S’West on path to N’West insurgency crisis — Retired General

Brigadier-General Peter Aro (retd.), former Nigerian Army commander and ex-Director of Information and Communication Technology at the Army Signals Headquarters, speaks with SOLOMON ODENIYI on the resurgence of terrorist attacks in the South-West and possible solutions, among other issues

how would you describe the nature and profile of the bandits operating in the south‑west today, compared with armed groups in the north‑west or south‑east?

The nature of banditry in the South-West today differs from what exists in the North-West and South-East, even though there are overlaps. In the North-West, many armed groups evolved gradually from cattle-rustling networks, illegal mining economies, arms proliferation, rural collapse, and weak governance into heavily armed territorial structures controlling forests and vulnerable communities. In the South-East, insecurity is more politically charged, shaped by separatist tensions, cult-criminal overlaps, and cycles of confrontation that blur the line between agitation and organised crime. The South-West, is facing a more gradual and adaptive penetration model: one built around mobility, forest infiltration, local intelligence gathering, and psychological fear rather than open territorial occupation. What makes the South-West increasingly alarming is that it is no longer about isolated ransom kidnappings alone. The recent attacks involving schools, children, and coordinated rural abductions indicate a dangerous evolution in operational sophistication. It suggests, organised logistics, planning, and growing familiarity with vulnerable rural corridors. There is also the possibility that some of the terrorists may have lived around forest communities long enough to understand the terrain, local movement patterns, and security weaknesses of the region. Since school children are targeted , it stops being mere opportunistic crime and becomes psychological warfare against society itself, creating fear capable of paralysing communities and weakening confidence in state protection. The deeper concern is that the South-West may be witnessing the early formation of the same insecurity ecosystem that matured gradually in parts of the North-West: forest sanctuaries, informant networks, ransom economies, logistical support systems, and fear-induced silence within local communities. Across Ondo, Oyo, Ekiti, Ogun, Osun, and parts of Kwara and Kogi historically connected to the South-West, these networks appear to exploit difficult terrain, inter-state boundaries, weak rural policing, and existing local relationships with calculated precision. It would also be dishonest to ignore the psychological impact of what is unfolding. Sustained insecurity does not only take lives; it quietly affects how people think, move, farm, educate their children, and even how they perceive government itself. Whether or not some attacks are intended to send political signals, the effect is often the same once fear begins to spread and trust starts to weaken. This is why the conscience of government must now speak louder than bureaucracy. The South-West may not yet be at the stage of entrenched insurgency seen elsewhere, but it is clearly approaching a dangerous transition point where delay carries serious consequences. Once parents begin doubting whether schools are safe, once rural communities organise daily life around fear, and once silence replaces cooperation with authorities, insecurity begins to reproduce itself faster than enforcement can contain it. That is how security crises harden: not overnight, but through repeated hesitation, fragmented intelligence, and delayed coordination.

In your view, what has triggered the spillover of banditry from the North‑West into the south‑west of Nigeria?

The shift of banditry and kidnapping from the North-West down into the South-West didn’t happen overnight. It was gradual, entirely predictable, and driven by a simple reality: when you squeeze a balloon in one place, it expands into another. Military offensives in places like Zamfara and Katsina disrupted the bandits’ camps, but they didn’t crush their networks. Instead of surrendering, these fighters did what any mobile enemy does: they took the path of least resistance. They slipped through the massive, unmonitored forest networks that stretch from Niger State straight into Kwara, Kogi, and deep into the dense bushes of Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti, Ogun, and Osun. Criminals naturally gravitate toward places where nobody is watching, where the police take too long to arrive, and the trees hide them from sight. To make matters worse, look at the informal, illegal mining camps popping up across the South-West. It is playing out exactly the way it did in Zamfara years ago. These camps are wild spaces with zero government presence. They attract transient workers, untraceable cash, and a heavy flow of hard drugs used to sustain exhausting labor. This environment is a goldmine for bandit syndicates. It gives them the perfect cover, cash flow, weapon routes, and a steady pool of desperate, drug-fueled young men ready to be recruited. Once kidnapping turned into a multi-billion naira business, it was only a matter of time before it migrated to wealthier, less militarised regions. But the recent attacks on schools and children show a terrifying shift. By going after the most vulnerable, these groups aren’t just looking for a payday; they are playing a psychological game. They want parents to feel helpless. They want the public to see that the government cannot protect its own children. The government cannot keep playing catch-up, sending troops after a tragedy has occurred. We need to hunt them before they strike. This means using real-time tech: tracking their phones, flying drones over forest canopies like the Kainji network, and cutting off their communication. Most importantly, it means federal forces and local communities must start talking to each other instantly. We have to take back our forests and show these criminals that there is nowhere left to hide.

