By Tony Ogunlowo

In the past few weeks, two high-profile kidnapping cases have captured the attention of the nation. One involved the kidnapping of more than 45 pupils and teachers from a school in Oyo state, and the other involved the relatives of an ex-minister.

Whilst the relatives of the ex-minister, his sister and her two sons, were rescued in a highly publicised police operation, the fate of the missing school children and their teachers remains unclear. Already two teachers have been killed: one was shot and the other beheaded.

Nigeria is a hotbed for kidnapping, and in 2025 alone, there were more than 4,000 reported cases. But bear in mind that for every case recorded, two or three went unreported, leaving relatives to deal with ransom demands on their own. And for cases reported, the overstretched and understaffed police are not much help and often suggest relatives negotiate with kidnappers. As a result, what was once a small sore has now festered, becoming an even bigger wound and growing.

It has been more than twelve years since 276 girls were kidnapped from their school in Chibok. To date, not all of them have been recovered. Some have died whilst others, heavily traumatised, have been found bearing children of their captors: their lives destroyed and those of their families.

The swift rescue of the ex-ministers’ relatives in a short window of just a few days points to one thing – elitism! If you’re well-connected, the powers that be will pull out all the stops to do what they’re supposed to be doing in the first place. If you’re a mere ordinary citizen, they can’t be bothered.

Even though the Federal Government has a policy of not negotiating with kidnappers, which is understandable since they don’t want to encourage the practice, they should have the means to end the scourge. Every government from the Obasanjo regime up to the incumbent have promised to take a hard line on abductions and banditry. To date, all that hardline rhetoric has just been ‘audio’, leaving bandits and kidnappers to get up to all sorts of things. There have been calls to allow citizens to take up arms: not a good idea, as this might encourage extrajudicial killings rather than for self-defence. There have also been calls for stiffer penalties, but, yet again, you need to catch the perpetrators first and make sure they don’t bribe their way out of the judicial system. The Forest Guards program is taking off, and hundreds of them are being recruited, trained and deployed, but are they paramilitary trained to be able to fight kidnappers in the bush?

Just like when the Chibok girls went missing under President Goodluck’s watch, the government is taking a lukewarm approach to the matter. What should be classified as a top priority has been pushed to the bottom of the list as all politicians rush to get their nomination forms in for the 2027 elections: the only thing that matters to them. If this were America, Trump would have mobilised the Army, Navy, Air Force, CIA, and whatever else he could think of to find ALL kidnapped victims. In Nigeria, the only thing politicians are interested in, their top priority, is re-election.

Children’s Day has come and gone, and so also has Democracy Day, as we head towards Independence Day, and somebody’s child, uncle, aunt, husband is still being held against their will with the security services running around like headless chickens, clueless as to what to do next. What happened to their network of informers? Are their surveillance techniques so primitive that they can’t locate a large gathering of people in the bush? Surely contact has been made with all kidnappers so they can list their demands, and why haven’t these leads been tracked using basic cellular telephony technology? But if it’s an ex-minister’s relative, they know how to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

Until the government adopts a zero-tolerance policy towards kidnapping and banditry – and sticks to it, these unfortunate incidents will continue.

Perhaps it’s time to seek foreign assistance since we don’t know what to do: already, Trump has stationed US troops, up North, to help us fight Boko Haram and ISIS. They already have the technology and personnel that can find a fly hiding behind a dune in the Sahara. An ordinary Air Force surveillance plane, or drone, equipped with heat-seeking infra-red cameras, overflying the place at night can easily find anyone hiding out in the Old Oyo park within hours, not days. And please don’t involve the NAF, who seem to bomb more innocent people than bad guys! Alternatively, bring in Sheikh Gumi, who seems to know most of the bandits. He might be able to help.

There is no easy fix to ending insecurity in Nigeria other than to bring in a brutal state of emergency that will grant security services carte blanche to deal with situations as they see fit. Again, this can lead to abuse of power, as was the case with the disbanded SARS.

To truly eliminate all insecurity in the country, the government needs to think long-term and go back to the root cause of all these problems – hunger. A hungry man (or woman) faced with unemployment and a high cost of living, with nothing to lose, will be crazy enough to do any kind of crime to put food on the table and a roof above his head. Doubling the size of the security services and equipping them doesn’t solve the problem.

