The system is so fractured it cannot speak with one voice about what it has accomplished
In Nigeria, where the promise of security has long outpaced its delivery, civil society organizations are no longer content to wait for gradual improvement. Groups like CISLAC and HURIWA have named the crisis plainly: a security establishment hollowed out by corruption, politicized appointments, and institutional incoherence is failing its citizens — from the forests of the North-East to the schoolyards of Oyo State. Their call for the removal of top security officials is less a political demand than a moral reckoning with what happens when the state can no longer protect the people it governs.
- A government that announced the killing of an ISIS commander — then repeated the same announcement two years later — has lost the basic credibility needed to lead a counterterrorism effort.
- Kidnappings of schoolchildren and teachers in Oyo State signal that the violence once contained to the north has crossed into new territory, shattering the illusion of regional safety.
- HURIWA is demanding the immediate removal of the Chief of Defence Staff, the National Security Adviser, and multiple intelligence chiefs, arguing that their continued presence is itself a security threat.
- Communities across the North-East, North-West, Middle Belt, and South-West are emptying out — residents abandoning homes and livelihoods as armed groups move with unchecked impunity.
- Civil society groups warn that relying on foreign partners like the United States while avoiding structural reform is not a strategy — it is a postponement of collapse.
- The path forward, both organizations insist, runs through competence and accountability, not the ethnic and political calculations that currently determine who leads Nigeria's security institutions.
Nigeria's civil rights organizations have reached a breaking point. Auwal Musa Rafsanjani of CISLAC pointed to a telling moment: a government official announced on television that security forces had killed a senior ISIS commander in the Lake Chad region — the same announcement the government had made two years prior. For Rafsanjani, the confusion was not a communications error. It was evidence of a security apparatus so fractured by rivalry, corruption, and institutional decay that it can no longer account for its own actions.
His critique goes beyond the familiar grievances of underfunding or equipment shortages. The deeper problem, he argues, is that Nigeria's security sector has become personalized rather than institutional — dependent on individual loyalties rather than coherent strategy. Foreign assistance, particularly from the United States, has become a substitute for the harder work of building accountable forces. With elections approaching in 2027, he warned, political survival has displaced citizen protection as the government's true priority.
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, through coordinator Emmanuel Onwubiko, went further — calling for the immediate removal of the country's entire top security leadership, including the Chief of Defence Staff, the National Security Adviser, and military intelligence chiefs. Their charge: total failure. Terrorism continues across the North-East and North-West. Bandits control highways. And violence has now spread south.
The abduction of schoolchildren and teachers in Oyo State marked a new threshold. When the Defence Headquarters dismissed concerns about terrorist activity in the South-West, HURIWA called the denial not merely wrong but dangerously deceptive. Armed networks, they argued, do not announce themselves — they are already embedded in forests and rural communities across the region.
The human toll is vast. Across multiple regions, communities have been repeatedly attacked, residents displaced, and economic life suspended. Both organizations identified a problem that may outlast any personnel change: security appointments are driven by ethnic and political calculation rather than competence. Creating new political offices, they warned, will change nothing. What Nigeria requires is structural reform — real accountability, real professionalism — and what it continues to receive is the same broken system rearranged.
Nigeria's security establishment is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, and the country's civil rights organizations have run out of patience with incremental fixes. Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, who leads the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, watched a government official claim on television that security forces had killed a senior ISIS commander in the Lake Chad region—then remembered that the same government had announced the same killing two years earlier. The confusion was not accidental. It was symptomatic of something deeper: a security apparatus so fractured by competing interests, personal rivalries, and institutional rot that it cannot speak with one voice about what it has actually accomplished.
Rafsanjani's critique cuts past the usual complaints about underfunding or lack of equipment. The problem, he argues, is structural. Nigeria's security sector has become so personalized—so dependent on individual leaders rather than functioning institutions—that it cannot sustain coherent strategy. Corruption runs through it like a fault line. Foreign assistance, particularly from the United States, has become a crutch that allows the government to avoid the harder work of building accountable, professional security forces. "The Americans cannot solve all their problems," Rafsanjani said. "You must do your own bit." He also pointed to a more insidious problem: security priorities are being warped by electoral politics. With elections scheduled for 2027, the government is more focused on protecting its political interests than on protecting citizens.