Are these groups purely criminal, or do you think they have political, ethnic or ideological motives?

There is a growing perception in the South-West that these groups may not be entirely random or unstructured in their operations. Some of the patterns being observed suggest a level of coordination that goes beyond isolated criminal opportunism. The sequencing of attacks, familiarity with forest terrain, and the apparent ability to probe vulnerable communities before escalating operations have raised legitimate questions about whether there are layered structures guiding field activity. In several cases, what appears to be scattered kidnapping may in fact resemble a method of operation where small mobile units are deployed to test response time, study security gaps, and identify weak rural corridors before larger or repeated operations follow. When this pattern is repeated across multiple states connected by dense forest belts and porous inter-state boundaries, it creates the impression of a system that behaves with coordination, even where the exact hierarchy is not publicly visible. While the sophistication of some operations suggests planning and coordination, there is still no fully verified public evidence of a single centralised “military-style” command structure. What is clear, however, is that these networks are becoming more adaptive, more confident, and more capable of exploiting delays in intelligence response and weaknesses in rural security coverage. On social media and in local conversations, there are claims and concerns that some foreign-linked mining activities sometimes arrive with transient labour networks that include individuals with criminal backgrounds. While these claims remain largely unverified in formal public records, their persistence reflects a deeper anxiety about weak regulatory oversight in remote economic corridors. Whether accurate in every detail or not, what matters is that such environments if poorly regulated: can unintentionally become spaces where illegal networks, mobility flows, and criminal recruitment overlap. Whether structured or semi-structured, they depend on reconnaissance, mobility, informant support, and delayed interception. Breaking that cycle requires intelligence penetration, stronger forest surveillance, tighter coordination between security agencies, and community-based early warning systems that remove the advantage of “testing waters” without consequence. In the end, the question is not only what these groups are, but what the system allows them to become when gaps persist.

Do you think the security agencies were adequately prepared for the emergence of banditry in the south‑west? Where did the system fail?

The spread of banditry into the South-West is not the result of a single failure. It is the outcome of many small gaps that slowly aligned. Federal agencies were built for conventional threats, not a mobile forest-based network that depends more on intelligence and local access than firepower alone. At the same time, state actors received early signals but did not act with enough urgency. Movement patterns through Niger into Kwara and deeper into South-West corridors were not hidden. They were discussed in media spaces and local reports. Yet coordinated action across contiguous states came late, when the pattern had already hardened. In a system like ours, early warning is only useful when it triggers early coordination. That bridge was weak. Intelligence did not move fast enough into political decision-making, and political attention did not translate into immediate joint response. Amotekun was created to close that gap between community knowledge and formal security response. In practice, however, it has not fully operated as an intelligence-first structure. Its value lies less in visibility and more in discretion. The real advantage would have been embedded field presence, blending into rural life and feeding continuous intelligence into coordinated command systems. There were also earlier warning incidents, including attacks in parts of Oke-Ogun in Oyo State some years ago. Those events should have shifted the system from reaction to prevention. Instead, responses remained largely episodic. In some communities, self-help emerged as a substitute for structured protection, which itself signals institutional delay. In the end, the issue is not just operational weakness. It is the slow conversion of warning into action. Weak intelligence integration, delayed political alignment, fragmented coordination between states, and underuse of local security capacity all combined to widen the space for escalation. Banditry in the South-West grew less as a sudden invasion and more as a predictable progression that was not interrupted early enough.

From your experience, how effective are the current intelligence‑gathering and early‑warning mechanisms in tracking these bandits?

Assessing how effective our intelligence and early-warning systems are is not straightforward. It is difficult to judge performance without first understanding the environment they operate in—the funding delays, procurement bottlenecks, and shifting priorities that shape daily reality. In many cases, what looks like weakness in outcome is often a reflection of constraint in capacity. A major part of the challenge is how security modernisation is approached. It is often treated as a one-off purchase rather than a continuous system. But security technology does not work like that. A surveillance system bought years ago cannot meet today’s threats in the same form. Threat actors evolve, terrain dynamics change, and technology itself becomes outdated. The same issue applies to equipment like drones and surveillance assets. Buying a small number and treating them as a complete solution creates a false sense of readiness. These systems require constant maintenance, software updates, trained operators, and reliable spare parts. In reality, they are not just purchases; they are long-term commitments that depend on steady funding and technical support chains that are often outside the country. When those support systems break down, even well-intentioned investments become inactive. Equipment is grounded, coverage gaps appear, and field personnel are left to rely more on experience than on real-time technological support. Within these limits, it is fair to say that intelligence personnel are doing what they can with what is available. Their effort is not in question. The real issue is that effort alone cannot substitute for structure. To move forward, the system must shift from irregular procurement to sustained capability building. Intelligence and surveillance should be treated as living systems continuously funded, regularly upgraded, and realistically maintained. Only then can the country move from reacting to incidents to anticipating and preventing them.

