THE Nigerian Defence Headquarters (DHQ) has, once again, offered the public a wrong-headed seminar in institutional gaslighting. When the recent wave of school abductions hit Oyo State—traumatising toddlers and dozens of others—the military’s response was not one of urgent accountability or a somber admission of failure.
Instead, it was a carefully curated, sterile press release dismissing the violence as an “isolated criminal act.”
This is more than a linguistic slight of hand; it is a profound insult to the collective intelligence of the Nigerian people. By attempting to sanitize the reality of terrorist infiltration in the South-West, the military has widened the chasm of trust between the state and the citizens it is constitutionally obligated to protect.
*The Myth of the “Isolated” Incident*
For years, the military has peddled the comforting fiction that the South-West is a sanctuary of peace, shielded from the contagion of insurgency. Yet, the evidence on the ground screams a different reality. The nexus between illegal mining in sites like the Old Oyo National Park and the rise of terrorism is no longer a matter of conjecture—it is a documented, bleeding sore.
Our investigative scrutiny reveals a disturbing convergence: unregistered mining operations, often involving foreign interests, are not merely ecological disasters; they are the financial engines of terror. These “pockets of criminality,” as the DHQ prefers to call them, are backed by a complex web of complicity involving security agencies, local enablers, and international actors who prioritize extraction over human lives.
When the military claims there are no “terrorist strongholds” in the South-West, they are either displaying a willful blindness that borders on the criminal or they are actively shielding the very architecture of sabotage that allows these groups to flourish.
*The “Repentance” Scam: Funding the Enemy*
Perhaps the most egregious policy fueling this “trust deficit” is the military’s insistence on rehabilitating and reintegrating former terrorists into the society and, allegedly, into high military ranks. In a world-class conflict resolution framework, rehabilitation serves a purpose. In the Nigerian context, it has become a perverse incentive structure.
To the grieving mother of an abducted child or the thousands of displaced citizens languishing in IDP camps, the spectacle of a “repentant” terrorist being fed, clothed, and reintegrated—while their victims wallow in abject poverty and human degradation—is a grotesque betrayal.
It is a policy that emboldens the aggressor and punishes the victim. By effectively subsidizing the insurgency through these “reintegration” programs, the military has signaled to every criminal syndicate in the forest that there is no cost to their depravity. There is only a path to state-sponsored sanctuary.
*The Obsolescence of the Roadblock Mentality*
The military’s tactical playbook remains locked in the era of the civil war. The reliance on roadblocks—those ubiquitous, inefficient, and often corrupt checkpoints—is not a security strategy; it is a public relations theater that fails to stop a single determined insurgent while terrorizing the law-abiding populace.
While the military leadership remains obsessed with static, colonial-era policing, the terrorists are utilizing sophisticated, high-tech networks, mapping the hinterlands, and exploiting the very “illegal mining” corridors the military claims to be monitoring.
The failure is not one of equipment, though that is significant; it is a catastrophic failure of doctrine. Relying on “Special Forces” as a political prop while regular units are left to wither in unserviceable vehicles and demoralizing rotations is a recipe for the systemic failure we are witnessing today.
*A Plea for Truth*
The Defence Headquarters must stop treating the Nigerian citizenry as an audience to be managed with misinformation. The trust deficit is not a public relations hurdle to be cleared with a better press officer; it is the natural consequence of a state that has abandoned its primary mandate.
Over two million citizens are currently living in conditions of misery, displaced by a conflict the military refuses to fully acknowledge. Corruption, internal sabotage, and the romance with “rehabilitated” terror networks have turned the security sector into a hollowed-out shell.
It is time to end the lies. It is time to dismantle the failed reintegration programs that insult our national dignity. It is time to hold the high command accountable for the sabotage of our sovereign security. Until the military stops defending its own failures and starts defending the people, the regional contagion of terror will not just knock at the gates—it will consume the house entirely.
Erasmus Ikhide contributed this piece from Lagos via: ikhideluckyerasmus@gmail.com in response to the growing public outcry regarding the security situation in Oyo State and the broader criticisms of Nigerian military counter-insurgency policies, including the Defence Chief’s stance on controlled rehabilitation of captured terrorists to gather intelligence.
