Security crisis is failure of conscience, not just policing – stakeholders

Stakeholders argue that Nigeria’s security crisis reflects a deeper failure of conscience, morality and citizen responsibility, not just insufficient policing.

Nigeria’s security crisis cannot be solved by policing and military action alone, according to stakeholders who insist that the country must confront a deeper failure of conscience, justice and civic responsibility if it hopes to achieve lasting peace. Speaking at the 2026 Feast of Barracuda, organised by the National Association of Seadogs in Abuja on Monday, Chief Lai Labode argued that Nigeria’s worsening security challenges should not be viewed merely as a law-enforcement problem but as a nation-building challenge requiring moral leadership, economic inclusion and active citizenship.

“I want to suggest that redefining insecurity as the challenge of building safety is itself an act of moral rebellion. It refuses a country that passively keeps a list of wrongs and instead demands of us the more difficult task of deciding what kind of society we must build,” Labode said. He cited estimates by the Institute for Economics and Peace, noting that insecurity costs Nigeria about eight percent of its Gross Domestic Product annually, while billions of naira are paid as ransom and millions of people are displaced by violent conflict.

Labode argued that sustainable security must be built on three pillars: economic dignity, cultural pride and principled resistance to injustice. “A young person who has a stake in the economy, access to savings, and a functioning system that rewards honest work is much harder to recruit into narratives of grievance and violence,” he said. He stressed that preserving cultural identity and heritage was critical to preventing violent extremism, saying young people who feel connected to their communities are less susceptible to radicalisation.

While referencing Chinua Achebe’s famous assertion that Nigeria’s greatest problem is leadership, Labode said citizens also have a responsibility to reject injustice and demand accountability. “Leadership divorced from conscience produces only temporary order, never lasting peace,” he added, urging Nigerians to embrace what he described as “moral rebellion” against corruption, impunity and official failure.

Speaking during the launch of his book, Ideas Do Not Die, Adesoji Adesugba warned that Nigeria’s rapidly growing population presents both an opportunity and a major risk if not properly managed. “Nigeria is adding millions of children every year. If we fail to plan for them, we are planning for kidnappers, scams and a more impoverished country. We have all the opportunities, but we must deliberately educate, empower and create jobs for our young people,” he said.

This echoes the 1990s debates about Nigeria’s leadership crisis, when intellectuals and civil society groups argued that the country’s problems were fundamentally moral rather than merely structural. The mechanism was different then, but the result was the same: a recurring recognition that Nigeria’s challenges run deeper than policy failures.

The winners: civil society groups like the National Association of Seadogs, which are keeping the conversation alive. The losers: the Nigerian state, which continues to rely on policing rather than addressing the root causes of insecurity.

Bottom Line: Nigeria’s security crisis is not just about policing, according to stakeholders. It is a failure of conscience. The question is whether the country will confront its moral crisis or continue to treat the symptoms.