Nigeria faces bloody break-up. Only wisdom, justice and truth can save the country
Irohinoodua Editorial February, 2026
As Nigerian inches toward another season of elections, the prospect of an implosion is real. There is a force hell bent on having their way or have the country exploded into pieces. The military coup plotted that failed last year may have been a significant indication of more troubles to come.
This is apart from insecurity that has lasted for years and renewed in the year 2026 again and again. On January 30, just few days ago, 25 people were killed when Boko Haram attacked Sabon Gari, a town in Nigeria’s North East.
Earlier on Thursday the same week, Ismamic fundamentalists raided military posts with drones, killing at least nine soldiers. The Senator representing the area, Aliyu Ndume said he was ‘shocked and saddened.’
Insecurity ahead of National Elections
As the Presidential election draws near, the mass killings are mind-boggling. The country of 250 ethnic groups now experience mass death and the ruins of humanity is obvious on the roads, worship places, in our homes and on the farmsteads. Nigeria is threatened by a combination of terrorism and non-state driven fascism.
The country actually began to sink into darkness in 2014 but there was official denial.
Credible reports claim 490 people have been abducted in two weeks last year. 2025 drew its curtains with trails of mass killings. 2026 has started on the same note. In Ondo State, a pregnant woman was kidnapped in mid-January.
In Port Harcourt on December 02, the last month of last year, five students of the University were kidnapped. In Abuja, six girls and a 16 year old little boy were murdered on November 28 at Gidan Bijii, Bwari. On the same day, 24 farmers among them a pregnant woman were seized at gun point in Niger State. At Mussa, Bornu State, several people were kidnapped by terrorists. In Kwara, Ifelodun area, no fewer than 40 people have been killed. There are several unreported cases of chilling murder in rural communities, of incessant rape and kidnapping.
Fulani terrorism seeks to subdue the country and force democracy under its barbaric grip. Farmers have largely abandoned their crops while women can no longer go to the stream. Urban centres are suspected to be saturated with terrorist cells, waiting to be activated. While security operatives are striking rogue camps, violence continue to surge. Guns are everywhere.
The United Nations, (UN) in 2016 said 500m illegal weapons are in West Africa with over 70 %, that is 350m of them in Nigeria. The Director of UN Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Africa, (UNREC), Olatokunbo Ige at the National Consultation on Physical Security and Stockpile Management, (PSSM) held in Abuja gave the figure. The Presidential Committee on Small Arms and Light Weapons, (PRESCOM) organised the event in collaboration with PSSM.
Deaf and Dump Leaders
Unfortunately, state actors think a sudden skip into uncontrollable chaos, or even war, is a myth. They argue: The country survived a civil war. The hurdle of June 12 mayhem was crossed, overcame bloody three and two attempted coups , saw eight civilian-to-civilian elections since 1999. In the face of overwhelming terrorism, chaos, trembling and fear, blind optimists think the country will triumph.
This is the deaf and dumb camp that thinks even if 20,000 people are killed in one month, armed gangs take over rural and urban areas, nothing is yet abnormal.
The driving force of the deaf and dumb camp is not nationalism but the overconfidence that their undue privileges will for ever be sustained, through a combination of brute force, cronyism, rented praise-singers, intrigue and corruption of the entire system, to the extent that, any one who raises opposition, including terrorists, would be identified and ‘settled.’ They are confident that even-though the masses are weak, that they are disillusioned, poor, kind-hearted and religious; barely educated enough to interpret the dynamics of class exploitation and are poorly organised. Precedence may be on the side of those who think the country will overcome. But history says otherwise.
The Soviet Union survived two world wars and an internal bloody civil war, but in 1994, one of the world’s most powerful countries, caved into 12 new nations. Yugoslavia survived for almost 70 years, yet it fell. No one ever thought Mobutu Seseseko would be pushed out of a fortress he held in iron grip. But a few men launched rebellion that soon gripped the entire country sending a once powerful dictator into exile where he died. In all of these instances, the history and objective conditions may differ but the recurrent decimal is the disregard and contempt for justice, truth and the vicious corruption and failure to hearken to the voice of reason in its raw form; the arrogance and illusion of those in power and the unpredictable, sudden rebellion of a once docile masses.
