Nigeria Is Bleeding: Fix the System or Lose the War*
By Sa’adiyyah Adebisi Hassan
Nigeria is not facing “insecurity.” Nigeria is facing a coordinated, evolving and emboldened terror threat and the most dangerous part is not just the attacks, but the system’s inability to stay ahead of them. Within hours, terrorists strike military formations, burn communities, kill worshippers, abduct children and disappear. That is not bad luck. That is a failure of intelligence, coordination and decisive force. And until that truth is accepted without excuses, nothing will change.
*Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu* , this is a moment that will define your leadership. Not your speeches. Not your reforms. Not your intentions. This. You cannot afford to rely on filtered briefings or optimistic reports while the country is under attack. Leaders do not lose control because they lack authority, they lose control because they are surrounded by people who protect their comfort instead of confronting reality. You must break that cycle immediately. Take direct command of national security priorities. Demand raw intelligence, not polished summaries. Insist on outcomes, not activity. Because right now, activity is happening but results are not.
*#The architecture of Nigeria’s security response* is too slow, too fragmented and too predictable. Terrorists are not stronger, they are faster, more adaptive and more coordinated than the system meant to stop them. That is unacceptable. You must establish a central intelligence fusion command one brain, one system, one operational picture of the entire country in real time. Every piece of intelligence from the military, DSS, NIA, police, telecoms, financial systems and border surveillance must feed into this single command. No silos. No rivalry. No delays. This command must operate 24 hours a day, analyzing patterns, flagging threats before they materialize and issuing immediate directives. Intelligence that arrives after an attack is not intelligence, it is evidence. And evidence does not save lives.
*Nuhu Ribadu* , your role is not ceremonial and it is not administrative. You are the nerve center of national survival. Right now, coordination is weak and that weakness is costing lives. You must impose a unified operational doctrine across all agencies. No more parallel systems. No more delayed responses because one agency is “waiting” for another. Intelligence must trigger action instantly. Build deep human intelligence networks inside hostile territories. Recruit, infiltrate, penetrate. Terror groups survive because they are not blind, you must make them blind. In countries like Israel, attacks are prevented because networks are penetrated long before they act. That level of aggression in intelligence is what is missing.
*Defence Headquarters Nigeria, General CG Musa.* The Ministry of Defence Nigeria must abandon passive oversight and move into full operational pressure mode. War is not contained by presence, it is won by dominance. Terrorist enclaves in forests, rural corridors and border zones must be identified, mapped and dismantled continuously. Not occasional raids. Not symbolic airstrikes. Sustained, intelligence-led operations that deny them space, movement and recovery. In the United States, counterterrorism is proactive; targets are tracked, fixed and eliminated before they strike. In Israel, threats are neutralized before they grow. Nigeria cannot keep reacting after blood has been spilled. That is not strategy that is failure management.
*#The National Intelligence Agency* must extend Nigeria’s reach beyond its borders. These networks are not local, they are regional and international. Weapons, funding, ideology and coordination flow across borders. You must track those flows, infiltrate those channels and cut them off. Follow the money relentlessly. Identify external enablers. Disrupt supply chains. Countries like the United Arab Emirates maintain security not just by watching internally, but by projecting intelligence outward. Nigeria must do the same or continue fighting an enemy that is always one step ahead.
*#The Department of State Services* must become invisible and lethal in intelligence work. Internal threats do not emerge overnight. They build, communicate, move and prepare. That means patterns exist and patterns can be detected. Surveillance must shift from static monitoring to behavioral intelligence: unusual movements, repeated routes, suspicious clustering, communication anomalies. Intercept early. Act quietly. Neutralize before escalation. Public awareness of operations should be minimal, effectiveness should be maximum. That is how serious internal security agencies operate.
*#The military (Nigerian Navy HQ Nigerian Army)* must evolve immediately. You cannot fight asymmetric warfare with rigid, conventional tactics. Terrorists rely on speed, surprise and terrain familiarity. That must be countered with mobility, intelligence-led targeting, night operations and rapid deployment units backed by air support. Response time must collapse from hours to minutes. Communities under attack must feel immediate protection, not abandonment. In the United Kingdom, surveillance feeds directly into rapid response systems. In Dubai, predictive monitoring prevents escalation before it begins. Nigerian forces must become faster, smarter and more decisive or they will continue reacting to attacks instead of preventing them.
*#And across all levels* , one doctrine must be clear: ambiguity is killing this fight. Terrorists are not misunderstood actors. They are organized killers. Any policy, force, rehabilitation, negotiation must be judged by one metric only: does it stop the killing? If it does not, it has failed. Mixed signals create space for terror to grow. Clarity destroys it.
*#The Central Intelligence Fusion Command* you must determine whether Nigeria regains control or continues to drift. It must integrate data from every sector, analyze threats in real time and trigger immediate operational responses. It must eliminate duplication, enforce accountability and ensure that no warning sign is ignored. Every successful attack must be treated as a system failure, investigated and corrected. That is how strong nations refine their security not by denial, but by discipline.
_#This is not a communication problem. It is not a perception problem. It is a reality problem.
Nigerians are not asking for reassurance. They are asking to live without fear. They are asking for a government that moves faster than those trying to destroy them.
#This is the moment to prove that the state is stronger than the threat. Not through words. Not through announcements. But through coordinated, relentless, intelligent action that leaves no space for terror to breathe.
Because right now, the enemy is adapting.
The only question is whether Nigeria will