By Prince Charles Dickson (PhD), and Dorcas Bawa

Nigeria’s democratic question is often wrongly framed as if democracy is a foreign garment that we must keep adjusting until it fits our body. We speak of Westminster, Washington, Athens, Paris and every borrowed vocabulary of governance, yet the wound before us is neither Greek nor British nor American. It is Nigerian. Our hunger is Nigerian. Our insecurity is Nigerian. Our broken families are Nigerian. Our abandoned children are Nigerian. Our vote-buying, ethno-religious suspicion, weak local institutions, elite impunity and democratic impatience are Nigerian. Therefore, any democracy that will heal us must be made in Nigeria.

This is not a call for isolation. It is a call for ownership. Democracy cannot survive as imported furniture placed in a burning house. It must grow from our values, culture, history and realities. It must be owned by the people, shaped by our communities, and driven by our collective aspirations for justice, equity and peace. It must answer the question of the farmer in Bassa, the displaced woman in Barkin Ladi, the market woman in Jos, the young person in Mangu, the traditional ruler trying to hold a fractured community together, the child who no longer trusts the home, and the citizen who has voted many times but has not yet felt government as care.

Since 1999, Nigeria has travelled a long and uneven democratic road. The return to civil rule after years of military dictatorship was not a small achievement. It restored constitutional government, reopened civic space, revived political parties, strengthened the press, expanded civil society engagement, and gave citizens the language with which to question power. We have had repeated elections, transitions between administrations, legislative contests, judicial interventions, public protests, investigative journalism and a growing generation of young Nigerians who no longer kneel before authority simply because it wears a title.

These are gains. They must not be dismissed.

But democracy is not merely the presence of elections. It is the presence of dignity. It is not only the counting of votes. It is the counting of lives. It is not complete because politicians campaign, courts sit, governors are sworn in, and budgets are read. Democracy becomes real when the weakest person in the community can say: “This country sees me. This system protects me. This government serves me.”

That is where our democratic journey remains painfully unfinished.

From 1999 to date, Nigeria has built the rituals of democracy faster than the culture of democracy. We have mastered rallies, slogans, posters, primaries, manifestoes, defections and inauguration ceremonies, but we have not sufficiently mastered accountability, inclusion, local ownership, civic discipline and justice. Too much power remains concentrated at the centre. Too many local governments exist more as salary points than as engines of grassroots development. Too many communities are remembered only during elections, condolences or conflict assessment visits. Too many citizens are mobilised as voters but abandoned as human beings.

Democracy made in Nigeria must therefore begin with the people at the centre. Government exists to serve the people, not the other way around. A system that treats citizens as spectators between election cycles is not a democracy. It is a political theatre with ballot boxes. A homegrown democracy insists that the woman, the youth, the person with disability, the displaced, the farmer, the trader, the child, the minority voice and the forgotten community are not footnotes in the national story. They are the story.

To be homegrown, democracy must also be rooted in culture, but not in the abusive misuse of culture. It must respect our languages, traditions, communal memory and ways of life, while refusing every cultural excuse for injustice. Culture should be a bridge, not a cage. It should protect the vulnerable, not silence them. It should teach respect for elders, but also responsibility by elders. It should honour family, but never hide violence inside family walls. It should value community, but never allow community loyalty to bury truth.

The crisis of Nigerian democracy is not only in Abuja. It is also in the home. It is in the family meeting where girls are denied inheritance. It is in the compound where abuse is covered because the offender is related. It is in marriage where responsibility is abandoned. It is in the neighbourhood where everyone knows a child is suffering but waits for the “government” to arrive. It is in the community where young people are recruited into dangerous labour because poverty has become an employer. It is in the silence that violence teaches how to grow teeth.

A recent week in the Plateau State Gender and Equal Opportunities Commission, particularly the Public Complaints and Mediation Department, tells a disturbing story. In one case, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl became pregnant after alleged abuse within her own home. In another case, an eight-year-old girl from Tudun Wada was brought before the Commission after an alleged sexual assault by a neighbour. Her story was already layered with tragedy: displacement, loss of parents to violence, and dependence on an aged grandmother. Another ten-year-old child had to be reunited with her family in Enugu Agidi after two years of maltreatment while living with a distant relative in Jos. She required psychosocial support before returning home.

In the same week, an illegal commercial motor park around Anguldi in Jos South Local Government Area was reported. The Police were swiftly deployed, and arrests were made. Twelve young people, including three young women, were brought to the Commission. Early interrogation suggested a troubling pattern: the park operated weekly, moving young teenagers from Jos to Ibadan.

These are not isolated moral accidents. They are democratic alarms. But the entire team somehow collectively succeed because they understand the terrain.

