The world hardly knows peace. It’s strange and discordant. The world is a deep-blue-sea – sharks swallow the fishes. Sadly, Nigeria is still on the lower rungs, far from being a virile nation. Military might; gunboat mediation, ruthless competition, over-dominance and economic exploitation are the banes of human disharmony and split-up. So it is with nations.
For about two decades and a half, Nigeria, Africa’s muscular nation, has been stuck in the labyrinth of unending insurgency. The country has more than a fair share of the wars and titanic armed struggles that continually rule and ruin the world. Nigeria is hindered by a grim armed conflict from within and without, in its fumble on the hard trek to manhood.
In another deadly season of lackadaisical or ‘sleep-walk’ responses to its internal insurgency, the state is overwhelmed, with its security concerns. Somewhat, Nigerians were envisaged to have gotten a truly committed Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), widely perceived to have the needed audacity to crush the insurgency. It was also envisaged that since he is from a ‘wrong’ part of the country that’s sidelined in the national polity, he was going to act differently, if only to prove a valid point that good things could come to a group where one is relegated.
Disturbing news emanated from the rumour mill about a sabotage of Christopher Gwabin Musa – who was yanked from his erstwhile CDS position, even though it was redecorated as a ‘retirement’. The same tell-tales believe that Musa was a stereotype victim of the same power-mongering elite – the very owners of the country’s estate that milk the people dry, without rendering useful services in return.
And there was a twist in the ‘Musa affairs’, when in a jiffy, ‘the lot fell on him’ to go clear the mess of the insurgency, with his elevation to a Defence ministerial position, by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the country’s president.
The name ‘Musa’ has a direct meaning to ‘Moses’, the Biblical leader, who freed his Israeli people from the king Pharaoh’s captivity in Egypt.
But Nigerian Musa is that retired Major General, who by sheer providence was elevated to his newest position, and a holder of the important national title of the Order of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (OFR). His cap is feathered by numerous honours, including the prestigious 2022 Nelson Mandela Exemplary Leadership Award, and an American Collins Power Meritorious Award for Soldiering.
For a man banked upon by the long-suffering public to promptly take them out of the self-imposed war, their joys would be unlimited especially as he is seen as coming back to tackle same insecurity, in a more commanding position than the former. Ordinarily, his sudden retirement and elevation could have eased the public’s resignation to the uncanny fate, that there was no more human to save them from the plunders before the Almighty God.
It was, nevertheless, a lesson in human frailty and a strong repose to God’s infinite knowledge and decision, that Christopher Musa, a pillar that was rejected, soon became the same that makes the corner stone.
So to speak, the upsurge of insurgency in the country is a sour tale, to be retold only to keep the record straight. What got started as a mere joke in 2011 by a ‘rookie’ and sizzling Islamic preacher called Mohammed Yusuf, whose rebellion was believed to have been quelled by his alleged extermination, had snowballed in a multi-headed monster. But rebellion has multiplier effects, like the mustard seed, a bushfire ignited by a madman in the Harmattan windstorms, which spreads out of control.
From a slang-name of ‘Boko Haram’ (Western education is evil), the Yusuf’s extermination had provoked deadly armed gangs and incorrigible franchises of the Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP), Lakurawa and others. Unknown Gunmen and a host of others had joined the fray, engulfing the country’s soul.
Nigeria’s vulnerable to maiming, killings, arsons, economic sabotage and local community annihilation. It has emboldened extreme jihadists (religious persecutors), herdsmen terrorists, blood-mining, land-grabbing, kidnapping for ransoms and surplus harvest of criminalities!
Nigeria, by the January 2026 Global Firepower Index (acquisition of weapons and war-readiness by countries of the world), was ranked 33rd globally and third in Africa
Still, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), through its spokesperson, Sunday Ichedi, told a startled world that not fewer than 614,937 victims were killed in Nigeria by the raging insurgency, mainly in the north, and much lower in the southern part, between May, 2023 and April, 2024 alone. He added that a minimum 2,235,954 were kidnapped, and over N2.23 trillion were paid in ransoms. However, these confirm scandalous claims by pundits that terrorism, insurgency and criminalities have become new and flourishing businesses in the country.
The ‘laissez-faire’ of many self-serving Nigerians elite, are the misleading claims that it is ‘mere’ insurgency and not full-scale war, happening in the country. And the never-do-well lords are the same that feed the tilted narrative that the insurgency is a mere clashes caused by tribal groups, farmer – herders and climate change, not religious persecution.
Until November 2025, estimated casualty in the war between Russia and Ukraine is 400,000 to 1.5 million victims, including both killed and wounded.
If the Nigeria’s insurrection, which came about the same time as the full-blown Russo-Ukrainian war, could record such huge victims, within a month, it therefore means that the summed-low tolls of both European countries, shows the Nigeria’s insecurity situation as deadlier.
To internal and external backers, and providers of sophisticated weapons to the insurgents, Nigeria must be further plundered or-and balkanised, whereas such doomsday’s predictions of its imminent collapse and breakup had failed
Retrospectively, Sani Abacha, the late despotic ruler, insinuated that prolonged insurgency do not exonerate incumbent government as a backer, which gives credence to wider criticism that the immediate-past government of Muhammadu Buhari, as having stabilized the insurgents.
Although the incumbent presidency of Tinubu only inherited the crisis, it is nevertheless, a mild inertia or the lack of will to confront it headlong.
From the theatres of military operations against the insurgents, emanate conflicting reports that some commanding officers and soldiers look the other way as they are overwhelmed by the terrorist fighters, causing the avoidable deaths of troops, carting away and destruction of weapons and equipment. Some soldiers are caught revealing tactical information and selling weapons to insurgents. In what could be referred to the Stockholm syndrome, cases abound where politicians, traditional chieftains and the locals supports the same bandits that persecute them.
The deradicalisation and rehabilitation policy of the government, which also evolves the recruitment of ‘repented’ terrorists into the army, is self-inflicting strategy that infiltrates the troops and other security agencies, such as the police, the judiciary and others that let loose apprehended terrorism suspects.
Unfortunately, these are not the usual Nigerian troops that were commended as one of the best infantry in the world, for their heroism in peacekeeping. “It isn’t the fiery fire that should produce the cold ashes”. No, this isn’t the same troops that have become lame ducks or easy targets on shooting range!
The intervention of President Donald Trump of the United States, with the bombing of the Sokoto’s operational camps of the terrors and jihad groups, had goaded Abuja to decisive actions against the bandits. But instead of abating, the attacks are aggravated, with recent killings in Maiduguri, Jos North, Takum – in Taraba State, Nasarawa and others, resulting heavy death tolls and swelling the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps.
When the drumbeat of war gets louder, it is lesser about the enemies’ push, indicating that the home-troops are ferocious at repelling and originating attacks, in order to destroy their strangleholds.
Although there seems to be upsurge attacks than before, that isn’t say that General Musa is not striving harder and will not be on top of the game, if all and sundry join hands with him. Afterall, his efforts are paying off, boosting the morale of the troops, especially as his commanding order is for soldiers not to await commands on the war theatres, before shooting the terrorists at sight, to foreclose sabotage.
Imperatively, the tough stance of General Musa, apparently bespeaks a strong desire to defeat the insurgency, as his return as Defence Minister, would indicate. A man, whose nativity is at the receiving end of a crisis is unlikely to drawback, whereas he was born and educated in a state largely implicated as the fortress of the terrorist groups, in addition to his hobnob with the different parts of the country, that are being afflicted.
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