economic pathways out of armed group participation. Young men join bandit groups and insurgencies for reasons that include genuine ideological conviction but also include poverty, unemployment, lack of educational opportunities, and the simple calculation that crime pays more than subsistence farming in a state that offers nothing else. Ignoring those material drivers while focusing exclusively on kinetic responses has produced fifteen years of escalating violence. It will produce fifteen more if the strategy does not change.

Accountability in the security forces. If communities in conflict zones regard the military as a threat as well as a protection, those communities will not share intelligence, will not cooperate with operations, and will not mourn when soldiers fail. Accountability for airstrikes that kill civilians is not a liberal luxury. It is a strategic necessity.

Nigeria spends billions on military operations. It deploys hundreds of thousands of security personnel across a country the size of Texas, California, and Montana combined. It has declared emergency after emergency, launched operation after operation, and claimed victory after victory. The result, measured in bodies and displaced people and kidnapped schoolchildren, is a security situation that has grown worse over fifteen years, not better. That is not an argument against security forces. It is an argument for a fundamentally different theory of how violence ends. Violence does not end when you kill enough fighters. It ends when the conditions that create fighters are addressed. Nigeria has not yet chosen to address those conditions. That choice is still available.

REFERENCES

[1] Madueke, K. (2025, October). Why Should We Worry About Nigeria’s Fragile Security? The Political Quarterly, Wiley Online Library [Buhari 2015 ‘technically defeated’ claim; 365 violent incidents May 2025; 635 deaths/182 abducted May 2025; 2,000+ killed Q1 2025; ACLED 5th most dangerous; 7 in 10 dreadful]. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-923x.70010

[2] Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (2026, updated). Nigeria [402 kidnapped Nov 2025; 160 killed Kwara Feb 2026; ISWAP 2025 offensive; JAS Borno resurgence; CEDAW findings Sept 2025; Dec 2025 US airstrikes]. https://www.globalr2p.org/countries/nigeria/

[3] The Soufan Center (2025, May 21). The Islamic State West Africa Province’s Tactical Evolution Fuels Worsening Conflict in Nigeria’s Northeast [12 coordinated attacks Q1 2025; kinetic drones; foreign fighters; Niger MNJTF withdrawal March 2025; ISSP Lakurawa northwest]. https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2025-may-21/

[4] International Crisis Group (2025, updated). Nigeria [Dec 2025 statement on US airstrikes and governance failures; March 2025 ISWAP Maiduguri bombings 26 killed 108 wounded; Malam Fatori March 2025 80 killed; ransom economy Aug 2024 quote]. https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/west-africa/nigeria

[5] ISS Africa (2025, December). Nigeria’s Deep Insecurity Demands More Than an Emergency Declaration [Tinubu Nov 2025 declaration; 20,000 new police vs 190,000 needed; 15+ military outposts overrun 2025; Brigadier General Uba killed; WhatsApp communication; commercial cellphone interception]. https://issafrica.org/iss-today/nigeria-s-deep-insecurity-demands-more-than-an-emergency-declaration

[6] ScienceDirect / Security and Social Sciences (2025, September). Banditry and Modern Slavery: (In)Security Dynamics in Nigeria [captive communities; levy extortion; forced labour; 24 captive communities across 4 northwest states by 2022; EFCC governance gap critique]. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949791425000703

[7] Human Rights Watch (2026, February). World Report 2026: Nigeria [2,938 kidnapped Northwest Jul 2024-Jun 2025 per SBM Intelligence; JAS Kukawa attack 57 killed May 2025; Darul Jamal attack 60 killed Sept 2025; Simon Ekpa Finland sentencing; airstrike accountability failures]. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/nigeria

[8] Human Rights Watch (2025, January). World Report 2025: Nigeria [1.3m IDP northcentral/northwest by April 2024; Mafa village 170 killed Sept 2024; Chibok 10th anniversary 90 girls still captive; #EndBadGovernance protests crackdown; ISWAP Lake Sanity operation]. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/nigeria

[9] Human Rights Watch (2024, January). World Report 2024: Nigeria [Nasarawa airstrike 39 killed Jan 2023; 300+ civilian airstrike deaths since 2017; ICC preliminary examination 2020 finding; ISWAP farming ban Marte LGA; 1.19m IDP March 2023]. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/nigeria

[10] Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (2025, updated). Nigeria Security Appendix [ISWAP March 2025 renewed Borno offensive; military installations seized; civilian abductions 580 in 2024; UN CEDAW September 2025 findings]. https://www.globalr2p.org/countries/nigeria/

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