Dear Victor,
I appreciate your thoughtful intervention and the earnestness with which you have articulated the public anguish that has enveloped our nation for far too long. The depth of insecurity in Nigeria is neither in dispute nor in need of dramatization; it is a lived reality that has scarred communities from Kaduna to Katsina, from the highways of the Middle Belt to the sanctuaries of worship across the South. On this, we are in concord.
What I must, however, clarify is that nowhere in my original post—nor in my subsequent exchange with Vincent—did I dismiss the fundamental purpose of government, least of all its duty to secure life and property. My argument rested on two intertwined concerns: first, the persistent absence of accountability at the two levels of governance closest to the ordinary citizen—the local governments and the states; and second, our alarming national addiction to kinetic solutions, despite the overwhelming evidence of their near futility.
Indeed, the empirical record since 1968 shows that purely kinetic responses succeed only about seven percent of the time in resolving insurgencies. That sobering statistic alone should compel us to interrogate reflexive calls for "bombing out" terrorists, as though the forests could miraculously sort innocents from perpetrators under the blast of explosives. I raised the question—perhaps uncomfortable but necessary—of whether bombs can distinguish between captors and captives, between a coerced youth conscripted into violence and a terrified villager caught in the dragnet. We both know they cannot.
My concern, therefore, is not with the legitimacy of public outcry—such anguish is natural, just, and borne of decades of state failure—but with the direction in which such understandable frustration is channeled. Anger may be righteous, but policy shaped in anger alone is often ruinous. Nigeria's present dilemma calls for granular, layered, and intellectually honest solutions, not the seduction of knee-jerk militarism.
You poignantly note that our government seems stirred more by foreign rebuke than domestic wailing. On that count, I do not disagree. Yet the remedy for this democratic malaise cannot be a blind embrace of tactics that international experience—and our own recent history—have repeatedly shown to be counterproductive.
Besides, what grounds exist to imagine that this so-called intervention attributed to Trump would yield an outcome any different from the long line of external forays that have left little but disillusion in their wake? Lest we forget, the earlier prescriptions of the Washington Consensus—championed by the IMF and the World Bank—crippled the Nigerian economy under the weight of the Structural Adjustment Programme in the 1980s. I was myself compelled to withdraw from the University of Ilorin when SAP's harsh measures rendered continued study untenable. That experience is but one thread in the broader tapestry of how externally driven "solutions" have repeatedly hollowed out national institutions while deepening social precarity.
Nor does the American record on counterterrorism abroad inspire confidence. The United States has not secured a decisive victory against insurgency anywhere it has intervened. The targeted killing of high-profile leaders has never eradicated terrorism in any context. President Obama may have succeeded in eliminating Osama bin Laden, but neither that symbolic triumph nor the vast military machinery deployed across Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan extinguished the fires of extremism. Indeed, the moment American forces withdrew, the fragile scaffolding they had erected collapsed with predictable swiftness.
What, then, assures us that Trump's bluster about invading Nigeria would reverse this long pattern of strategic failure? On what basis are we to believe that an intervention founded on questionable intelligence—intelligence that crudely mischaracterizes Nigeria as a country neatly split into a Christian South and a Muslim North, blithely ignoring the complex religious and cultural pluralism of the Middle Belt—could offer anything more than further destabilization?
My concern is not Trump's theatrics or the predictable bravado of American political rhetoric. My concern is that our leaders, at every level, summon the clarity, courage, and competence required to confront this crisis on terms that reflect our own realities, rather than yielding once more to the illusions of external rescue. Only such grounded, internally driven resolve stands any chance of restoring security and dignity to our people.
What recent developments require is not the easy symbolism of airstrikes, but a sober, nuanced rethinking of our security architecture; the political courage to demand accountability where it truly matters; and a commitment to solutions that protect, rather than endanger, the very citizens we all seek to defend.
With warm regards, and with respect for the spirit in which you wrote,
OBA
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Bukola A. Oyeniyi
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Missouri State University
College of Humanities and Public Affairs
History Department
Room 440, Strong Hall,
901 S. National Avenue
Springfield, MO 65897
Email: oyeniyib@gmail.com
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On Wed, Dec 3, 2025, 6:20 PM 'Victor Okafor' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
My Dear Colleague, one lesson I learned long ago from one of my graduate professors is this: never defend the indefensible.What you dismisively characterized as "shallow thinking" are various forms of citizens' outcry against a failure of governance in the national security arena that both the blind and the dumb can see and verbalize. Throughout the whole world of organized leadership known as a government, the #1 duty of those who have been enthroned to govern is to secure and protect life and property. You perhaps must be the only one who is unaware of or insensitive to the air of insecurity that pervades the nation of Nigeria. This state of affairs did not happen as a bolt from the blues. It evolved and degenerated to where it is now.Now, anyone who claims to love his country must be embarrassed that it took the utterance of another country's president for the leadership team in Nigeria to begin to wake up to the reality of a cancerous problem that has been in its backyard for decades, across multiple governments. They waited for a Donald Trump outburst to recognize the need for a state police system to fill a yawning gap in the national security architecture! What emerges here is a picture of a leadership team that has little or no respect for its own electorate. Thus, this leadership which, for years, has been aware of the plight of a terrorized nation, is driven to ameliorative action/rhetorics by an external stimulus and not the internal grief of its citizens. The citizens' just outcry, which you derided, was not an exercise in security analysis expertise. It was an outcry to the Lord our God from a fear-gripped population that has been living under a cloud of terror for decades: terror on the roads, terror in their homes, terror on moving trains, terror in their churches, terror at their primary, secondary, and university educational locations. Their justified outcry is not an exercise in security analysis critical thinking. It's an outcry from a traumatized population. Peace be unto you!Sincerely,Victor O. Okafor, Ph.D.Professor and HeadDepartment of Africology and African American StudiesEastern Michigan UniversityEmail: vokafor@emich.eduTel: 734.487.9594Food for Thought:"I myself do not judge a man [or a woman] by the color of his [or her] skin. The yardstick that I use to judge a man [or a woman] is his [ or her] deeds, his [her] behavior, and his [or her] intentions. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth. And, every time you let someone stand on your head and you don't do anything about it, you are not acting with intelligence and should not be on this earth—you won't be on this earth very long either." -- Malcolm X.