What kind of operational strategy would you recommend for the military and police to tackle banditry in the South‑West?

The operational strategy required in the South-West must be intelligence-driven, decentralised, and deeply rooted in local terrain knowledge. This is not a conventional battlefield where large troop movements alone guarantee success. Banditry in the South-West thrives on mobility, forest concealment, informant networks, and delayed response systems. Once intelligence is weak, even heavily armed forces become vulnerable to ambush and misinformation. The first priority should be building a 24-hour real-time intelligence and surveillance architecture across vulnerable forest corridors linking Kwara, Kogi, Ondo, Oyo, Ekiti, Ogun, and Osun. Security agencies must integrate drone surveillance, local informant systems, forest mapping, telecommunications analysis, and rapid intelligence-sharing between the military, police, DSS, Amotekun, hunters, and trusted community structures. In asymmetric environments, the person who understands the terrain often becomes more valuable than the person carrying the biggest weapon. Secondly, operations must become more covert and infiltration-based. Security personnel cannot rely only on visible checkpoints and ceremonial deployments. Specially trained units, including selected Amotekun operatives, should operate discreetly within rural communities, blending into local environments to identify movement patterns, supply routes, and collaborators. Intelligence penetration weakens criminal networks long before confrontation begins. Thirdly, contiguous states must stop operating as isolated security islands. The attackers move freely across forests and boundaries, while government response often remains fragmented. A joint South-West operational command structure with shared databases, coordinated patrols, and rapid cross-border response capability is essential. Delays between states create escape corridors for armed groups. Government must also focus on dismantling the economic infrastructure sustaining banditry. Kidnapping survives through ransom flows, illegal arms movement, drug circulation, informant payments, and hidden logistics networks. It is difficult to believe that large criminal networks keep huge ransom proceeds physically within camps or private homes for long periods. The likelihood is that there are underground laundering structures, financial handlers, warehouses, and covert operators helping to move and conceal illicit funds. This is where the intelligence apparatus of the state becomes critical. Financial intelligence units, DSS, anti-money laundering agencies, and telecommunications surveillance must work together to identify the operators, intermediaries, and hidden economic channels sustaining these networks. If the financial ecosystem survives, armed networks will continue regenerating even after tactical victories in the forests. Also, I am proposing the use of a security vote scorecard as a practical way to address the rising wave of banditry across Nigeria. States that record lower levels of insecurity and demonstrate stronger protection of lives and property within a given year should be rewarded with higher security vote support and targeted federal incentives. There is a saying that “what is measured is what is improved.” A security scorecard for Nigerian states would bring these truths into governance. It would shift security funding from quiet, discretionary spending into a transparent system of measurable results, accountability, and performance. For this to work effectively, the National Assembly must enact a Security Performance and Intergovernmental Safety Act. This law would serve as the legal foundation for the framework and define clear, practical indicators for evaluation. These would include response time to attacks, trends in kidnapping, intelligence-sharing compliance, prosecution success rates, and the level of protection for schools and rural communities. It would also establish credible and independent data sources for verification. The National Economic Council would provide the natural coordination platform for implementation. Governors already meet there regularly, making it ideal for quarterly security performance reviews. However, rankings must be based on verified intelligence from the DSS, Police, military agencies, and independent audit systems, not self-reported figures. As the saying goes, “a man cannot be the judge in his own case.” Trust in data must be earned through verification. States that demonstrate strong prevention capacity, effective intelligence coordination, and rapid response systems should receive enhanced federal security support. Those that underperform should not be abandoned, but supported through targeted intervention plans and required to implement corrective actions before accessing additional discretionary funds. Safeguards must also be built to prevent manipulation. For this reason, verification must rely on multiple independent sources such as telecom data patterns, hospital records of violence, school incident reports, and community intelligence networks. In truth, “one stream does not make a river.” Only combined evidence can tell the full story. The goal is not punishment but progress. Security votes should evolve from quiet, opaque allocations into structured instruments of national improvement. In a country facing mobile and adaptive criminal threats, money alone cannot guarantee safety. Coordination, accountability, and measurable outcomes must define the next phase of Nigeria’s security architecture. Ultimately, when security is measured honestly, it begins to improve intentionally. And as wisdom teaches us, ‘where there is clarity, there is direction.’