All over human history, those that benefit from a decadent system are usually deluded by the grandeur of power and its pretence to infallibility. The signs are too glaring, too obvious that Nigeria may become history. The signals have been shown over and over, physically and in spirit that Nigeria is fading into oblivion, but the leaders are so fixated to their own assumptions that reason and common sense are a mirage. A country may cope with mass uprising. A country may survive unprecedented protests, or even foreign invasion, but hardly can a country survive the geo-metric increase in sophisticated arms in the hands of non-state actors, not just in a part of the country but almost in all parts of the country.
The worse aspect is that the country stands two hands up in awe as terrorists, obviously supported by high-calibre politicians and extreme Islamist, encourage and prop up what looks like iron cast determination to set Nigerian ablaze. Almost everyday, terrorists attack churches and mosques, kidnap, rape and kill innocent souls. Those kidnapped are not taken out of the country, they are kept within. Authorities respond by paying huge sums to the criminals who in turn carry out more devastating attacks in few days after each horrendous mayhem. The issue is no longer the weapons they display. Government no longer talk about their killing of civilians and soldiers.
The authorities now get more worried about how much the government would pay in the desperation to save the system from exposure to global ridicule.
Tinubu and a drifting country
We should be fair enough to agree that these state of anomie has its own history. While terrorism started in 2009, it became entrenched under President Mohammadu Buhari who appeared to have looked the other way as heavily armed militias and terrorists took over Nigerian grass and forest homestead. There are reports that a section of the All Progressive Congress, (APC), possibly the Congress for Progressive Change, (CPC) brought the armed Fulani from across West Africa, armed them and disperse them across indigenous territories across Nigeria to take over the land and subdue it, unless power is in the hands of their masters.
This was the mess handed over to Tinubu. It is simplistic to assume that Nigeria would have been different if either Peter Obi or Atiku Abubakar had won the 2023 Presidential elections. If Atiku had won, there are strong feelings that he would have continued where Buhari, a fellow Fulani left it.
More so, it is believed the rotation of power to the South is partly responsible for the rise in terrorism.If Buhari tolerated his own kinsmen inflicting terrific terror on Nigerians, there is only one possibility: Atiku is likely to do the same to further protect and defend the havoc of his people. Would Obi have been able to tackle the hydra headed problem? Not likely. Apart from his weak network across the country, his lack of compelling history of confrontation with such a problem on a national scale, his lack of record in the struggle for the restructuring of Nigeria, suggest that he may have been overwhelmed.
His faith, being a Christian is another poser. Would terrorists who seek to Islamise Nigeria fold their arms if Nigeria is led by a Christian President? It therefore seems that this is a problem Nigeria was destined to confront at one point in her blood-soaked history.
Does the extreme section of the Fulani North think that power would for ever remain in the hands of its elite or their cronies? Do they think the entire country would be consumed by their designed rage? This is shortsightedness.
What is to be done.
Nigerians are bored listening to the rhetoric that President Tinubu inherited the problem. Yes, he did. But Nigerians are more concerned about what he wishes to do to make them sleep at night in peace and walk in the day without fear. What Nigeria needs is bold and decisive restructuring.
The country needs to shrink or sink. Centralisation of power at the centre is linked to corruption, repression and the creation of a cabal that thinks Nigeria is its private fiefdom, a tiny group that wants to hold the entire country to ransom. It is this evil caucus that seems bent on bringing down Nigeria using mass terrorism, fear and threats, simply because they have lost power. Their primitive tactics threaten economic development of the country and stunts prospect of cultural and social renaissance. Their tactics is to make the country ungovernable using violence as a tool.
The President’s Lack of Mass Communication
The President and his team are also not communicating enough. Press statements and social media notes cannot com.pare with real, lifetime engagements with social and cultural forces across the country including Pan ethnic associations. His aides have failed in this regard. The President needs to explain the challenges and his efforts to the people that elected him not just to his party members.
He needs to galvanise the people and convince them that he understands the problem and that he is ready to provide workable solutions. He should not pretend he does not know the enemies he is fighting when it is already public knowledge. He also should rally progressive Fulani in the North who stand above primitive tactics of their kinsmen.
The President should be commended for the creation of Regional Development Commissions, the mooted idea of State Police and the National Guard. These are bold steps. Why he implemented the regional commissions in months, the restructuring of the security architecture has been very slow. The President no doubt is facing one of the most difficult moments in his life.
He has to fix the country or face the consequences, stop the violence or reap the reward of the current whirlwind.
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