--On Mon, Dec 1, 2025, 4:55 PM Oyeniyi Bukola Adeyemi <oyeniyib@gmail.com> wrote:--A Nation of Hot Takes: How Nigeria's Insecurity Exposes Our Shallow ThinkingEvery time insecurity makes the headlines, I go online, and what I see is not analysis—it is a flood of shallow thinking dressed as wisdom. Twitter threads, WhatsApp broadcasts, YouTube gurus, and even mainstream media anchors—people who should know better—are suddenly security experts.Everyone is shouting. No one is thinking.I have watched video after video, read comment after comment, and one thing is clear:Many Nigerians have not taken a single moment to understand the complexity of the insecurity crisis. They just want an emotional outlet, not a solution.The loudest argument online today is this simplistic and dangerous chorus:"Why is the government negotiating with terrorists? Why not bomb them all? Why engage? Why dialogue? Why bring Sheik Gumi? Why talk to criminals?"To everyone making this argument, let me ask a very simple question:When bombs drop, do they magically separate terrorists from abducted schoolchildren?Bombs are not surgical tools. They cannot distinguish between a bandit and a 12-year-old girl tied to a tree.If you bomb a camp where abducted children are held, you kill the children you claim to be fighting for.Is that the "solution" you want? Is that your grand strategy?WHO SHOULD KNOW THE TERRAIN? THE SOLDIER OR THE LOCAL LEADER?Another shallow argument is the idea that:"The federal government should know where the bandits are.They should go in. They should find them. They should strike immediately."Really?Let me ask you:Who knows the forests, footpaths, farmlands, streams, and hideouts? Who lives among these communities year after year? Who mobilizes voters from those same villages? Who visits those communities during campaigns?It is not the President. It is not soldiers. It is not the federal government. It is the local leaders.The traditional rulers. The councillors. The local government chairmen. The state government machinery.These are the people who know the terrain intimately.But where are they after elections? They disappear with monthly allocations. They abandon the wards they begged for votes from.They pocket funds meant for rural security, vigilantes, community policing, and intelligence gathering.Then when chaos erupts, they all turn to Abuja and shout:"The President must fix it!"THE TRUTH NO ONE WANTS TO SAYBefore a community becomes unsafe, someone at the local level already knows. Before a camp of bandits forms, ward councillors already know. Before kidnappers settle into a forest, village heads already know. Before terrorists establish a base, traditional rulers already know. Before violence explodes, local government chairmen already know.So I ask all the social media "experts":Why are you not angry at the local leaders who kept silent? Why are you not asking the councillors who know the terrain what they did with that knowledge? Why are you not asking the chairmen who receive billions monthly why they did nothing? Why are you not questioning the state governors who swallow security votes like water? Why is the outrage reserved only for the federal government?Do you think the President is a spirit? All-seeing? All-knowing?Omnipresent? A supernatural drone who knows every valley in Zamfara and every cave in Katsina?This is the shallow thinking I am talking about.THE HYPOCRISY IS ASTOUNDINGLocal leaders know these criminals:They know their houses. They know their sponsors. They know their markets. They know their movement routes. They know their supply lines. They know the forests inside out.But instead of demanding answers from those leaders, Nigerians log on to social media to shout:"Bomb them! Bomb them! Bomb them!"You want bombs? Fine. But tell me:Where were your councillors when the terrorists first came? Where were your chairmen? Where were your district heads? Where were your governors? Where were the state intelligence units? Why do you leave them out of the conversation?THIS IS WHY OUR CONVERSATIONS ARE SHALLOWBecause they are emotional, not intellectual. Reactive, not reflective. Driven by pain, not by understanding.We make noise, but we don't ask the right questions. We attack the wrong people. We shout at the President while ignoring the people directly responsible for local safety.The insecurity crisis did not begin in Abuja.It began in:villages without governance, forests abandoned by states, wards neglected by councillors, LGAs crippled by corruption, states drowning in stolen security votes, communities living without police presence.We blame the roof when the foundation has collapsed.A FINAL WORD TO SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENTATORSBefore you tweet, post, rant, or go on air next time, ask yourself:Do I actually understand this issue, or am I just loud? Am I thinking, or am I performing anger? Why am I not holding local and state leaders accountable? Why do I expect the President to do a job that the councillor, chairman, and governor failed to do?Nigeria's insecurity has exposed the failure of our institutions— but it has also exposed the failure of our thinking. It is time to think with depth. Not with noise. Because noise has never saved a nation—and it never will.***************************************************************************************************
Bukola A. Oyeniyi
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Missouri State University
College of Humanities and Public Affairs
History Department
Room 440, Strong Hall,
Email: oyeniyib@gmail.com
***********************************************************
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