The Toyin Falola Interviews once again demonstrated its growing influence as a global intellectual platform on Sunday, as leading analysts and scholars gathered to examine Nigeria’s worsening insecurity and its deeper causes. The programme, convened by renowned historian Toyin Falola, continues to stand out as one of the few international forums where complex Nigerian and African issues are rigorously interrogated through scholarly dialogue and public engagement.
During the latest session, analysts offered an expansive diagnosis of Nigeria’s violent conflicts, arguing that the country’s insecurity cannot simply be explained as criminal activity. Rather, they suggested that it reflects deeper social, political, and historical fractures that have accumulated over decades.
The discussion, themed “Nigeria: Insecurity Problems,” brought together scholars and analysts who contended that Nigeria’s security crisis cannot be understood through a narrow law-and-order lens. Instead, they argued, the country’s multiple forms of violence—from banditry and insurgency to communal clashes and separatist agitations—reflect structural weaknesses in governance, justice, economic inclusion, and national identity.
The panel featured Dr. Hussain Abdu, a public intellectual and international development leader; Dr. Sam Amadi, policy strategist and Director of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts; Dr. Aderonke Esther Adegbite, Associate Professor of Law at Lead City University; and Mr. Majeed Dahiru, journalist and public affairs analyst. The conversation was moderated by Professor Babafemi Badejo and hosted by Falola, whose long-running interview series has become a respected intellectual space for critical engagement with African issues.
The programme drew a global audience that included academics, policymakers, security experts, and members of the Nigerian diaspora. More than 8.4 million viewers from over 26 countries followed the session through Facebook, YouTube, Zoom, radio, and television platforms, underscoring the widespread interest in understanding Nigeria’s escalating security challenges.
Observers say the reach of the programme reflects Falola’s broader commitment to creating an international knowledge network that connects scholarship with public discourse, bringing academic insights into debates about governance, development, and society.
Insecurity as a Social Security Crisis
Opening the discussion, Dr. Hussain Abdu urged participants to rethink the conventional framing of Nigeria’s insecurity. Rather than seeing it solely as a matter of armed violence, he argued that insecurity should be interpreted as a broader social security crisis that reflects failures in social protection, economic opportunity, and governance.
“Insecurity has become a major issue in Nigeria,” he said, “but in the last two years I decided not to examine Nigeria’s current situation from a simple security perspective. I see this more as a huge social security crisis that has presented insecurity as one of the symptoms.”
Abdu explained that the country’s dominant policy response has largely focused on expanding security forces and deploying military solutions, a strategy he believes has failed to address underlying causes.
“When we see it simply as a security problem, we assume that technocratic fixes will solve it — more arms and ammunition, more policemen, more forest guards, more soldiers, more vigilantes,” he said. “That is the usual approach. But we have seen all of this not working in the last 25 years.”
According to him, Nigeria’s widespread insecurity cannot be properly diagnosed when each conflict is treated in isolation.
“Practically every part of Nigeria has one element of insecurity or the other,” Abdu noted. “There is virtually no part of Nigeria that is immune. And when a problem becomes that pervasive, isolating and examining such insecurity concerns does not allow for proper diagnosis.”
He pointed out that many contemporary security challenges have long historical trajectories that are often overlooked in public debate. Using the example of banditry in northern Nigeria, he argued that violent criminal networks evolved gradually from earlier social and economic disruptions.
“When you mention banditry, the first thing people think is that it just appeared one day. But that is a simplistic analysis,” he said, recalling earlier forms of rural insecurity such as cattle rustling and the phenomenon locally known as “Kwonta Kwonta.”
A Multidimensional Crisis
For Dr. Aderonke Esther Adegbite, the discussion of insecurity must go beyond physical violence to include a range of social and institutional vulnerabilities that shape everyday life.
“Insecurity is not limited to physical insecurity; it is a multidimensional concept,” she explained. “We could have cyber insecurity, social insecurity, political insecurity, economic insecurity, health insecurity, food insecurity. They are all interwoven.”