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria went further. In a statement released by coordinator Emmanuel Onwubiko, the group called for the immediate removal of the country's top security leadership—the Chief of Defence Staff, the National Security Adviser, the Director-General of the Department of State Services, military intelligence chiefs, and service commanders. The organization did not mince words about why: these officials have failed. They have failed to stop terrorists from operating across the North-East and North-West. They have failed to prevent bandits from turning highways into killing zones. And they have failed to keep the violence contained to the north, where it has raged for years.
The spread of kidnappings and armed attacks into the South-West represents a new threshold. In Oyo State, schoolchildren and teachers were abducted—a stark reminder that no region is now beyond the reach of organized violence. The Defence Headquarters dismissed concerns about terrorist activity in the South-West, claiming that armed groups have no operational base there. HURIWA's response was blunt: this claim is not just wrong, it is dangerously deceptive. Terrorists do not need to erect signboards. They are already in the forests and on the highways. Armed criminal networks have infiltrated rural communities across the region. The intelligence failure is total.
The scale of displacement is staggering. Communities across the North-East, North-West, Middle Belt, and now parts of the South-West have been hit repeatedly. Residents are fleeing their homes. Economic activity has stopped. The country has begun to resemble what HURIWA described as "a nation under siege"—a place where armed groups move with impunity while ordinary people live in fear. The security agencies that are supposed to protect them have become so dysfunctional that they cannot even gather reliable intelligence about where threats exist.
Both organizations pointed to a secondary problem that may be harder to solve than the first: the politicization of security appointments. Ethnic and political considerations now influence who gets hired into top positions, rather than competence or track record. Adding more political offices to the security architecture, as the government has done, will not fix anything. Rafsanjani was clear on this point: "Political appointment is not the solution to the insecurity that we have." What Nigeria needs is comprehensive reform—real accountability, real professionalism, real institutional strength. What it is getting instead is more of the same: officials shuffled around, new positions created, foreign partners asked to do more, while the underlying system remains broken. The question now is whether the government will listen, or whether the violence will have to get worse before anything changes.
Notable Quotes
The Americans cannot solve all their problems. You must do your own bit.— Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, CISLAC Executive Director
Political appointment is not the solution to the insecurity that we have.— Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, CISLAC Executive Director
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
When Rafsanjani mentioned that the government claimed to have killed the same ISIS leader twice—in 2024 and again now—what does that actually tell us about how the security sector works?
It tells you that there is no central record-keeping, no coordination between agencies, no one checking whether a claim has already been made. It's not just incompetence. It's a sign that the system is so fragmented that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand did. And when the public hears conflicting stories, they stop believing any of it.
HURIWA is calling for the removal of almost the entire top tier of security leadership. Is that realistic, or is it just venting?
It's both. The organization knows that removing people alone won't fix anything. But they're also saying that the current people have had years to show results and haven't. At some point, you have to ask whether they're part of the problem.
The spread of kidnappings into the South-West seems to be what finally triggered this level of alarm. Why does geography matter so much?
Because the North has been in crisis for over a decade. People in the South had some distance from it, some sense that it was someone else's problem. Now it's their problem. That changes the political calculus. Suddenly, the security failure is not abstract—it's happening in your region, to people like you.
Rafsanjani criticized the government for prioritizing political interests over citizen safety. How does that actually work in practice?
When you're worried about elections, you deploy security forces to protect political events, to ensure voting happens in your strongholds. You don't necessarily deploy them where the threat is worst. You allocate resources based on where they'll help you win, not where they'll save the most lives.
Is there any indication that the government is actually considering these reforms?
Not yet. The statement from HURIWA is a demand, not a response to something the government has already proposed. The real question is whether this pressure from civil society will force a response, or whether it will be ignored like previous calls for reform.