WORSENING INSECURITY IN NIGERIA: An Indictment of Dysfunctional and Exploitative Capitalist System

Insecurity has become a daily reality in Nigeria, getting worse year in year out. Little wonder it hardly creates any sense of shock even though there is dissatisfaction over the failure of the government to tackle the monster. Nigerians currently live in palpable fear considering the fact that schools are no longer safe for teachers and children, farmers dread going to farms for fear of attacks, roads have become den of kidnappers, even houses, particularly in rural areas have become easy targets.

By Chinedu Bosah

Mass kidnaping, especially by Islamist terrorists or Fulani bandits, used to be common only in the northern part of the country, but it is now also prevalent in the south. The kidnap of 46 teachers and pupils in the Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State was reminiscent of Chibok girls kidnap in Borno in 2014 as school children are now victims of criminal activities in a badly and corruptly-run country. The Oyo victims, who were kidnapped on May 15, 2026 by an Islamist terrorist group, were just released on July 10, 2026 after they had been subjected to 56 days in a horrendous captivity and torture. Two teachers were killed in captivity, one of whom was bestially beheaded. Another teacher and commercial motorcyclist were shot dead during the abduction.

The government characteristically claimed that security agencies rescued the kidnapped victims but it cannot be ruled out that a huge sum of money might have exchanged hands in order to secure their release. Incidents of kidnapping have continued to be on the rise because it is now one of the most profitable criminal ventures and very attractive to many idle hands. The Oriire incident hit headlines but there have been many cases of kidnapping in different parts of Nigeria that attract little or no public attention.  The victims are languishing in kidnappers’ den, killed or families paid huge ransom to secure their freedom. For instance, there has been repeated kidnaping of farmers in Ikangba area of Ogun State and victims forced to pay tens of millions of Naira while Ogun State government and the Nigerian police and other security agencies did nothing.

What started as a religious sect in Borno over two decades ago has metamorphosed into hydra-headed and more sophisticated terror organisations with links to international groups. It used to be Boko-Haram who was opposed to western way of life and worked towards the introduction of Shariah but is now just one of the big insurgent groups the government is finding difficult to contain. Aside from Boko Haram, there are other deadly groups linked to ISIS, which are Islamic State for West Africa Province (ISWAP), a splinter group from Boko Haram, and Lakurawa. There is also Ansaru which is linked to al-Qaeda.

Northern Nigeria has experienced more violent crimes in the last 2 decades because the region has more socio-economic crises. For instance, there are repeated herders-farmers clashes in the middle belt of Plateau and Benue States that have claimed many lives for decades and happen due to backward agricultural methods and the unresolved nationality questions. According to Amnesty International, between January 2016 and October 2018, the bloody conflicts between farmers and herders killed 3,641. Besides, 3,000 deaths were recorded between 2018 and 2023. What it entails to drastically reduce herders-farmers deadly clashes include massive public investment in modern, mechanised and mass-scale integrated agriculture including building of mass grazing reserves and ranches that would make unnecessary an unauthorised driving of cattle into crop farms. Such a public investment which also include the establishment of mass crop farms and plantations as well as provision of cheap credits and farm supplies to individual farmers would serve as a means of mass food production and also feed raw material to industries. But the backward capitalist ruling elite and the government have failed woefully in this regard.

Insecurity and violent crimes in Nigeria are largely a product of the terrible socio-economic conditions as a result of failure of capitalism and the backwardness of the ruling elite in a neo-colonial economy. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, Northern Nigeria accounts for 65% of Nigeria’s poor, with about 86 million people condemned to multi-dimensional poverty. In the North-east, poverty exceeds 70%. The southern part of the country has its own dose of violent crimes which also in the final analysis are connected to socio-economic crises. Across the country poverty is ravaging like plague and it is getting worse by the day as a result of the consolidation of anti-people capitalist policies that have made the vast majority poorer while the privileged capitalist class swim in ocean of wealth. For instance, astronomical hike of petrol prices, electricity tariff and devaluation of the Naira have had devastating consequences on the already poor living conditions of the vast majority.

The growth and spread of armed groups clearly indicated that the gun-boat tactics of the government has failed woefully and will continue to fail in the absence of mass decent jobs for youths, social and basic infrastructure and concrete plans for industrialisation and massive social investment. Without these measures that cut off the recruitment and breeding ground for criminal armed groups, there is no military solution to the security crisis. For many years, the allocation to defence is the highest Nigerian item in the federal budget. This is about N4 trillion naira in the current budget, but little or no success has been achieved, because the root cause has not been addressed and the people are not mobilised democratically to fight back. Besides, a chunk of this defence allocation gets stolen through fraudulent contract system and bureaucratic corruption. There is need for the mass of working people in different communities to organise non-sectarian (multi-ethnic/religious), adequately armed and democratically controlled defence committees to begin to a serious fight back against criminal armed groups and terrorists.

By and large, insecurity can never be resolved by the capitalist system that create it.  It can only be tackled and resolved overtime by a socialist system that prioritises the needs of all. It will take a planned socialist economy on the basis of working-class democratic control and management to begin to resolve the myriad of the crises confronting the country. But to achieve this entails building a mass political movement of working people armed with socialist ideas.

Given the refusal of most of the current Labour leadership to build such a movement it is necessity for activists to continue taking what steps they can, whether it is supporting popular struggles or initiating campaigns. This is to build support to be able to widely spread the ideas of a socialist alternative when the mass of Nigerians draw the conclusion that ‘enough is enough’ and it is time for themselves to take action.