Conflict does not end when gunfire stops. It enters homes. It alters parenting. It displaces children. It weakens supervision. It breaks livelihoods. It creates fear, dependency, resentment and desperation. A society that does not heal its conflict will eventually watch that conflict migrate into marriage, childhood, education, labour, politics and faith. The family becomes the first casualty, and later, the polling unit becomes only a mirror of the wounded home.

This is why democracy cannot be discussed only in constitutional language. It must be discussed in human language. When family values erode, democracy suffers. When parental responsibility collapses, democracy suffers. When the culture of respect for human dignity becomes almost non-existent, democracy suffers. When children are unsafe, women are overburdened, fathers disappear from responsibility, mothers are left unsupported, and communities outsource morality to government agencies, democracy becomes a tree without roots.

The problems holding us back are therefore clear. We continue to operate systems that often ignore local realities. We suffer from the concentration of power and the lack of accountability. Our local institutions are weak. Our democratic culture is poor. Tribalism, ethnicity and religious intolerance are too easily weaponised. Many citizens are apathetic because they have been disappointed too often. Others are active only when their group interest is touched. But a person who participates decides their destiny. A person who watches politics from the balcony should not be shocked when decisions are taken in rooms where they are absent.

Homegrown democracy must be community-driven. Decisions must be shaped at the local level through dialogue, consensus and trust. Nigeria cannot continue to pretend that Abuja can understand every stream, shrine, church, mosque, market, grazing route, school, boundary dispute and family wound better than the people who live with them daily. Local problems require local intelligence. But local intelligence must be connected to justice, not captured by local power brokers.

This is why traditional rulers, community heads, women leaders, youth groups, faith leaders, civil society organisations, government agencies, schools, security institutions and families must become democratic actors, not passive observers. Democracy is not INEC alone. It is not the National Assembly alone. It is not the courts alone. Democracy is the mother who protects her child, the father who carries responsibility with honour, the neighbour who reports abuse, the teacher who notices distress, the police officer who acts promptly, the mediator who listens carefully, the traditional ruler who refuses to hide wrongdoing, the pastor and imam who preach dignity, and the citizen who refuses to sell tomorrow for a small envelope today.

Finally, we must rebuild the moral architecture of the family. Mothers, fathers, guardians, relatives and neighbours must rise to nip these issues in the bud. The home is not outside democracy. The home is where citizenship first learns either care or cruelty. If the child learns silence in the face of abuse, she may become an adult who fears power. If the child learns dignity, he may become a citizen who demands justice.

Our country. Our democracy. Our future—May Nigeria win.

By Sani Abdulrazak, PhD

Believe whatever you want, but this government was not, is not, and sadly will not be serious about securing the lives and properties of Nigerians, which is its core and fundamental responsibility, unless citizens demand accountability and consequences for failure. Whatever they say is far from the reality on the ground. More troubling is the apparent complacency of many northern elites who seem to believe they are insulated from the insecurity consuming the region. Oh, how mistaken they are. It will surely reach their doorstep if they don’t do something about it; make no mistake about it.

Across Northern Nigeria, insecurity has evolved from a periodic challenge into a defining feature of daily life. Despite rising security expenditures and repeated assurances from those in authority, banditry, insurgency, kidnappings, cattle rustling, and communal conflicts continue to devastate communities. Thousands have lost their lives, countless others have been displaced, and many farming communities have either been abandoned or are operating under constant threat. While political and administrative centres often enjoy relative security, ordinary citizens in rural areas continue to bear the heaviest burden of the crisis. This growing disconnect has reinforced the perception that those in power are detached from the realities confronting the people they govern.

And then came the painful news of General Rabe Abubakar’s death; a tragedy that lays bare the helplessness consuming our region. For nearly two weeks, a retired General and his wife vanished into the shadows of Northern Nigeria, yet the vast security architecture of the state could neither locate nor rescue them. One cannot help but imagine the long, agonising days they endured: waiting, hoping, praying that help was on its way. But help never came. A man who once dedicated his life to defending this nation met his end in captivity, while his loved ones and an anxious public waited for a miracle that never arrived. If a General could disappear for days with no rescue in sight, what hope remains for the ordinary farmer, trader, teacher, or student whose name will never make the headlines? His death is not merely a personal tragedy; it is a haunting symbol of a North where even those who once stood at the pinnacle of the security establishment are no longer beyond the reach of the monster that has been allowed to grow unchecked.

The North has become a giant gallows; If you are residing in Northern Nigeria today, you are just waiting to be killed, somehow, someday…until we radically and collectively take this monster head-on by addressing the issue of out-of-school children, scrapping completely the almajiri system, reviving parental and societal values and responsibilities, enforcing birth control, and creating jobs for our teeming youths via agriculture and by reviving our comatose industries, we will not come out of this madness masked as insurgency, banditry, and kidnappings.