In your time in service, what counter‑banditry or counter‑insurgency tactics proved most effective, and can they be applied here?

In counter-banditry and counter-insurgency work, one lesson stands above all others: force alone is never enough. Firepower may respond to threats, but intelligence is what prevents them from forming in the first place. When intelligence is strong, operations are precise. When it is weak, even superior force ends up reacting late and guessing wrong. The most effective approach has always been early visibility of the threat. This comes from deep human intelligence within communities, careful observation of movement patterns, and the ability to separate normal rural activity from early signs of coordinated planning. In forest environments, the side that sees first usually gains the advantage first. Just as important is coordination across agencies. When military, police, and intelligence services work in silos, gaps appear and are quickly exploited. When information is shared in real time and operations are fused, response becomes faster, cleaner, and more effective. In practice, coordination often achieves what raw numbers cannot. Another key lesson is unpredictability in deployment. Static presence alone is not enough. Once movements become predictable, they are studied and exploited. Rotating patrol routes, changing timing, and avoiding fixed patterns reduces exposure and keeps adversaries uncertain. In this kind of conflict, predictability creates vulnerability. At the centre of it all is a simple truth: it is not about time or era. What remains constant in this kind of warfare is intelligence. Intelligence is the real centre of gravity. Everything else supports it. Without it, operations become reaction. With it, even limited resources become decisive. That is why future strategy must go beyond manpower. Governments must invest in intelligence tools: drones, signal monitoring systems, tracking capabilities, and forest surveillance technologies. But procurement alone is not enough. These systems must be sustained through maintenance, spare parts, and long-term technical partnerships. In the end, counter-intelligence is not a one-time purchase. It is a living system. If it is sustained, it shapes the battlefield. If it fails, everything else follows.

Are the current security deployments in the South‑West adequate in terms of manpower, logistics, and equipment?

The issue is not that the Armed Forces or Police are insufficient in strength. The core challenge is that they are overstretched, and the threat environment has outgrown purely manpower-based response. In my view, the current deployments are not inadequate in numbers alone, but they are structurally constrained by geography, speed, and intelligence gaps. Banditry in the South-West is forest-based, mobile, and intelligence-driven. That means even a well-staffed force will struggle if it depends mainly on physical presence and reactive movement. This is where the real gap lies. The system is still heavily kinetic, while the threat is increasingly technological in nature. What is missing is not more boots on the ground, but a strong technology layer that multiplies the effectiveness of existing personnel. Security today is not about replacing forces, but about extending their reach. Technology must therefore move from isolated procurement to integrated deployment. Surveillance drones, thermal imaging systems, forest monitoring grids, signal intelligence tools, and real-time communication networks must operate as one connected architecture. These systems should feed directly into command centres that can trigger rapid, coordinated response across states. It is also important that this is not treated as one-off acquisition. Technology without maintenance, spare parts, and long-term service agreements quickly becomes dormant. What is needed is a sustained intelligence-technology ecosystem, supported by partnerships that ensure continuous functionality, upgrades, and operational readiness. So the conclusion is simple. The Armed Forces and Police are not the problem in terms of strength. The gap is that they are operating in a 21st-century threat environment with partially 20th-century support systems. The next phase of security in the South-West must therefore be force-plus-technology, not force-alone.

How should the military and police work with vigilante groups, hunters, and community‑based security outfits without creating parallel armies?

The key is integration, not militarisation. Vigilantes, hunters, and community security groups should remain lightly-armed, intelligence auxiliaries, not parallel forces. Their strength is local knowledge. They understand forests, routes, strangers, and early warning signals better than external deployments. That advantage should be formalised within the national security architecture, not left informal or uncontrolled. The military and police must place all community actors under a single joint command and intelligence framework. No independent operations. No independent arrests. No parallel command structures. This prevents fragmentation and reduces the risk of armed groups operating outside lawful control. Their operational role should focus on occupying and stabilising ungoverned spaces after clearance operations. The military clears, then auxiliaries help hold territory through presence, observation, and reporting. That breaks the cycle of attack, withdrawal, and reoccupation. A structured remuneration system is also essential. Hunters and vigilante operatives should receive approved stipends or salaries through transparent security funding channels. This strengthens discipline, reduces vulnerability to corruption, and formalises accountability for risk and service. In addition, there is already an existing national structure that can be leveraged. The Nigerian Forest Security Service operated voluntarily with nationwide presence before the Bill establishing it was signed into law. In fact, they were part of the stakeholders that initiated the legislation itself. It is therefore logical to absorb and integrate such a structure into the formal security framework rather than duplicate efforts or waste established networks. Technology must sit above the entire system. Drones, surveillance grids, and signal intelligence should validate field reports and guide deployment decisions in real time. This ensures accuracy and prevents misinformation or panic-driven mobilisation. The guiding principle remains simple: clear with force, hold with trained local auxiliaries, and monitor with technology. Anything outside that chain risks becoming a parallel security structure instead of a coordinated national defence system.