Adegbite argued that one of the most dangerous aspects of the crisis is the erosion of trust between citizens and institutions.
“Insecurity is that state of uncertainty and unsafety where the victim no longer has faith in any institution — whether government or stakeholders — to provide recourse,” she said.
She framed the country’s crisis partly as a moral and social breakdown, raising questions about how extreme forms of violence emerge within communities.
“At what point will a person decide to pick up arms against another person in the same country? At what point will someone decide to rape another person within the same community? At what point will a leader sacrifice his community members just to remain in power?”
Her response was that such actions are often rooted in deep experiences of exclusion, frustration, and insecurity.
“In my opinion, this happens when that person has suffered from one of these several forms of insecurity that we have identified,” she said.
Adegbite further argued that insecurity intensifies when the reciprocal obligations that hold societies together begin to collapse.
“When my obligation to you is no longer relevant to me, when government’s obligation to protect the citizen is no longer important to the government, then there will be insecurity,” she said. “When neighbours no longer see themselves as obliged to live in peace, insecurity becomes inevitable.”
Rule of Law and Economic Exclusion
Dr. Sam Amadi approached the crisis from the perspective of political economy and governance, arguing that insecurity flourishes when the rule of law weakens and social justice erodes.
“Nigeria is one of the most terrorised, fragile, insecure countries in the world today,” he said. “The problem is that we have seen deterioration in the status of the rule of law.”
He noted that laws become ineffective when they fail to bind both ordinary citizens and those exercising state authority.
“There is a sense in which law and order breaks down because the law is unbinding,” Amadi said. “It does not bind the criminal, neither does it bind those who exercise state authority.”
According to him, the erosion of institutional norms has produced a climate in which rules exist on paper but lack practical authority.
“The rules are absent and also indeterminate,” he said. “The culture, procedures and norms that should make those laws tick are absent.”
Amadi also highlighted the link between insecurity and socio-economic inequality. Large sections of the population, he noted, remain excluded from economic opportunity and basic social protections.
“There are gross socio-economic iniquities across the regions of the nation,” he said. “Many people in Nigeria are living below minimum. They lack the fundamental dignities of life.”
He warned that persistent marginalisation has created a growing population that feels alienated from the state.
“This group of left-behinds is a growing army that is in a state of war with society, and the society appears to be against them,” Amadi said. “That is one of the drivers of generalized insecurity.”
Historical Roots of Instability
Journalist and public affairs analyst Majeed Dahiru located the roots of Nigeria’s contemporary insecurity in the historical foundations of the Nigerian state.
“Our founding fathers negotiated from the British authorities a Nigerian state that was structured ab initio along ethno-geographic and religious fault lines,” he said.
According to Dahiru, the political framework inherited at independence encouraged competition among ethnic and regional groups rather than fostering a shared national identity.
“Nigeria was structured in a way that made assimilation very difficult,” he argued. “The concept of national citizenship was absent right from the beginning.”
As a result, he said, identity politics gradually became embedded in the country’s political culture.
“Identity politics became the norm,” Dahiru said. “There was no collective aspiration for the development of a Nigerian interest.”
He explained that this environment also encouraged a system of patronage in which political power became the primary route to economic reward.
“It became a zero-sum game where the winner takes all,” he said. “Corruption in Nigeria became culturally, politically, traditionally, and religiously a legitimate tool to extract reward from the common pool — what we call the national cake.”
Over time, Dahiru argued, this political economy produced deep regional grievances that continue to manifest in various forms of conflict.
“What we are dealing with in Nigeria goes beyond crime and criminality,” he said. “What we are dealing with are centres of grievances that have deep legitimate roots in the various sections where they are operating.”
He pointed to insurgencies and separatist movements across the country as expressions of these accumulated grievances.
“Whether it is Boko Haram in the North, IPOB in the South-East, or agitations for resource control in the Niger Delta,” he said, “these are expressions of accumulated grievances within the Nigerian state.”
