Why is Nigeria’s security so fragmented?

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This is the script for my video posted on May 7, 2026. Watch it on TikTok.

You probably never heard that on Christmas Day 2025, US Tomahawk missiles hit Islamic extremist targets in the state of Sokoto in northwestern Nigeria. These were the first ever direct US missile strikes against Nigeria’s insurgencies, but the more interesting aspect of this is that it’s a symptom of the fact that the Nigerian government doesn’t have oversight of the country’s security. Today, Nigeria relies on many different security architectures that vary in effectiveness from region to region and often barely speak the same language, making coordination difficult at best. So why is Nigeria’s security architecture so scattered?

Nigeria’s constitution gives the federal government a monopoly on policing and defense, but on the ground, security is provisioned by a patchwork of different organizations. Many of these have grown more powerful and permanent in the last few years as federal security has failed, producing radically different outcomes from state to state.

From 2015 to 2023, former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari served as president of Nigeria, and in that period Boko Haram grew stronger in the country’s northern states. Under him, Nigeria’s federal security forces faced massive losses and never managed to make permanent progress. In 2023, former Lagos State governor Bola Tinubu was elected president. Despite massive budget allocations for defense and national security, Tinubu’s government has faced serious issues actually disbursing that money. There are over 370000 federal police officers, but a quarter of them are reportedly assigned to protect politicians, they are notoriously corrupt, and constitutionally speaking, they are the only police allowed to operate across Nigeria. This means that every region has had to build its own security apparatus.

In May 2021, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau was killed, but this created a power vacuum that the Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP, was able to fill. At one point these were the same, but Shekau was demoted by ISIS in favor of Musab al-Barnawi, after which Shekau’s faction reverted to the original Boko Haram name. Today, ISWAP has about 5000 to 10000 fighters who consistently seize towns and military bases, and their recruitment relies heavily on mass abductions and forced conscription of men, women, and children. Security forces in the region mostly comprise the Civilian Joint Task Force, or CJTF, which formed as a group of untrained civilians in 2013 but now numbers about 26k people, with support from state governments.

In the northwest, an estimated 30k bandits operate, including warlords who collect feudal taxes from local towns. In 2024, bandit warlords convened to elect a “boss of bosses”, only for eight kingpins to be killed in joint operations by the Nigerian army and air force and groups of vigilantes. Meanwhile, a group called Lakurawa that was founded as a counter-bandit militia in 2017 has transformed into a jihadist faction now operating in several parts of the northwest. This was the group targeted by the US missile strikes I mentioned. But as of now, hundreds of villages are still occupied by bandits.

Nigeria’s middle belt face unique issues of its own. For years, the region’s primarily Fulani Muslim herders have attacked Christian farmers of various ethnicities for control over arable land. Their actions have been characterized by international observers as terrorism and genocide, and though the details are sometimes disputed between media outlets and government agencies, the damage speaks for itself. Conservatively, many thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. In response, the Nigerian government launched operations to stabilize the region and create sustainable peace, but there have also been militarized responses from individual states and state-backed vigilante groups. Unfortunately, none of this has stopped the killings.

In the southeast, the greatest security threat comes from the separatist group called the Indigenous People of Biafra, or IPOB, and its armed wing, the Eastern Security Network, which aim to restore the defunct Republic of Biafra that collapsed in 1970. In 2021, after an attack on a prison and the Imo State Police Headquarters led to the escape of over 1800 inmates, the governors of Nigeria’s five southeastern states established a security outfit of their own to counter threats. But this outfit, called Ebube Agu, collapsed almost immediately due to poor funding and IPOB threats against anyone who joined it. The Nigerian government proscribed IPOB as a terrorist organization in 2017, but many in the region actively support it.

In January 2020, the governors of Nigeria’s six southwestern states launched Amotekun, or the Western Nigeria Security Network, initially with 120 patrol vehicles and personnel drawn largely from Yoruba vigilante traditions. Today Amotekun is heavily institutionalized, with thousands of members working to counter highway kidnapping, ritual crime, urban insecurity like cult violence and crime, and increasing Fulani herder incursions into rural forest reserves. The Niger delta, meanwhile, has a lot of contracted security due to the presence of oil pipelines and piracy.

Today, the Nigerian government under President Tinubu has been relying more heavily on its partnership with the US since the nearby Alliance of Sahel States, including Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, withdrew from ECOWAS in 2025. The Tinubu administration is moving toward a model of state-level policing under a proposed constitutional amendment. The idea is that this would allow states to handle their own security because they face so many unique and local considerations. But the reality is, the Sahel region north of Nigeria’s border is collapsing southward after the Alliance of Sahel States broke away from ECOWAS, and the border is porous enough for extremist affiliates to cross over.

Twelve of Nigeria’s northern states practice Sharia law, and while they do have Hisbah, an Islamic morality-enforcement authority that also provides some policing, these places are often so geographically isolated that they are difficult to exert influence over, requiring a more cohesive military and police response. Around Lake Chad, this has taken the form of a Multinational Joint Task Force with Cameroon, Chad, and Benin. But for Nigeria specifically, the greatest concern is that state-level police forces would face ethnic recruitment imbalances, funding issues, and abuse by governors. The question is if having 36 governors with effectively their own armies will make Nigeria more secure or more fragmented.

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