The security threats testing Nigeria’s Fourth Republic

In the last 26 years since its return to democratic rule, Nigeria’s Fourth Republic has grappled with a security landscape that is shaped by violent extremism rooted in deep-seated ideological movements, recurring communal clashes, ethnic strife, and the protracted farmer–herder conflicts. Other forms of insecurity, driven by marginalisation and ethnic agitations, have steadily escalated. Together, […]

In the last 26 years since its return to democratic rule, Nigeria’s Fourth Republic has grappled with a security landscape that is shaped by violent extremism rooted in deep-seated ideological movements, recurring communal clashes, ethnic strife, and the protracted farmer–herder conflicts. Other forms of insecurity, driven by marginalisation and ethnic agitations, have steadily escalated. Together, these dynamics have compounded national instability, leaving the country increasingly vulnerable to foreign interference.

Experts point to a web of interlocking drivers behind these crises. Weak institutions, entrenched ethnic and religious tensions, pervasive corruption, widespread displacements, poverty and unemployment, as well as systemic marginalisation, all form the backbone of Nigeria’s security challenges. Undeniably, the Fourth Republic has experienced repeated waves of militarisation, leaving the armed forces overstretched. From communal and ethno-religious riots in the north central, to militancy and cultism in the south-south, secessionist agitation in the south east, the prevalence of ritual and mob killings in the southwest, as well as the twin scourge of insurgency and banditry in the north east and north west respectively, successive governments have struggled to  tackle these diverse yet interconnected threats. Analysts argue government’s failure to confront these threats forms the backbone of the narrow framing of Nigeria’s complex security challenge by the US government, as merely systematic attacks on Christian communities.

Yet, in the last two decades, insurgency driven by Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) in the north-east remains the most persistent and formidable violent threat that has tested the country’s military capacity and might. Since the escalation of Boko Haram in 2011, Nigeria has consistently remained among the ten most insecure nations on the Global Terrorism Index (GTI). By 2025, the country had climbed to 6th position, up from 8th in both 2023 and 2024, indicating worsening conditions.

As part of its National Security Strategy, the Federal Government, beginning around 2015, shifted its focus militarily-ledtomilitary-led counterinsurgency and regional collaboration with neighbouring countries. The initiative, though it achieved territorial gains but opened up new violent frontiers of banditry in the north-west and secessionist agitation by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in the south-east, widening the country’s security crisis and further stretching the capacity of security agents. Therefore, while the Fourth Republic marks Nigeria’s most enduring democratic run, the republic has equally endured its harshest security crises.

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From local grievances to global threats

The 2025 GTI report captured a September 2024 attack in Mafa village, Tarmuwa local government area of Yobe state as one of the 20 most fatal terrorist attacks of 2024.

Suspected members of Boko Haram, moving on motorcycles, opened fire on a market and killed over 100 people while setting fire to shops and residences. From preaching against western education, the activities of Boko Haram and its affiliates have since gone beyond violent campaigns to the use of suicide bombers, improvised explosive devices and drone capabilities. Thousands of innocent lives, including Nigeria’s security forces, have been consumed by the insurgents’ carnage and millions have been displaced, altering the socio-economic fabrics of the north east region.

But long before Boko Haram, Nigeria witnessed its first violent extremist group in the 1970’s, when Muhammadu Marwa, an Islamic preacher from Cameroon settled in Kano State and founded the Maitatsine movement. Similar in ideology to Boko Haram due to its stringent opposition to the Western way of life, the group had galvanised and incited youths against urban elites. Like Boko Haram, it culminated in riots that began in Kano in 1980 and spread to other parts of northern Nigeria, claiming thousands of lives, including Marwa.

But analysts say over 45 years since the Maitatsine riot, the Nigerian government and specifically the leadership of northern Nigeria has failed to address the underlying factors that exacerbated these security challenges and catapulted Boko Haram into one of the world’s most vicious terrorists’ organizations.

