By Chuks Eke
A social critic, Sir Ifeanyi Ejiofor has decried the latest arrangement whereby the office of the National Security Adviser, NSA is proposing to arm a so-called joint operation in the Kwara forests under a ‘hybrid forces’ strategy against banditry is not Innovation but an institutional amnesia dressed up as security policy.
He also described the proposal as a tragic legitimisation of the very monsters whose ideological offspring have, for years, ravaged farms, sacked ancestral communities, and left blood-soaked trails across Nigeria’s rural landscape.
In a press statement titled: “when the state arms the fire and calls it firefighting: a dangerous romance with terror in the guise of hybrid security, Ejiofor cautioned that such a proposal is a security experiment that must be reviewed immediately, and abandoned without sentimentality.
According to Ejiofor, “Across contemporary Nigeria, insecurity has metastasized into the most dominant national emergency of our time. From the North-West and North-East, through the North-Central, and spilling relentlessly into the South-East and South-West, no region has been spared”.
“Despite enormous budgetary allocations, repeated policy interventions, and the visible exertions of the Federal Government, the end still appears frustratingly distant”.
“A growing school of thought, shared quietly by many Nigerians and loudly by a courageous few, attributes this grim persistence not merely to capacity deficits, but to active sabotage from within”.
“It is now an open secret that elements embedded within the system, including compromised security actors, profit from the chaos, feeding fat on ransom economies, illegal arms flows, and displacement-driven land grabs. This corrosive internal betrayal explains why sincere efforts are routinely neutralised before they can bear fruit”.
“This is precisely why many Nigerians continue to call on the Commander-in-Chief to wield the big stick of authority without fear or favour, no matter whose ox is gored. Against this backdrop, it becomes imperative to confront one of the most enduring and destructive sources of Nigeria’s insecurity: the organised violence perpetrated by armed herdsmen operating under the umbrella of Miyetti Allah”.
“For years, communities in Benue, Plateau, Southern Kaduna, Nasarawa, parts of Enugu State, and several South-West locations have endured coordinated attacks attributed to these armed groups. Farms have been forcibly seized, entire villages emptied, livelihoods annihilated, and defenceless farmers murdered in cold blood. These are not isolated incidents; they form a pattern, repeatedly documented, consistently denied, and tragically normalised”.
“In response to this existential threat, many affected communities, abandoned to their fate, were compelled to establish local vigilante structures to defend their lives and lands. These indigenous security formations arose not from rebellion, but from necessity”.
It is therefore both ironic and alarming that the same State that failed to protect these communities now contemplates arming Miyetti Allah–affiliated elements with prohibited firearms under the guise of security collaboration”.
“We must not forget that at a point, even the State Security Service found it necessary to take into custody a prominent leader of this organisation for his open incitement and obvious involvement in terrorist activities, a matter that eventually found its way to court. These are the same actors who conveniently mutate in nomenclature, from killer herdsmen to bandits, and now to the freshly baptised label of jihadists”.
“Granted, the Office of the National Security Adviser is constitutionally empowered to deploy creative strategies, including the arming of vigilantes, to confront insecurity. However, what logic, legal, moral, or strategic, justifies incorporating herdsmen linked to Miyetti Allah into such operations?”
“You do not fight banditry by arming the ideological cousins of bandits.
You do not extinguish fire by handing petrol to the arsonist”.
“In Kwara State and its environs, there already exist credible indigenous security structures, including Amotekun and state-backed vigilante groups, who understand the terrain, know the communities, and can identify the perpetrators. These are the forces that deserve strengthening, not groups whose antecedents inspire fear rather than confidence”.
“It bears repeating: Miyetti Allah has, over time, functioned as a breeding ground from which armed herdsmen graduate into bandits, kidnappers, and trans-regional criminal networks. The decision, whether by omission or commission, to arm such elements with prohibited firearms under any so-called “hybrid forces” arrangement is not merely baffling; it is dangerously counter-intuitive”.
“One is therefore compelled to ask:
Why were these armed herdsmen later arrested by state authorities?
Why was their arrest publicly celebrated? And if they were indeed safe partners, why the sudden recoil? Something is fundamentally wrong somewhere. Nigeria must draw a clear, uncompromising red line”.
“All members of “Miyetti Allah” or any affiliated structure already armed under any security arrangement must be immediately disarmed, disengaged, and excluded from all present and future security collaborations. They are not part of the solution; they represent a foundational pillar of the problem”.
“No nation defeats terrorism by outsourcing security to its ideological incubators. No State restores public confidence by blurring the line between protector and predator. And no government wins the war against banditry by legitimising the very networks that sustain it”.
“If Nigeria is serious about reclaiming its forests, securing its farmlands, and restoring the dignity of rural communities, then this dangerous experiment must end now, before it matures into yet another chapter of avoidable national tragedy”.
“History will be unforgiving. The people are watching. And posterity will ask who spoke when silence was safer. Stop arming terror. Disarm Miyetti Allah. No compromise on security. Protect our farms. End banditry. Security without sabotage”.
