Rising Insecurity Poised to Undermine Tinubu’s Strength Going into the 2027 Elections
With 16 months to go before Nigeria heads to the polls, President Bola Tinubu’s political machinery appears tightly wound. He has neutralized rivals, encouraged defections, and consolidated his hold over the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). On paper, a second term seems well within reach.
On the ground, however, the narrative is far more precarious. Insecurity—once a weapon Tinubu wielded against his predecessors—has become his Achilles’ heel. From jihadist assaults in the north-east to bandit raids and mass kidnappings in the north-west and north-central regions, violence is spiraling, shaking public confidence and drawing international scrutiny. Political ambitions are being eclipsed by a security crisis that strikes at the core of presidential authority.
In a rare public acknowledgment, Tinubu admitted on 22 November: “Nothing troubles me more gravely than the security crisis bedevilling Nigeria, especially northern Nigeria.” For a president whose brand rests on firm leadership and competence, the statement underscored the gravity of the challenge.
The crisis escalated last week with twin jihadist attacks in Kebbi and Niger states, resulting in the abduction of over 300 schoolchildren. In Kwara, gunmen stormed a church during evening service, killing two worshippers and kidnapping dozens more. Social media was flooded with a chilling video showing Boko Haram militants executing a brigadier-general, intensifying fears that even Nigeria’s security forces are being targeted.
As Tinubu battles to restore control, insecurity threatens not only lives but the very political calculus of his re-election campaign, turning what should be a smooth path to 2027 into a volatile and unpredictable contest.
By week’s end, the federal government had ordered the temporary closure of 47 unity schools amid fears of imminent assaults, with multiple northern states following suit. The 2025 National Festival of Arts and Culture in Enugu was postponed. In Borno, Boko Haram militants killed women returning from farms and razed an entire community. In Kogi, local vigilantes were the only barrier preventing another village from catastrophe—a stark reminder that many communities now depend as much on self-defense militias as on state security forces.
These events form part of a wider pattern. Conflict-monitoring organisations report a steady uptick in killings and abductions since 2023, with the north-west and north-central regions emerging as hotspots. Bandit groups, once simple cattle rustlers, have evolved into cross-state criminal networks, extorting villages, pillaging harvests, and selling captives to their families. Displacement in the north-west has surged to levels not seen in years.
The U.S. factor
Amid this turmoil, the United States has intensified scrutiny. President Donald Trump and congressional allies have labelled the violence a ‘Christian genocide,’ raising the spectre of sanctions or unilateral measures. Nigeria’s insecurity dominated a recent congressional hearing, while days earlier, American rapper Nicki Minaj condemned Abuja’s record during a UN appearance.
In response, President Bola Tinubu canceled trips to the G20 in South Africa and the AU-EU summit in Angola, convening consecutive security briefings in Abuja to signal control. Critics argue that if he fails to contain the crisis, he should step aside.
The administration maintains it is taking action. Since assuming office, Tinubu has frequently reshuffled service chiefs and, in a landmark move, endorsed the creation of state police—a long-debated reform that would transfer policing responsibilities from the federal government to shared jurisdiction. In theory, this could enhance local intelligence networks and accelerate response times in regions under daily attack.
The recent wave of violence has exposed how limited the current reforms truly are. Although military campaigns in the north-east have delivered some tactical victories against Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province, vast stretches of Borno and Yobe continue to be perilous and largely ungoverned.
Across the north-west and north-central zones, there is still no coherent blueprint for tackling banditry beyond sporadic airstrikes, occasional raids and improvised arrangements with local powerbrokers.
Rapid Political Blowback
Within Nigeria’s security institutions, corruption, depleted morale and systemic rot remain widely acknowledged. Procurement scandals, phantom personnel, and claims of officers diverting allowances or illicitly selling fuel have long undermined operational effectiveness. When disasters occur—whether errant airstrikes on civilian gatherings or failed operations that allow mass abductions—official inquiries are opaque, and vague accusations of “internal sabotage” simultaneously reveal genuine concerns and risk becoming a universal excuse.
Public outrage has been immediate. After video of the Kwara church assault circulated online, activists resurfaced a 2014 post from Tinubu in which he urged President Goodluck Jonathan to step down over widespread insecurity. “Why should any part of this country be under occupation? In any civilised nation, Jonathan would resign,” he wrote. Figures such as Omoyele Sowore, Folarin ‘Falz’ Falana and comedian Debo ‘Mr Macaroni’ Adedayo amplified the old post, insisting the president must now be held to the same principle.
