Andy Ezeani
Tuesday, June 9 2026
There is nothing more unnerving about the sweeping bestial killings by terrorists and bandits across Nigeria currently than the cluelessness of the government about how to respond to the affliction.
The reality of Nigerians being abandoned to their own devices is very demoralizing. They are virtually at the mercy of a rampaging blood-thirsty tribe, a blight the type of which has never descended on the country before.
Shockingly, the government is not incensed enough yet to get into a war mode to combat the danger. If any drastic action is being initiated to secure the citizens, the people are yet to feel it.
Leave politics out of it,President Bola Tinubu’s government has proved totally out of its depth in meeting the challenge of the asphyxiating security emergency in the country. The security situation presented the government with a test of its mettle in leadership and decisiveness. It has flunked the test woefully.
A rash of violent killings and kidnappings across the country in the last two or three weeks may have thrown up a new pale of sorrow and gloom over the land, but in truth, they were not exactly new. Tales of woe and death have largely characterized life in Nigeria under its present administration.
Alarmingly, prominent members of the government do not seem to be perturbed. Indeed, a number of them are still heard, to their shame, commending the president for his handling of insecurity. Such manifest insensitivity.
Securing the lives and welfare of citizens as well as the territorial integrity of the state remains the raison d’etre of a government. Governance is never about brinksmanship in partisan politics. If the latter does not ensure the former, it is a waste.
The security of Nigerians has never been in greater jeopardy than is the case at the moment. These days, anyone can be kidnapped anywhere, at any time. Worse still, the killers have greater chances of walking away Scot free than being apprehended.
Several dimensions to the current national insecurity are, actually, of great concern.One, the bandits and terrorists, who usually strike in their numbers, are commonly believed to come from across the Nigerian borders. They do not travel with flight. That means they either travel en masse by road or they assemble over time before they launch out.
If any security intelligence ever picked up the movements, the use of such intelligence has not been impactful enough to forestall the activities of the criminals.
Two, they have infiltrated the nooks and crannies of the country and are fanned out in a manner that indicates a well-planned campaign, the type that foreigners alone can not effectively undertake without local guides. So, who are the local accomplices?
Three, the bandits launch their deadly attacks at their own pace. They pick their targets, kidnap hapless citizens in dozens and scores, and return to their strongholds in the forests.
Somehow, the locations in the forests occupied by the bandits appear to be impregnable and treated by security agencies as diplomatic zones of sort, which are not easily violated. Yet, these are the same security agencies who regale Nigerians intermittently, with their heroics in dislodging the so-called indigenous non-state actors and criminals inside forests. So many things about Nigeria do not add up.
The fact that the movement of these ghouls and their subsequent settlement in their chosen forests are never detected by the security agencies can only happen in Nigeria. How did a country with elaborate apparatuses of state security become such a contemptuous joke, ripe to be picked at will by foreign bands of invaders who are now made to seem invincible?
Now, the murderous bandits and terrorists have taken their violence against Nigerians to the next level. Their new horrendous mark is the beheading of their victims, a confirmation that these elements do not belong to this age. What type of human beings do such in the 21st century?
And to imagine that these are the elements who, when they strategically lay down some of their weapons briefly, are embraced by the Nigerian government and its military leadership, as “repentant bandits”, “our brothers”. Next, the killers are enlisted in the Nigerian Army! Nigeria is probably beyond redemption.
While the murderous invaders reserve their repulsive ways, perhaps, their clearest expression of contempt for Nigeria and its military manifest in their treatment of officers of the Nigerian Armed Forces. The open humiliation of the Nigerian military by the bandits at every opportunity is unmistakable.
The kidnapping of General Abubakar Rabe, abducted alongside his wife, is one of the latest expressions of disdain for the Nigerian military by the terrorists. General Rabe, former Director of Defense Information, and his wife were abducted in Matazu Local Government Area of Katsina State on May 30,2026.
A video of the retired General and his wife, released last week by the bandits, has gone viral. Perhaps, only the government and the chieftains of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) will fail to get the point the bandits are making by having a General of the Nigerian Army and his wife beg for their lives, heads bowed. The bandits want the government to release their arrested colleagues in exchange for General Rabe.
A General is, or ought to be, a country’s prized asset, a symbol of the strength of its military. A general on his knees is a reflection of a country subdued. What now is a general worth in Nigeria?
Unfortunately, General Rabe’s ordeal is not the first time the terrorists are loudly denigrating a Nigerian general. The gruesome public execution of Brigadier General Musa Uba in November 2025 remains painfully fresh in mind.
It was not enough for the Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP) that they captured General Uba, the commander of the 25 Brigade of the Nigerian Army, in circumstances that were never fully explained. They publicly executed him.
Last week, on June 5 2026, Boko Haram terrorists again struck at the military once more. They attacked the military formation at Mandara-Girau in Biu Local Government Area and beheaded 8 soldiers.
The Nigerian military appears to be confronted with a challenge many believe it is fighting in shackles. Attempts to get to the root of its challenges always get squashed before they can be effectively explored. So, the immolation of its gallant men continues, for purposes that neither exalt a state nor are known to the sacrificed.
If Nigerians have to rely on President Donald Trump of the United States of America to intermittently strike at the terrorists for them to breath, then the Nigerian government might as well drop posturing and apply for Nigeria to become a territory of the United States of America.
Of what value is independence to a country the government of which can not defend its citizens and its territorial integrity?