What lessons can be learned from other Nigerian regions or neighboring countries that have dealt with similar banditry or kidnapping crises?

Lessons from other Nigerian regions and comparable countries show one consistent truth: insecurity is rarely defeated by force alone. It is defeated by intelligence depth, local ownership, financial disruption, and sustained pressure over time. From the North-West, the clearest lesson is that delayed coordination allows criminal networks to evolve. Early warnings around forest banditry were treated as localised incidents for too long, and the networks adapted faster than the response system. The key lesson is speed of unified action across states sharing forest borders. From the North-East, the major lesson is that territorial recovery is possible only when military operations are followed immediately by holding strategies. Clearing zones without stabilisation allows re-infiltration. That is why hybrid approaches combining military force, intelligence units, and local community actors became necessary over time. From parts of the South-East, the lesson is that insecurity becomes more complex when political interpretation overtakes intelligence clarity. Once actors, motives, and narratives blur, response becomes fragmented. Clear intelligence classification is essential before action becomes effective. From countries that have faced severe insurgency such as Colombia and Sri Lanka, the consistent lesson is that success came from intelligence penetration, financial disruption of networks, and long-term coordinated strategy, not isolated tactical victories. These examples show that when insurgent ecosystems are allowed to survive economically and socially, they regenerate even after military pressure. However, Nigeria’s context also requires honest realism. Our moral, religious, and social structures are deeply influential in shaping behaviour. That is why solutions must include moral authority alongside security force. Religious and traditional leaders can shape perception in ways the state alone cannot. In that light, a coordinated moral front is important. If respected authorities such as the Sultan of Sokoto and other religious leaders clearly and consistently delegitimise kidnapping and insurgency as incompatible with faith, it strengthens societal resistance to recruitment narratives. A unified moral position helps strip criminal groups of ideological cover and community sympathy. Still, moral declarations alone are not enough. They must sit alongside intelligence systems, technology deployment, financial tracking, and coordinated enforcement. Countries that succeeded did not rely on one pillar. The broader lesson is simple. There is no purely military solution, and no purely moral solution. The effective path is a combined system: intelligence-led operations, financial disruption, territorial holding strategies, community legitimacy, and sustained political will applied consistently over time.

How can communities be better organised and empowered to protect themselves while still relying on state security?

Across Nigeria, communities can strengthen their safety by building simple, united local networks that serve as the eyes and ears for state security agencies like the Police, Civil Defence, and the military. This involves clear roles for local leaders, youth, farmers, and traditional rulers to observe and report early signs of threats in a calm and coordinated way. By working hand-in-hand with government forces rather than replacing them, communities create a stronger partnership that deters criminals through vigilance and rapid information sharing, while respecting the law and avoiding panic or rumours.

What tactical vulnerabilities are these bandit groups exploiting that allow them to carry out mass abductions so easily?

The success of mass abductions in Nigeria is not built on superior strength alone. It is built on patience, surveillance, local collaboration, and exploitation of predictable weaknesses within vulnerable communities. These groups rarely move blindly. In many cases, they study targets quietly for days, sometimes weeks, before striking. One major vulnerability they exploit is predictability. Boarding schools, rural roads, farm settlements, and isolated communities often follow fixed routines. Attackers observe movement patterns, security presence, lighting conditions, and response delays. They learn when students wake, when guards change shifts, when roads become empty, and how long reinforcements usually take to arrive. In asymmetric operations, information becomes a weapon long before guns are used. Their timing also reflects deliberate operational logic. Boarding schools are often targeted in the very early hours of the morning, when fatigue is highest and resistance is weakest. Day schools and roadside abductions may occur around active movement periods, sometimes mid-morning, when panic spreads faster and coordination becomes harder. Many village attacks and kidnappings occur between midnight and 2am, when communities are psychologically and physically least prepared to respond. Mobility is another critical factor. These groups depend heavily on motorcycles and forest escape corridors. Large fuel purchases in vulnerable rural zones should naturally trigger intelligence attention, especially where multiple bikes are involved. Fuel movement patterns, unusual supply activity, and repeated logistics purchases near forest corridors can provide early warning signals if monitored properly. No sustained kidnapping network operates in total isolation from human environment. Local collaboration, whether through fear, financial inducement, coercion, or silent sympathy, often plays a role in helping attackers understand terrain, identify wealthy targets, or monitor security movement. That is why counter-banditry cannot rely only on patrols. It must include behavioural intelligence and close observation of unusual lifestyle patterns, sudden unexplained spending, suspicious movement cycles, and hidden support structures around vulnerable communities. The deeper lesson is that these attacks succeed where observation is weak and communities become disconnected from security intelligence systems. The attackers study society carefully before acting. Government and communities must therefore become equally observant. In security environments like this, prevention often begins with noticing what others dismiss as ordinary.

