By Onuora Aninwobodo
A group of national leaders have called on the Federal Government to create a Presidential Task Force on National Security, with powers and a clear mandate to coordinate and execute emergency measures to combat insecurity in the country.
The group, in a statement issued at the weekend and signed by its members from across the country, said the Taskforce should work directly with the National Security Adviser (NSA) and all relevant security, intelligence, and humanitarian agencies.
The statement, titled: A Joint Statement by Concerned Nigerian Leaders on the Deepening National Security Crisis, reads:
We, leaders and citizens drawn from every part of this country — diverse in ethnicity, faith and
political tradition — come together compelled by a painful truth: our nation is bleeding. We stand silence is complicity, and inaction is betrayal.
In just two years, Nigeria has recorded at least 10,217 violent killings, according to Amnesty
International. These numbers stagger the conscience. For perspective: over roughly the same period, Ukraine’s war has claimed 10,000–12,000 civilian lives, Gaza’s devastating siege has taken over 35,000, and Syria, still reeling from civil war, now averages 3,000–5,000 deaths annually.
Parts of Nigeria are enduring wartime levels of slaughter, yet we are officially at peace. The devastation at home is chilling. Benue State alone has witnessed 6,896 killed, over 450,000
displaced, entire local councils hollowed out by fear.
Plateau has lost 2,630 lives, its boreholes
poisoned, granaries torched, farmers forced to watch harvests rot for fear of ambush on the road to market. Zamfara has seen at least 638 villages sacked, and residents are now paying criminal levies by phone under threat of mass killings.
Similar horrors persist in Sokoto, Kebbi, Katsina and Niger, where bandits have turned entire
districts into fiefdoms. Meanwhile, Boko Haram is resurging in the Northeast, regaining the
ability to launch deadly assaults, kill servicemen and even attempt overruns of local governments, as seen in recent attacks on Gwoza, Damboa, Biu and Bama, forcing farmers off their fields and reviving fears of the dark days when the entire country trembled under their shadow. The Southeast, too, is gripped by relentless killings by unknown gunmen, making peace increasingly elusive.
Why Does This Nightmare Continue?
At its heart, our crisis reveals a brutal fact: the Nigerian state has surrendered its monopoly on
the legitimate use of force. New armed groups flourish — Lakurawa in Sokoto and Kebbi,
Mamuda in Kwara, alongside local militias that exploit old grievances. What began as herder and farmer disputes over land and water has morphed into sectarian wars, stoked by military-grade weapons and deep distrust.
Perhaps the most alarming thing is the national silence. The ritual of press condemnations after
each massacre, and the swift return to other mundane issues, is now a national pastime. This is not resilience. It is the slow implosion of a nation and a rot of its conscience.
Lessons from Around the World
Other countries, torn by even deeper divisions, found the courage to change course.
Colombia was once ravaged by guerrillas, cartels and paramilitaries. Its state lost vast territories to terror, a predicament all too familiar to parts of Nigeria today.
Change came only when leaders across rival camps acknowledged they had lost control, funded local peace deals, spurred economic renewal, and reformed their security forces. This convergence of national will gradually pulled Colombia back from the brink of collapse. Rwanda, haunted by genocide, did not look away from its ethnic wounds. It established grassroots courts to pursue accountability, reintegrated communities, and reformed security institutions to ensure the state’s reach extended to the remotest villages.
Nigeria, too, bears deep scars of identity — ethnic, religious, and regional tensions, that demand similar bold, structural confrontations.
Northern Ireland, after decades of bombings and reprisal killings, only found peace when its elites decided violence could no longer shape the future.
They forged power-sharing deals under local and onternational guarantees, proving even the deepest hatreds can be unwound. These were not perfect journeys.
They were fraught with setbacks and painful compromises. Yet they stand as enduring proof that crises on this scale are not immutable. They yield to political courage, elite consensus, and a willingness to confront hard truths. Nigeria’s path demands no less.
A Dangerous Narrative that Must End
We must resist the temptation to blame this violence on one group alone. As recent revelations in Katsina, Anambra, Benue and Plateau have shown that, while some of the attackers are foreigners with local collaborators, many of the attackers are Nigerians, sons of the soil, from various communities, who have abandoned kinship for criminality.
This is a Nigerian problem with Nigerian faces. The challenge is not ethnic, but systemic:
poverty, arms proliferation, impunity, injustice, and the erosion of local governance. We must lift the veil of stereotypes and deal with the truth: criminals come from every group; justice must be blind to identity.
The way forward
We refuse to be silent accomplices. We call on the Presidency, National Assembly, Governors,
traditional rulers, religious leaders, security chiefs, civil society, and every Nigerian of
conscience: let us forge a new path.
We propose urgently creating a Presidential Task Force on National Security, with extraordinary powers and a clear mandate to coordinate and execute emergency measures to halt the violence.
This Taskforce should work directly with the National Security Adviser (NSA) and all relevant security, intelligence, and humanitarian agencies. Ots mandate should include:
1. Operationalising community-based early warning systems and rapid response frameworks, ensuring that intelligence from local actors, traditional leaders, and civil society triggers immediate coordinated action, not bureaucratic delay.
2. Implementing a disarmament and reintegration programme for conflict zones, particularly in the North East, North Central and North West, combining humanitarian assistance with strategic security deployment to enable the safe return of displaced populations.
3. Driving accountability through quarterly public security reports, disclosing arrests, prosecutions, and progress made — thereby rebuilding public trust and strengthening civilian oversight.
The Presidential Taskforce must be time-bound, results-driven, and composed of experienced
security professionals, non-partisan Nigerians of unquestionable integrity, and war-time decisionmakers who are bold enough to use their mandate responsibly and transparently.
The body should report directly to the President but operate independently of political pressures. These are unusual times, they require unusual but constitutional measures.
A Final Word
Nigeria stands on a knife-edge. Whether we tip into chaos or climb toward peace depends on
what we do next. If Rwanda, Colombia, and Northern Ireland can emerge from darker abysses, so can we, if our leaders, across the villa, government houses and Assembly, our palaces, pulpits, and barracks, take the more challenging road of reconciliation, justice, and reform.
The right of every Nigerian child — in Bokkos, Gwoza, Maru or Yelwata — to grow up without
fear is not negotiable. History will not judge the bandits. It will judge us who had the power to protect, and either to act, and may He heal our land.