“The Maitatsine upheaval and this Boko Haram challenge are all rooted in the same challenges: state neglect, urban dislocation, and the alienation of poor youths, as well as women. They all fuel violent movements,” said Dr Kabiru Adamu, Managing Director of Beacon Consulting, a renowned firm providing enterprise risks and security management solutions in Nigeria and the Sahel. He described these existing drivers as a “combustible mix of both socioeconomic, political, and environmental factors,” such as poverty, illiteracy, poor governance, and historical grievances.

“What happened in the 1980s is repeating itself in the 2000s, mainly because of bad governance,” said Dr Adamu. “The root causes are not being addressed, and frankly, we have not learnt. Governance at the federal level may be strong, but as you go down into the states, there is no governance, especially at the local government, and then at the community level.”

Retired Assistant Inspector General (AIG) of Police, Wilson Inalegwu, echoed a similar feeling saying the Nigerian government in the Fourth Republic had failed to address the underlying causes that make it easy for insurgents to recruit. “When dealing with insurgency, there are underlying causes. It is easy to recruit people because there is unemployment,” he said.

How agitations morphed into militancy

Whatever name they are called, whether militants in the south-south or unknown gunmen in the south east, the involvement of these non-state actors in violence may have started from ethnic agitations, fighting or defending a cause, but morphed into violent groups in the Fourth Republic.

 

During Nigeria’s transition from military to democratic rule in 1999, the country inherited a simmering crisis from the oilrich Niger Delta region. What began as agitation by aggrieved youths soon took on a violent edge as militants began to kidnap foreign oil workers for ransom and launch daring attacks on pipelines and critical infrastructure in a move that greatly sabotaged the country’s economy. By 2009, the federal government was forced to introduce an Amnesty Programme. Yet, a year later, a militant faction detonated bombs that claimed eight lives during Nigeria’s 50th Independence Day celebrations in Abuja.

Today, while the intensity of militancy in the Niger-Delta area has greatly reduced, the Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND), a nonprofit organisation that promotes peace and equitable economic growth in the region, note that the violence has evolved into a “complex mix of violent criminality, communal clashes, and cult-related violence, largely driven by economic pressure, substance abuse, and domestic tensions.”

But even as the embers of violent flame perch in other regions, a new drum of fear and chaos began to beat in the south-east, a region which has for many years screamed of marginalisation and employed non-violent civil resistance under the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), to express its agitation for secession. The birth of IPOB in 2012 soon configured the socio-political, economic and security fabrics of the region. Under IPOB’s now convicted leader, Nnamdi Kanu, secessionist agitation became radicalised, switching from provocative rhetoric to active aggressive violence. It created the Eastern Security Network (ESN), an armed militant group that targeted and assassinated politically exposed persons, traditional rulers, security personnel and travellers.

Under a media cover that tagged them as “unknown gunmen,” the militants also launched attacks on police stations, election officials and offices, as well as abducted and intimidated anyone who defied them. They enforced a weekly sit-at-home order, crippled economic activities of the southeast region, as well as burnt down several government establishments.

But retired AIG Inalegwu insists such brazen audacity to confront state authority is a result of poor investment on intelligence and policing which he said must involve members of the community. “We have the kinetic and non-kinetic, and in dealing with issues of insecurity, we have to consider sustainability,” said Inalegwu, who added that the continued approach of military action against non-state actors, while instant, is not sustainable. “We are not going to be able to kill every IPOB member, or every insurgent, so what can we do? We need to give them hope of an alternative, something that will give them a modest living. Yes, bombing them can achieve instant success, but what will achieve sustainable success is good governance,” he said.

He urged the Nigerian government to avoid “the quick fix” approach to problem-solving, which he said has led to the establishment of multiple security agencies while ignoring the core problem of coordination and collaboration among security agencies. While insisting on administration of justice reform to ensure every offender, irrespective of status and position, faces the consequences of their actions, AIG Inalegwu stressed that “So long as there is no intelligence, no coordination, and there is corruption and bad governance, if you like, bomb the whole of Sambisa, we will not solve the problem.”

