Summary
In early February, an insurgent group attacked communities in Kwara, North Central Nigeria, killing over a hundred people. President Bola Tinubu condemned the attack, ordered the deployment of an army battalion to the area and approved the establishment of a new military command structure to coordinate Operation Savannah Shield, an initiative aimed at dislodging armed groups and reinforcing protection for vulnerable communities. He also directed closer collaboration between federal and state agencies to support affected residents, strengthen intelligence operations, and ensure those responsible are tracked down. This routine violence across many parts of Nigeria shows that a press statement cannot stop the […] The post The Hollowing of Sovereignty: Nigeria’s Trilemma and the Retreat of the State appeared first on African Arguments.
Full Text
Photo from fieldwork in Ikakumo, Ondo State. The image of the power lines shows the physical signs of the state in a place where governance and security have retreated. In early February, an insurgent group attacked communities in Kwara, North Central Nigeria, killing over a hundred people. President Bola Tinubu condemned the attack, ordered the deployment of an army battalion to the area and approved the establishment of a new military command structure to coordinate Operation Savannah Shield, an initiative aimed at dislodging armed groups and reinforcing protection for vulnerable communities. He also directed closer collaboration between federal and state agencies to support affected residents, strengthen intelligence operations, and ensure those responsible are tracked down. This routine violence across many parts of Nigeria shows that a press statement cannot stop the violence. You cannot win a war with a new statement or communique, but with actions, political will and presence. The hollowing of Nigerian sovereignty These attacks reveal the gradual hollowing out of Nigerian sovereignty. Such a violent attack represents ongoing attempts by non-state actors to hijack the nation’s peace, a challenge that rhetoric alone cannot resolve. To save the state, the federal government must abandon its pastime of reactive, distant governance. Security is not an abstract concept to be debated in the capital; it is the physical, breathing presence of the state in the lives of its most vulnerable. The erosion of Nigeria’s authority has sparked a high-level debate among scholars and public intellectuals. The scholars Jibrin Ibrahim and Alex Thurston have debated the implications of a potential surrender of sovereignty to foreign powers, specifically the United States, through increased military footprints and the potential hosting of foreign bases. While these concerns are valid, they often overlook the fact that sovereignty is first domestic before it is diplomatic. Sovereignty is not only lost at diplomatic tables; it is lost when bandits raid villages and kill scores of innocent citizens. Osmund Agbo, a US-based medical doctor and public intellectual, offers a necessary counterpoint to Jibrin Ibrahim’s take, suggesting that the fear of losing sovereignty to foreigners is secondary to the fact that sovereignty is no l onger self-evident within our borders. As Agbo poignantly asks : “We speak of sovereignty as though it is self-evident. But how would the people of Woro in Kaiama Local Government Area define it after enduring terror at close quarters ? How does one explain sovereignty to the farmer in Chiraa, who is compelled to pay levies to the Islamic State in order to farm his own land? For citizens who must negotiate survival with armed non-state actors, sovereignty is not a constitutional doctrine. It is either security or its absence.” This diagnosis aligns with the grim reality of the shadow state – a parallel system of authority where non-state actors perform the functions of government, such as taxation and law enforcement, in areas where the state is weak or has retreated. Before we can fear a handover of authority to Washington, we must acknowledge the authority already surrendered to non-state actors through the state’s loss of its monopoly on violence. There have been reports in various Nigerian states of residents fleeing their communities due to fear of bandits . The travel log: governance by social distancing At the heart of Nigeria’s insecurity and sovereignty challenge is a profound leadership gap. While sovereignty is being contested in peripheral villages, the state’s executive authority is increasingly defined by its absence. The data tells a story of detachment. Last year, the president was reported to have spent about 30 per cent of his tenure overseas . In January 2026 alone, the President was abroad for 23 days across two trips . While the administration justifies this as “economic diplomacy,” it facilitates a catastrophic deficit of presence. You cannot secure a nation from a distance. The economic cost is equally damning: over ₦2 billion spent on travel in six months of 2024. This expenditure, in contrast to the lack of basic security infrastructure in the rural areas currently under siege, creates what I call “democratic dissonance.” It is a state where the political class inhabits a world of international summits and high-altitude protocols, while the citizenry remains exposed to extinction on the ground. People as infrastructure: activating the social body To reclaim these territories, the President must look beyond the traditional military apparatus and recognise what AbdouMaliq Simone calls “ people as infrastructure”. Simone argues that in environments where formal systems and state hardware fail, it is the “intricate choreographies” of people’s daily activities, social networks, and collective agency that sustain life. In Nigeria, the state’s retreat has forced a radical improvisational agency upon the people. From local vigilantes to community intelligence networks, Nigerians have become the primary infrastructure of their own survival. As Commander-in-Chief, the President’s jurisdiction is not merely administrative; it is symbolic and kinetic. His role is to act as the connective tissue for this human infrastructure. Decisive authority must be expressed by deploying his own agency to lead Nigerians to triumph in moments of grief. By showing up in the theatre of war, the President