Israel Umoh
The heart‑wrenching scenes are becoming all too familiar: Gabriel Oche from Ugba, an agrarian community in Guma Local Government of Benue State huddles over the smouldering remains of his home, his children weeping at the loss of everything they had.
Across Nigeria, insecurity has carved a pathway of fear through villages, towns and religious communities alike. For over a decade, the toll on Christian communities has been stark.
According to the rights‑group International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), more than 19,100 churches have been razed or forcibly abandoned between 2009 and 2025 — an average of about 1,200 per annum.
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Meanwhile, credible estimates place the number of Christians murdered since 2009 at around 52,250, with thousands more abducted. These figures tell a grim story: insecurity isn’t simply high — it is changing lives, faith practices, and family‑futures forever.
Fathers Without Power, Children of Anxiety
Across Nigeria’s rural belt, men like Oche once symbolised strength and protection. Today, many are shadows of that role — displaced, unemployed, and haunted by guilt. In IDP camps and roadside shelters, fathers confess that the hardest part is not hunger, but helplessness. “A man’s worth is his ability to protect,” says a displaced farmer in Niger State. “Now, even that is gone.”
It’s a crisis of masculinity as much as it is of security — the quiet devastation of men stripped of agency, forced to watch their families unravel under the weight of fear.
For Nigeria’s children, insecurity has rewritten the story of childhood. Schools have been shut down in dozens of northern communities. UNICEF and other observers report millions of children out of school, many because their parents fear abduction or attack. “When children live with constant fear,” explains child psychologist Dr Halima Danjuma, “they stop dreaming, and that is how a nation loses its future — not in one war, but in the quiet death of hope.”
Each administration promises to restore security, yet the cycle persists — new task forces, fresh deployments, and rhetorics about “decisive action.” But beyond policy briefings, the structural rot remains: porous borders, under-funded security agencies, and a justice system too weak to deter crime. Analysts warn that without tackling the roots — unemployment, poverty, illiteracy, and corruption — Nigeria’s security challenges will continue to mutate. “You can’t fight insecurity with bullets alone,” notes Dr Akintola. “You fight it with justice, opportunity and trust.”
A country under siege
What began as the insurgency of Boko Haram in the north‑east has metastasised into a much wider web of violence. From jihadist groups to armed herders and bandits, the assault on Christian communities and their places of worship has become almost routine. Reports suggest roughly 100 churches are attacked every month in Nigeria today. Meanwhile, in the first seven months of 2025 alone, some rights‑observers tracked 7,087 Christians killed, an average of about thirty a day.
From the farmlands of Zamfara to Plateau, from the forests of Benue and wetland of Taraba to the highways of the South-East and South-West, the map of Nigeria reads like a catalogue of grief. Kidnappings, communal clashes, insurgencies, and ritual killings have become grim markers of a country at war with itself. Human-rights reporting over recent years has documented large numbers of faith-related killings and communal deaths by Fulani militias and Islamic Jihadists across the country, underlining how violence has become both diffuse and chronic.
Into this combustible mix steps US President Donald Trump, who in November 2025 publicly threatened to intervene militarily in Nigeria by sending terrorists to their creator, accusing the government of failing to protect Christians from Islamist‑extremist violence and declaring the U.S. would “immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria” if the attacks continued.
Nigeria’s government responded with equal force: rejecting any unilateral U.S. military deployment on Nigerian soil, emphasising national sovereignty, and insisting the violence is not confined to a single religious group but is rooted in complex conflicts over land, resources and governance. China and European Union with inherent interests in the country countered US planned action.
The heavy cost of “security”
The government of Goodluck Jonathan (2010‑2015) came under heavy criticism for its handling of insecurity. By late 2014 the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) claimed Nigeria had spent US $32 billion on security and defence — yet the country remained far from safe. Later, under Muhammadu Buhari (2015‑2023), Nigeria’s defence and police budgets rose sharply — reaching allocations such as N1.69 trillion in 2020, N1.86 trillion in 2021 and N2.49 trillion in 2022. Despite this, the violence persisted — raising uncomfortable questions about the effectiveness of the spending and the accountability of the institutions.