 

Banditry, kidnapping and the rise of ethno-religious militias

In the vast forests of Nigeria’s north-west, bandit gangs have turned rural communities into hunting grounds. Armed with sophisticated weapons, these non-state actors raid villages, kidnap for ransom, and disrupt farming and trade. What began as an ethnic grievance and complications between predominant Fulani herders and Hausa farming communities in Zamfara State has now become a national crisis that has spread into the country’s north-central region.

Bandits echo Boko Haram’s strategy of exploiting communities for levies and using mass abductions as a weapon of fear, turning it into a lucrative industry that helps finance their activities. The introduction of mass abduction, a tactic famously used by Boko Haram, when they kidnapped over 200 schoolgirls from Government Girls Secondary school Chibok, in Borno State, catapulted the terror group onto the global stage. The abduction was followed by others by the group and its splinter factions, including the 2018 mass school abduction from Government Girls’ Science and Technical College, Dapchi, in Yobe State.

However, bandits in the north west have increasingly adapted Boko Haram’s playbook, replicating its brutal tactics through several mass school abductions in Zamfara, Katsina, Niger, Kaduna, Kebbi and other neighbouring northwestern states, alongside many high profile and community mass kidnappings.

Over the past decade, the government’s inability to systematically confront their activities has deepened long-standing religious and ethnic fault lines in the middlebelt, an area that stretches across the central part of Nigeria and long known as a melting flashpoint of communal and ethno-religious strife. Even before the Fourth Republic, increased population, competition over land and water and ethno-religious diversity has made the area more susceptible to clashes including long existing conflicts between sedentary farmers and pastoralist herders. As failed dispute structures and suspicion on the grounds of “indigeneship” and “settlership” widen the divide, ethno-religious biases have escalated into the creation of identitydriven militias, with allegiance to their religious and cultural groups. These groups, posing as community-based protection vigilantes often around Kaduna, Plateau, Benue, Adamawa and Taraba states exploit grievances by taking laws into their hands and fueling instability.

 

How to address future security threats- Expert

Even as Nigeria continues to battle its diverse security threats, its attention must also focus on emerging threats, says Dr Kabiru Adamu, who itemises four broad issues which the country must pay attention to.

Dr Adamu warned of an impending climate induced conflict triggered by the competition for land and water. He noted that youth unemployment and exclusion, especially in northern Nigeria, could create a fertile ground for recruitment into criminal networks and extremist groups.

“The issue of cyber-related threats, digital misinformation and disinformation,n as well as propaganda issues, will be on the rise. Then, the politicised or ethnic religious polarisation ahead of the elections in 2027. This issue around Christian genocide, Muslim-Muslim ticket, and several other things are likely to increase these polarization, and so we are likely to see more ethnic and religious violence,” he said.

He however said all hope is not lost as the country can solve these issues by investing in climate smart agriculture and water management to reduce resource competition, focus on massive investment, and expansion of vocational training and job creation programmes for the youths especially in northern Nigeria. The development of a national cybersecurity strategy and building digital security capacity and enhancing accountability, he added, are equally vital to securing the country’s future.

Drawing on insights from Audrey Kurth Cronin’s acclaimed work “How Terrorism Ends,” Dr Adamu argued that Nigeria could take a cue from Colombia, a Latin American nation that successfully blended military force with non-violent strategies to weaken insurgencies, an approach that transformed radical groups into the political arena. “Even Ghana here is a good example for us,” he said, adding, “Ghana is close to Burkina Faso, and all the issues that are in Burkina Faso could have affected Ghana, but we’re not seeing that. It’s mainly because of good governance and what I would call communal governance.”

Dr Adamu observed that while many nations have embraced what is often described as a “whole-of-society, whole-of-government” approach that integrates community, traditional and religious structures into the national security architecture. “We only mouth it, we don’t implement it,” he noted.