The roots of this crisis run much deeper than the activities of armed groups. Northern Nigeria carries the largest burden of out-of-school children in the country, leaving millions of young people without the education, skills, and opportunities necessary to build productive lives. The Almajiri system, once a respected institution for Islamic learning, has in many places deteriorated into a mechanism that exposes children to neglect, poverty, and exploitation. Thousands of young boys roam the streets without adequate parental care, formal education, or vocational training, making them vulnerable to recruitment by criminal and extremist networks.

Demographic pressure further compounds the problem. Many northern states continue to record high fertility rates while struggling to provide sufficient schools, healthcare services, and employment opportunities. The result is a rapidly expanding youth population confronted by limited prospects and widespread unemployment. In such circumstances, criminal gangs and insurgent groups find a steady pool of recruits. Breaking this cycle requires a comprehensive approach that combines educational expansion, meaningful almajiri reform, responsible family planning, youth empowerment, agricultural development, industrial revival, and targeted vocational training programmes. Security operations may suppress violence temporarily, but only social and economic transformation can remove the conditions that sustain it.

A Gallows Called Arewa

But just like the government, the masses are so not ready; they feign oblivion to the reality facing us. They instead channel their energy and time to ‘trending’ celebrity topics and await the next celebrity nude videos/pictures and chats to aimlessly talk about. The celebrities are only after immorality or waiting to endorse the politicians with the highest bid; the traditional rulers are either afraid or consumed by the menace.

This collective distraction has weakened society’s ability to confront its most pressing challenges. While communities suffer from poverty, violence, and underdevelopment, public discourse is often dominated by trivial controversies. Yet the North has repeatedly demonstrated that communities can mobilise when properly organised. Faith-based groups, youth associations, community leaders, and local organisations have played important roles in peacebuilding and conflict resolution in several areas. Reawakening civic consciousness and redirecting public attention toward education, security, and development must therefore become a priority.

The crisis also demands courage from those traditionally entrusted with providing moral, intellectual, and cultural leadership. At critical moments in our history, influential voices helped shape public opinion, challenge injustice, and mobilise communities toward collective action. Today, however, many of those voices appear either absent, intimidated, or resigned to the status quo, creating a leadership vacuum at a time when Northern Nigeria desperately needs guidance.

Our intellectuals have gone back to their shells, and rightly so. Our elders have done their part and are giving up on us. The most painful part is that our religious leaders, who spent time and energy convincing us that this government would usher in a golden age reminiscent of the Ottoman Empire, have disturbingly gone mute; no Al-Qunuts or warnings to the government anymore, since it is not the government of the fisherman from the creek. It makes one wonder if we are normal in Arewa. The northern elites despise their followers like the Israelis despise the Palestinians. Posterity will surely judge us all, and history will tell how we played our parts in the destruction of our beloved Northern Nigeria.

Religious leaders, elders and intellectuals historically provided mediation, moral authority and local governance where the state was weak. Their retreat may stem from fear, co-optation or the erosion of moral credibility. Re-engagement requires rebuilding trust and protecting civic space: establish formal consultative roles for elders and clerics in security and development planning, fund independent intellectual forums, and create interfaith platforms that can speak to social issues without intimidation. When clerics and scholars mobilise—on health, education or peace—public behaviour and policy often follow; restoring their voice is therefore strategic and urgent.

If you want to see all the ingredients of a doomed people, look no further than Northern Nigeria at the moment. Deepening poverty, educational failure, demographic pressure, weak governance, economic stagnation, and persistent insecurity have combined to create a dangerous reality for the region. Yet history shows that decline is not irreversible. Societies facing similar challenges have transformed themselves through long-term investments in education, economic opportunity, accountable governance, and community-led development. Northern Nigeria can do the same if its leaders and people are willing to confront uncomfortable truths and commit themselves to meaningful reform.

The time for lamentation alone has passed. Northern Nigeria requires a deliberate and measurable programme of recovery that places education, economic empowerment, and community security at its centre. Governments must become more transparent and accountable, traditional and religious leaders must reclaim their moral voice, intellectuals must re-enter public discourse, and citizens must demand better leadership. Only through a collective effort that addresses both the symptoms and the root causes of insecurity can the North begin to reverse its decline and build a future worthy of its people.

Sani Abdulrazak, PhD, is a researcher, writer, and public commentator based in Kaduna State