Rescuing the democratic Nigerian Republic: Sovereignty under siege (II)

In the first part of this series, I argued that the systematic absorption of opposition into the ruling party has created a consolidation trap that weakens the Nigerian Republic’s capacity for self-correction. But there is a second crisis, at once more visible and more fundamental, that now confronts the federation: the erosion of sovereignty itself. […]

In the first part of this series, I argued that the systematic absorption of opposition into the ruling party has created a consolidation trap that weakens the Nigerian Republic’s capacity for self-correction. But there is a second crisis, at once more visible and more fundamental, that now confronts the federation: the erosion of sovereignty itself.

Sovereignty is not merely a legal word found in constitutions, treaties, and speeches. It is the most basic promise a state makes to its people: that it will protect their lives, secure its territory, and exercise legitimate authority within its borders. When a state can no longer fulfill that promise in a consistent and credible manner, every other function of government begins to rest on uncertainty. Elections can still be conducted, budgets can still be read, laws can still be passed, and official ceremonies can still go on. But beneath the formal continuity lies a more troubling reality: a republic whose authority is no longer fully effective across its own national space.

That is the condition Nigeria is drifting toward. In parts of the northwest, armed groups linked to jihadist currents and bandit formations have moved beyond raids into forms of local domination, imposing levies, enforcing coercive rules, and displacing the authority of the state. In the northeast, insurgent violence remains resilient despite years of military operations. In the southeast, separatist violence continues to disrupt commerce, civic life, and the normal routines of citizenship. In the Niger Delta, the threat of militant resurgence continues to shadow the oil economy. Across parts of the north-central zone, the overlap of rural violence, criminality, communal conflict, and jihadist penetration has produced a deteriorating security environment.

This is not alarmism. It is documented reality. On daily basis, we grapple with horrors of kidnappings, the persistence of civilian massacres, the recurrence of military airstrikes that kill non-combatants, and the continued capacity of armed actors to strike schools, villages, highways, farms, and local communities with impunity. These are not isolated breakdowns. They are signs of a deeper incapacity: the inability of the Nigerian state to establish a reliable monopoly of lawful authority across the whole of its territory.

It is against this background that the debate about foreign military partnership becomes so sensitive. Looking at the current Nigeria-U.S. counterterrorism relationship, it is legitimate to raise a basic question: what does it mean for the sovereignty of a republic when a foreign military conducts kinetic operations on its soil, even with its consent?

That question should indeed be asked. But it should be framed with care. The central issue is not simply whether Nigeria cooperates with foreign powers on security matters. States do that all the time. Intelligence-sharing, technical assistance, training, and even operational coordination are not in themselves evidence of lost sovereignty. The deeper issue is whether such cooperation arises from strategic choice by a capable state, or from dependence imposed by incapacity. That is the distinction that matters.

For this reason, the sovereignty crisis cannot be reduced to the presence or absence of foreign military assistance. Doing so would mistake symptom for cause. The more serious and enduring question is why the Nigerian state, despite the largest military establishment in West Africa, repeated security appropriations, numerous special operations, and countless official declarations, remains unable to secure large stretches of its own territory. The answer is simple: Nigeria’s security crisis is not, at root, a purely military problem. It is a governance failure expressed through security consequences.

This answer is entirely consistent with the historical processes out of which modern Nigeria emerged from 1914 to date. The Nigerian federation has always required conscious institutional construction if it is to function as a single political and economic community. The challenge has never been merely to proclaim unity, but to build the structures capable of making that unity real in the everyday lives of citizens. That remains the issue today. Where the state is absent in practical terms, sovereignty becomes nominal.

Armed groups do not emerge from nowhere. They grow in spaces where the state has withdrawn, failed, or never meaningfully arrived. Where there are no functioning schools, no accessible healthcare, no impartial courts, no viable economic opportunity, no dependable roads, and no responsive local authority, the state appears only as abstraction: distant in power, near in taxation, and absent in protection. In such conditions, coercive non-state actors do not need to conquer society in the classical sense. They fill a vacuum. They become, however brutally, a more present force than the government to which the people are formally subject.

A political system in which power is excessively centralised, subnational governments remain fiscally and politically dependent, and access to office is valued more for resource extraction than for service delivery, is structurally incapable of extending effective governance to the periphery. Over-centralisation does not only breed inefficiency. It produces abandonment. And abandoned spaces become the breeding ground of insecurity.

The tragedy here is not only territorial. It is constitutional. As 2027 approaches, a question that ought to trouble every serious political actor is this: in how much of the national territory can a genuinely credible election be conducted? Elections are not merely legal events on a timetable. They require physical access to polling units, secure movement of electoral materials, freedom of candidates to campaign, ability of voters to appear without fear, and conditions under which collation and transmission can take place with basic order. In significant parts of the northwest, northeast, and sections of the southeast, these conditions are impaired.

There is also an economic dimension to sovereignty that Nigerian public debate too often ignores. Insecurity in the northwest and north-central regions has devastated agriculture, displaced rural communities, disrupted food supply chains, and contributed directly to inflation. Instability in the Niger Delta threatens oil production at a time when government revenue projections depend heavily on petroleum receipts. Insecurity in the southeast disrupts one of the country’s most commercially vital zones. Security and economic performance are not separate policy domains. They are two expressions of the same governing reality. A state that cannot govern effectively cannot protect its people, and a state that cannot protect its people cannot sustain productive life.

It is necessary, however, to be precise about what sovereignty means in a federal republic such as Nigeria. Sovereignty is not diminished merely because the state faces internal violence. All states face threats. Nor is it negated because a government cooperates with foreign partners. The real measure is whether the institutions of the republic retain effective command over territory, enforce law through legitimate authority, and sustain the allegiance of citizens through protection and service. Once those capacities weaken severely, formal sovereignty remains, but substantive sovereignty thins out.

That is why this crisis cannot be solved by military expenditure alone, nor by louder rhetoric from the centre. More deployments, more weapons, and more emergency declarations may be necessary in the short term, but they cannot substitute for the reconstruction of governance. The security of the republic ultimately depends on the presence of a state that is visible and credible in the lives of citizens at the margins, not only in Abuja or in state capitals.

Nigeria’s own constitutional history teaches this lesson. The federation did not emerge in order to concentrate all relevance at the centre. Its evolution, however uneven, was tied to the problem of how to secure local identities, participation, and national cohesion within a common political framework. Since 1963 the challenge of the Nigerian federation has always been to come to grips with its historical inheritance and to build institutions adequate to its scale and diversity. That challenge has now returned in its starkest form.

If 2027 is to be more than another ritual of electoral succession, the sovereignty question must move to the centre of national debate. Not merely as a military question to be answered by force levels and hardware acquisitions, but as a governance question that requires a fundamental reconsideration of how power is distributed, how public goods reach the periphery, how local authority is made responsive, and how citizens come to experience the republic as a living presence rather than an intermittent abstraction.

Sovereignty is not a gift bestowed permanently by international recognition. It is a capacity that must be continuously earned. A republic whose authority extends securely to a few centres but weakly to forests, borderlands, farmlands, highways, and vulnerable communities is a republic whose sovereignty is increasingly nominal. The flag still flies. The anthem is still sung. But the promise that sovereignty represents remains unfulfilled where it matters most.

That is the warning before us. The Nigerian Republic cannot be rescued by electoral theatre alone while large parts of its social and territorial life remain insecure, under-governed, or effectively abandoned. The first duty of the state is not ceremony. It is protection. Where that duty is persistently unmet, sovereignty is not merely challenged. It is under siege.

 

Chafe is the Director, Arewa Research and Development Project, Kaduna.