In your professional opinion, how do you balance the government’s public stance against paying ransom with the growing temptation for families and communities to pay privately?

The government’s public stance against paying ransom is understandable and strategically correct. Once kidnapping becomes profitable, it reproduces itself. Every successful ransom payment risks financing more weapons, logistics, recruitments, and abductions. A state cannot sustain authority while criminal networks openly build economies around fear. At the same time, it is impossible not to empathise with families trapped in these situations. When a child, parent, or loved one is in captivity, emotion naturally overrides policy. In that moment, survival comes first, not doctrine. This is where the tension between state policy and private desperation becomes most visible. The deeper challenge is that government has not sufficiently attacked the financial and logistical infrastructure behind kidnapping. Ransom money does not vanish into forests. It moves through handlers, intermediaries, transport routes, and laundering channels. Public discussions and social media narratives have also raised concerns about suspicious financial activity around remote mining corridors and poorly monitored extractive zones. Whether fully verified or not, they point to gaps in oversight that must be closed. There are also recurring concerns about low-altitude aircraft activity around isolated areas, sometimes linked in public discourse to movement of cash, supplies, and illegal logistics. This raises a critical national question: Nigeria’s aerial surveillance and radar coverage must evolve beyond conventional civil aviation monitoring into a security-sensitive detection system that can flag unusual low-level movement patterns in real time. This is where a stronger integrated response becomes necessary, especially from the Air Force, NAMA, and intelligence community. First, the Nigerian Air Force should expand low-altitude persistent surveillance corridors over high-risk forest belts using a mix of manned aircraft, drones, and forward-operating sensor nodes. These should not be occasional patrols but continuous monitoring grids over known infiltration routes. Second, NAMA’s radar architecture, including TRACON and TopSky systems, must be reinforced with low-level gap-filling technologies such as ground-based short-range radar, mobile radar units, and elevated sensor towers in forest-adjacent regions. The goal is to reduce blind spots created by terrain masking and low-altitude flight paths. Third, Nigeria needs a fusion intelligence centre for aerial, financial, and ground data. Air Force radar feeds, NAMA airspace data, DSS intelligence, and financial tracking units must operate in a single analytical loop. Suspicious low-level flight patterns should trigger automatic intelligence alerts, not delayed manual review. Fourth, the system must move from passive tracking to pattern detection and anomaly mapping. Repeated low-altitude flights near mining sites, forest corridors, or remote settlements should be flagged for joint investigation. Intelligence is no longer just observation; it is behavioural pattern analysis. Fifth, radar and surveillance infrastructure must not only be installed but continuously maintained under binding service agreements. Spare parts, calibration systems, and technical partnerships must be secured so that critical coverage gaps do not emerge silently over time. Finally, financial intelligence must be tightly linked to aerial surveillance. Suspicious bulk cash movement, unregulated extractive site activity, and unusual logistics flows must be treated as one connected ecosystem, not separate problems. The truth remains simple. Kidnapping survives not only through armed groups, but through invisible economic and logistical systems that sustain it. Once those systems are disrupted—financially, spatially, and operationally—the business model begins to collapse. A nation defeats organised kidnapping not only by rescuing victims, but by making the entire ecosystem of ransom movement, laundering, and logistics too visible, too tracked, and too risky to sustain.

What measures can be taken to reduce the value of kidnapping as a business model for these gangs?

To reduce kidnapping as a business model, the aim is to make it unprofitable, risky, and difficult to cash out. First, attack the money trail. Track ransom flows through banks, fintechs, and cash withdrawal patterns in real time. Flag unusual transactions immediately. Second, break the laundering chain – target middlemen, transporters, and informal businesses that convert ransom into usable cash. Third, shrink response time. Fast intelligence fusion and rapid deployment units reduce the window between abduction and rescue. Fourth, deny safe havens. Continuous surveillance and clear-and-hold operations in forest corridors prevent criminal regrouping. Fifth, reduce community silence. Strengthen protected reporting systems and enforce penalties for aiding negotiations or concealing information. And sixth, use technology as a force multiplier. Integrate drones, radar, telecom tracking, and financial intelligence into one system. In simple terms, kidnapping loses value when money is traceable, movement is visible, and escape space is removed.