Meanwhile, the roots of Nigeria’s security crisis are inextricably tied to politics. In 2014‑15 electoral fight, political heavyweights played major roles. The late Buhari backed by including Bola Ahmed Bola Tinubu (now President) was a key architect of the merger that formed the All Progressives Congress (APC) and strongly supported Buhari’s emergence as the party’s flag‑bearer. He mobilised southwest delegates and resources to help deliver the required national spread for victory.
Buhari, who had run unsuccessfully in 2003, 2007 and 2011, finally defeated Goodluck Jonathan in 2015, signalling a historic shift in Nigeria’s power dynamics.
While Jonathan’s administration presided over large security budgets amid rising violence, critics blame both weak institutional responses and political mis‑prioritisation for failing to stem the tide.
The kidnapping shock‑waves
The 14 April 2014 mass abduction of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in Borno State by Boko Haram shocked the world and sparked the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. Of those 276, 57 escaped early, but dozens remain missing and some were forced into marriages.
On 19 February 2018, in the town of Dapchi, Yobe State, Boko Haram abducted 110 schoolgirls (aged 11‑19), killed five and later released most — but one girl, Leah Sharibu, remained captive for refusing conversion.
Such attacks have continued — meaning that schools, once thought to be safe havens, are now frontlines.
Silent guardians
While the violence rages, some of Nigeria’s major socio‑cultural organisations have been criticised for their muted responses. The northern umbrella group Northern Elders Forum (NEF) has at times spoken out — calling on the federal government to declare a state of emergency in the North and condemning inaction. Yet critics say such statements remain reactive, not proactive; they rarely translate into regional mobilisation or meaningful pressure on the state.
Similarly, the Yoruba socio‑cultural body Afenifere has decried rising insecurity and pointed to “complicity of state actors”, porous borders, and weak institutions — but its interventions remain largely rhetorical rather than operational.
In the South‑East, the Igbo apex body Ohanaeze Ndigbo has warned of its region becoming a “crucible of suffering” and criticised the silence of governors and leaders in the face of internecine killings.
In other words: while anguished fathers cry over destroyed homes and abducted children, some of the very societal pillars meant to protect social cohesion seem paralysed, silent or limited to appeals.
Government complicity — omission or commission?
The state’s role in this insecurity is not limited to what it fails to prevent, but in some cases what it fails to punish. Security agencies are under‑resourced, justice is slow, many perpetrators roam free — and sometimes there is credible evidence of tacit collusion. Local communities speak of checkpoints removed, intelligence ignored, militias allowed to lay waste. The so-called ”repentant” terrorists are deradicalised and reintegrated into Nigerian Army. The government may claim “we’re doing our best”, but the fathers and children in Benue, Adamawa, and Kaduna and other gravely affected communities squatting in IDP camps and struggling to get daily free meals for their families know “best” is nowhere near enough.
Why it matters
This is not merely a religious or regional crisis — it is national. When a government cannot—or refuses to—protect all its citizens equally, the social contract frays. When a church is razed, it’s not just bricks collapsing: it’s a community silenced, a congregation displaced, a future disrupted. When schoolgirls are kidnapped in the dead of night, it’s not just an attack on a school: it’s an assault on hope and education itself.
The world is watching: fifty‑plus thousand Christians dead, thousands of places of worship destroyed, billions spent on security, high‑profile kidnappings and foreign threats. Yet the deeper threat lies closer to home: can Nigeria’s government silence the guns within its own borders—before foreign boots are called in?
Need for Urgency
Nigeria must act. Not just in statements or press conferences, but in prosecutions, in competent intelligence operations, in community rebuilding. The narrative of “we’re doing our best” no longer suffices when entire villages are abandoned and children are orphaned by fear. The state must shift from rejection of blame to ownership of protection.
For every helpless father, for every crying child, this is not a statistics story — this is home. And until Nigeria’s leaders — at the federal, state and communal levels — acknowledge their roles of in both the violence and the solution, those tears will continue.
