Data from Acled and the Global Terrorism Index shows that after a few years of improvement, insecurity in Nigeria has worsened. With general elections less than a year away, the crisis has come under increasing scrutiny – both abroad and at home.
Europe Says reports that experts say the primary long-term driver of insecurity is a government vacuum across much of the country. On paper, Nigeria is a federation comprising 36 states and 774 local government council areas, but in practice, power is heavily centralized at the federal level. Resources trickle down to states in limited quantities and are distributed in far smaller amounts to local government councils, largely at the discretion of governors.
As such, vast swathes of Nigeria consist of what academics and civil society groups call ungoverned and under-governed spaces, where non-state actors
motivated either by extremist ideology or economic, political or ethnic marginalization – or a combination of all the above – can move relatively freely, recruit, and plot attacks.
The situation is exacerbated by the thinly stretched nature of Nigeria’s security apparatus. The military, at about 230,000 personnel, is one of Africa’s largest, but it is fighting insurgencies on multiple fronts in the north and a secession movement in the south-east. The police force of around 370,000 officers translates to one officer per every 600 citizens, which is far below the UN-recommended ratio of one per 450. Indeed, in many communities outside the big cities and towns, the only government presence is an abandoned police post, dilapidated primary healthcare centre or barely functioning primary school.
On Saturday, the US and Nigeria said a joint operation had killed Abu-Blal al-Minuki, the second in command of the Islamic State globally, in Nigeria’s north-east. The US also targeted extremist militants in the north-western state of Sokoto late last year. In February, about 100 US soldiers arrived in the country to help advise its military on the fight against insecurity. Those strikes and deployments did little to stem the rising tide of violence.