If you were to advise the current government, what three key policy changes would you recommend to tackle banditry nationwide?

To defeat the modern, adaptive insurgency of banditry and kidnapping, the Federal Government must transition from reactive, defensive troop deployments to an aggressive strategy of tactical denial, institutional accountability, and frontline finality. These are the three foundational policy pillars required to reclaim sovereign control – Policy 1: Leveraging Existing Federal Law to Establish Forward-Deployed Terrorism Tribunals or Establish “Frontline Terrorism Tribunals” via Exploitation of Federal Statutes. The current judicial bottleneck is a major structural failure. Justice delayed is not merely justice denied: it is a security liability. When captured insurgents sit in indefinite detention without trial, the entire counter-terrorism architecture seizes up. And when state governors quietly refuse to sign execution warrants, whether from political calculation or personal reluctance, the law’s deterrent edge is quietly blunted. The Policy and Mechanism: The Attorney General of the Federation should systematically direct the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court to establish mobile, specialized judicial panels physically annexed to, or near, military Forward Operating Bases in critical theaters (such as the North-West forest zones and South-West border corridors), scaling up the mass-trial model successfully utilized at the Wawa Military Cantonment in Kainji.

1. Airtight Federal Jurisdiction. Prosecuting bandits and kidnappers under the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022 does more than upgrade the charge: it anchors the case firmly in the Federal High Court, which holds exclusive jurisdiction under Section 251(1)(g) of the Constitution. That matters. It protects the accused’s right to a fair hearing under Section 36, while building convictions on ground solid enough to survive appeal.
2. Taking the Warrant Out of the Governor’s Hands: This is because terrorism is a federal offense, the power to authorize an execution no longer rests with a state governor. It moves, constitutionally, to the President, whose prerogative of mercy under Section 175 governs all federal criminal matters.
3. The Terminal Command: Capital sentences of death by firing squad will be signed by the Commander-in-Chief in decisive batches and executed swiftly within secure military perimeters, delivering an unyielding shockwave of frontline deterrence.

Policy 2: Understanding how bandit networks think, and turning that understanding into prosecutable evidence. The success of mass abductions is not built on superior strength, but on patience, surveillance, and predictability. Bandits study targets quietly for weeks observing movement patterns, lighting conditions, shift changes, and response delays. They strike with calculated timing: targeting boarding schools and villages between midnight and 2:00 AM when fatigue is highest and psychological resistance is weakest, or striking roads mid-morning to maximize panic and shatter coordination. Furthermore, their logistics depend heavily on mobility. Large fuel purchases in vulnerable rural zones and unusual supply activity near forest corridors are clear operational signatures that currently go ignored. Crucially, these syndicates rely on local informant networks, coerced or incentivized, to feed them intelligence on target wealth and security troop movements.

The centrepiece of this proposal is the Joint Evidence Fusion Cell: a standing, multi-agency unit embedded within major military divisional commands and joint task force theatres. Its sole purpose is to close the distance between what soldiers know on the ground and what prosecutors can prove in court. The Cell brings three actors to the same table: Military Intelligence Officers, Digital Forensics Experts, and prosecutors from the Federal Ministry of Justice. Each speaks a different professional language. The JEFC forces them to speak one. The intelligence focus shifts from passive patrolling to something more deliberate: tracking the logistical fingerprint of banditry itself. Anomalous fuel movements: unusual supply spikes near forest corridors like the Kainji National Park network. Sudden, unexplained wealth or conspicuous lifestyle changes in vulnerable communities. These are not random signals. They are the operational grammar of organised banditry, and they are readable. The moment a syndicate cell is disrupted or an informant network is rolled up, the JEFC moves immediately: extracting and preserving digital forensic evidence before it can be deleted, disputed, or lost. Weapon-flaunting social media broadcasts. Geolocated SIM card logs. Satellite surveillance records: financial trails from ransom payments. Every thread is captured, catalogued, and formatted for court. By the time a suspect stands before a frontline tribunal, the case is already built. These policies draws the line: rehabilitation for the coerced, prosecution for the committed. No doctrine of unconventional warfare has ever succeeded by execution alone. Bandit networks understand this instinctively: which is why they do not simply recruit. They coerce. Vulnerable rural communities are conscripted into compliance through fear, producing a layer of low-risk accomplices who are less willing participants than trapped ones. Any serious counter-banditry strategy must reckon honestly with that distinction. The proposal is straightforward: expand the Operation Safe Corridor architecture, proven in the North-East: and apply its dual-track methodology nationwide to banditry and kidnapping. The split is deliberate and non-negotiable. Syndicate commanders, recruiters, active shooters, and internal military collaborators go directly to the Frontline Tribunals for capital prosecution. Military saboteurs face an additional reckoning: aggressive court-martial under Section 120 of the Armed Forces Act for aiding the enemy. There is no rehabilitation track for those who chose this. For the others, the local lookout pressed into service under threat, the logistics runner who had no real exit, the informant who cooperated because the alternative was worse: Joint Investigation Cells conduct systematic screening. Those who genuinely acted under duress are diverted into an expanded, high-security version of the DRRR model: De-radicalisation, Rehabilitation, Readjustment, and Reintegration. The strategic logic is as important as the humanitarian one. Separating the coerced from the committed starves hardcore bandit networks of their forced labour pools, generates actionable intelligence for frontline forces, and opens a structured pathway back to stability for communities that terror has held hostage. The Strategic Objective: By implementing these changes, the state moves from a reactive posture to a proactive, technology-driven containment strategy. It leverages ironclad federal law to enforce absolute terminal justice for irredeemable warlords, while deploying deep, strategic statecraft to dismantle the logistics and informant networks that feed the crisis.