Religious leaders have echoed these sentiments. “A decade later, and #BringBackOurGirls has returned,” lamented Isa El-Buba of Plateau State. Primate Elijah Ayodele went further, declaring that citizens were “losing faith” in the administration. “If the president cannot resolve insecurity, he should step aside for someone who can,” he argued. For many Nigerians, the parallel is stark: the same north-eastern and north-western regions that suffered under Jonathan and Buhari now find themselves reliving a familiar nightmare under a leader who pledged “renewed hope.”
Tinubu’s supporters, however, present a contrasting narrative. They partly attribute the escalation to Donald Trump’s threat to deploy American troops “guns blazing” into Nigeria, claiming extremists are exploiting the rhetoric to intensify their attacks. More broadly, senior APC members allege the violence is being deliberately engineered to destabilise the government ahead of 2027. Senator Orji Uzor Kalu describes it as a recurring pattern: as elections near, shadowy domestic and foreign actors supposedly “mount pressure on the government” by financing terrorists and bandits.
Such accusations are not new. Jonathan once asserted similar political sabotage during the Boko Haram insurgency. Former defence chief General Christopher Musa also hinted at orchestrated interference, pointing out that fatalities had dropped before surging again in an election season. In Lagos, the APC has even suggested that soldiers’ withdrawal from a village shortly before an attack in Kebbi hints at collusion between “those meant to protect and those who assault.” Senior lawyer Wale Olanipekun has urged the government to publicly reveal the individuals “waging war against Nigeria,” claiming, “We know them, but we fear to name them.”
Yet, to date, no credible, publicly available evidence supports the notion that the current spate of rural kidnappings and assaults is being centrally directed by a political cartel. Independent analysis continues to depict a far more tangled reality: intersecting jihadist factions, profit-driven criminal syndicates, local collaborators, and a weakened security establishment eroded by graft. Suspicion of elite manipulation is potent—and not entirely baseless—but remains far easier to invoke than to conclusively prove.
Opposition voices have capitalised on this ambiguity. Babachir Lawal of the African Democratic Congress argues that if Kalu insists the present insecurity is politically orchestrated, he is inadvertently admitting that the APC was responsible for the Chibok kidnappings while it was in opposition. “There are only two parties now—the APC and the people,” he said. “The people are prepared to unseat them in 2027, so why would anyone slaughter the very citizens they need?” Lawal added that no opposition group possesses the organisational capacity to coordinate violence of this magnitude.
Analysts caution that both the government and its critics are treading on perilous ground. For President Tinubu, international perception may prove as perilous as domestic scrutiny.
Donald Trump’s framing of Nigeria’s insecurity as a “Christian genocide” has found resonance among segments of the global evangelical community and Nigerian Christians who feel vulnerable. Yet the data tell a more intricate story. In the north-east, the majority of jihadist victims are Muslims residing in or near insurgent-controlled areas. In the north-west and north-central zones, bandit raids frequently strike those unwilling to pay protection levies or living along strategic corridors—regardless of religious affiliation.
This distinction does not diminish the horror of attacks on churches or the symbolic weight of abducted schoolgirls. It does, however, highlight how swiftly a multifaceted security crisis can be misrepresented as a binary religious conflict, with potentially perilous repercussions. “The security situation is inherently polarising,” notes Beverly Ocheing of Control Risks. She argues that political actors are likely to tread carefully, particularly when actions risk stoking sectarian tensions. In her assessment, the violence remains geographically concentrated and is unlikely, by itself, to derail national elections—especially with the ruling party controlling most governorships and holding a legislative majority.
Yet this perspective may be overly sanguine. Both banditry and jihadist insurgency thrive on the same structural weaknesses that fuel Nigeria’s cost-of-living crisis: collapsing rural economies, limited state presence beyond major urban centers, and a security apparatus that consumes increasingly larger budgets while delivering minimal protection. Each new massacre or abduction erodes Tinubu’s pledge of “renewed hope” and reinforces the argument that the problem is systemic, not solely tied to the presidency.
For the moment, however, Tinubu retains command of a formidable party machinery and faces an opposition still fractured and disunited.
Source: Honoré Banda