validates this “people-infrastructure.” He signals to the farmer in Kwara and the fugitive in Sokoto that their daily resistance is not a lonely struggle, but a national asset. What we see in Kwara is what Achille Mbembe calls “necropolitics”, a space where the state has abandoned its duty, leaving non-state actors to decide who lives and who dies. When the President is absent, he inadvertently surrenders this sovereign power to non-state actors, allowing them to turn Nigerian villages into death-worlds. Reclaiming sovereignty requires the President to trade his passport for his boots, using his valour to mobilise life against the necropolitical order of the rebels. Nigeria’s trilemma and the shadow state Nigeria is currently trapped in what I argue is a “security trilemma”: a structural struggle to balance domestic legitimacy, military capacity, and international engagement. While Abuja prioritises high-level military alliances and image-making abroad, my research reveals a citizenry that has been entirely “de-statized.” In Sokoto, I met a man who had fled the killing fields of Zamfara, only to find himself in a state of perpetual displacement. His words provide a clearer diagnosis of Nigeria’s security crisis than any official news statement: “I came from Anka Local Government Area of Zamfara State to run away from bandits and kidnappers. I’ve been their victim three times. The first time, I paid a ransom before they released me; the second time, they didn’t collect anything, but I escaped. Then the third one, we escaped in a group.” This man’s experience highlights a terrifying evolution in our national crisis: the normalisation of the “escape-and-return” cycle. In his world, the state is a ghost, visible in the rhetoric of “renewed hope” but absent in the hour of abduction. This vacuum of protection has given rise to a darker reality in places like Ikakumo, Ondo State, South-West of Nigeria. There, residents exist under a regime of “shared sovereignty,” a perversion of the social contract where citizens are forced to provide logistics and sustenance to the very bandits who terrorise them. When the state fails to secure its borders or its people, sovereignty is not lost; it is partitioned between the government in the city and the gunmen in the bush. When the state is a ghost, the barrel of a gun writes the social contract. Non-state actors exploit these trust gaps, promising a brutal form of “order” that the government has failed to provide. In these marginal communities, the government’s declarative statements about “sovereignty” sound like a cruel joke because the state’s physical footprint is almost non-existent. Multi-dimensional reform: kinetic and beyond To reverse this decay, we must understand that security is a two-sided coin: kinetic intervention and non-kinetic structural reform. On the kinetic front, the Nigerian military needs more than just “Operation” titles; it needs a decentralised command structure that prioritises real-time intelligence over reactive force. We must move away from the “fire brigade” approach, where soldiers arrive only after the villages are cold. Presence means permanent rural saturation, not temporary military parades. However, kinetic force is a blunt instrument without a robust justice system to support it. Nigeria needs urgent judicial reform that decentralises the legal process, making justice a communal right rather than a purchasable commodity for the elite. Furthermore, “non-kinetic” measures must address the structural deficits of poverty and exclusion. Insurgency thrives in a system of trust deficit and a broken social contract. We cannot talk about security while millions of youth wallow in poverty, unable to find dignity in the social market. The state needs to shore up its trust by fulfilling its part of the social contract through the provision of social services, education, and economic integration. If the state does not provide a path to a future, the insurgents will provide a path to a grave. The wartime general’s responsibility By virtue of his title, Grand Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (GCFR), President Tinubu is a general. In a time of irregular civil war, he is a wartime general. This role requires the responsibility of presence. Nigeria’s troops on the battlefield, often exhausted and under-resourced, expect action, not press statements. They need a Commander-in-Chief at the theatre of war, not one offering empathy from a foreign capital. Presence boosts morale, deters belligerent groups, and asserts authority on the ground. Presence is a kinetic tool. It provides first-hand intelligence and prevents the cognitive dissonance that develops when leaders rely solely on filtered reports from subordinates. Real authority is felt in the safety of a farmer’s field, not the smoothness of a diplomatic communiqué. Reclaiming the state Nigeria can no longer be governed through a rhetoric of authority; peace is the only outcome that validates legitimacy. Reclaiming the state requires a radical shift: trading the “politics of the shuttle” for the politics of impact. This begins by ending the “social distancing” between the ruler and the ruled. We must reallocate the billions spent on travel toward the rural intelligence networks and the community-led “people as infrastructure” currently holding the line in our peripheral villages. This is not just about military boots; it is about the sovereignty of justice. It is about ensuring that the state is present not just with a gun, but with schools, jobs, justice, and a sense of shared destiny. The Commander-in-Chief must be physically seen in the villages of Kwara and the camps of Sokoto, in the margins of Zamfara, to dismantle the death-worlds created by his absence. Real peace requires sacrifice, grit, and kinetic action, not photo-ops or news statements. If we do not close the distance between the leadership and the lived reality of the people, we will lose the nation to the gunmen waiting in the wings. It is time for the President to trade his passport for his boots. He must step into his role as the anchor of our national security and lead the Nigerian people in a collective stand against the forces of disorder. The post The Hollowing of Sovereignty: Nigeria’s Trilemma and the Retreat of the State appeared first on African Arguments .