Policy 3: Enact a Performance-Driven Security Vote Scorecard

Security votes in Nigeria have historically functioned as opaque, discretionary spending envelopes with zero correlation to actual safety outcomes on the ground. This lack of financial accountability allows underperforming regions to tolerate weak rural policing, unmonitored forests, and fragmented local intelligence networks. Additionally, a pure kinetic strategy fails to recognise that bandit networks use raw terror to coerce vulnerable populations into silent compliance, necessitating a clear separation between hardcore actors and coerced accomplices. The National Assembly must pass a Security Performance and Intergovernmental Safety Act, creating a legalized framework that ties federal financial incentives and security allocations directly to measurable governance outcomes. The Strategic Objective: Money alone cannot secure lives against an adaptive, mobile threat. By implementing these three pillars, the Federal Government legally weaponizes federal law to ensure swift execution for unrepentant warlords, monitors the exact tactical signatures the enemy uses to exploit society, and transforms security funding into an honest, performance-driven instrument of national survival.

If you were in charge of security in the South‑West today, what would be your first 90‑day plan to push back against banditry and abductions?

If I were in charge of security in the South-West today, the first ninety days would be focused on one objective: shrink the operational space of bandit networks by making movement, money, and communication visible again. The starting point would be intelligence consolidation, not scattered response. I would sit directly on the National Financial Intelligence Unit to track suspicious financial flows linked to ransom networks. At the same time, I would work with Immigration to verify permits and identity records of all foreign and local actors operating in mining corridors, because uncontrolled movement in those spaces often becomes cover for logistics and recruitment networks. Next would be communications intelligence. I would secure lawful authority, through proper judicial and regulatory channels, to access real-time call data records tied to kidnapping hotspots. The aim is not surveillance for its own sake, but pattern detection: who is communicating, when, and around which locations before and after incidents. In modern asymmetric conflict, communication patterns often reveal intent before action. Then I would shift attention to the physical environment. I would rally South-West states into a joint arrangement to procure commercial satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) coverage. This becomes the “eye in the sky” over forest belts, border corridors, and mining zones. Unlike optical imagery, SAR can see through cloud cover and operate day or night, closing one of the biggest blind spots in current surveillance. These layers would then be fused into a single operational intelligence picture. Financial signals, telecom patterns, immigration data, and satellite movement would not sit in separate silos. They would be analysed together so that anomalies become actionable intelligence, not scattered information. Amotekun and other local structures would then serve as ground verification and presence forces. Their role would be to confirm intelligence, maintain visibility in cleared areas, and provide early warning from communities. But their effectiveness depends on being guided by a strong intelligence backbone, not operating independently. In the same period, I would prioritise rapid clearance of identified forest corridors and immediate occupation afterward. Clearance without holding space only resets the problem. The objective is not just to disrupt, but to deny return. Finally, I would ensure that response is matched with visibility. Arrests, prosecutions, and disrupted networks must be publicly communicated in a disciplined way. Not for propaganda, but to restore confidence and weaken the psychological hold of fear in affected communities. In simple terms, the first ninety days would not be about scattering effort. It would be about building a system where movement is tracked, money is visible, communication is traceable, and no forest corridor is truly dark anymore. (Punch)