“What we cannot afford to disagree on is the value of a Nigerian life” —Dr. Declan Onwudiwe
In one of my previous op-eds in Pilot News, I exhorted President Bola Tinubu to release Nnamdi Kanu. I made that call as a scholar of terrorism and political violence, but his release did not happen. Today, I argue that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s broadcasts may, paradoxically, have done more to draw attention to the predicament of ordinary Hausa and other northern Nigerians than many initially recognized.
Although his rhetoric was sometimes controversial and his political project centered on Igbo grievances and the restoration of Biafra, some of the conditions he repeatedly denounced, such as political exclusion, elite manipulation, unequal regional infrastructure development, insecurity, poverty, and the Nigerian state’s failure to protect its citizens, are increasingly articulated by voices from the North itself.
This development deserves serious national attention because, for years, Nigeria’s insecurity has too often been expressed along regional and ethnic lines. Boko Haram was treated primarily as a northeastern problem; banditry as a northwestern issue; separatist agitation as a southeastern trouble; militancy as a Niger Delta crisis; and farmer-herder violence as a tribulation confined to communities. This fragmented understanding has enabled political leaders to regionalize what is fundamentally a crisis of the Nigerian state.
The human consequences have been devastating. Across northern Nigeria, communities have endured terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, displacement, the destruction of livelihoods, and repeated killings. Insecurity has closed schools and markets, disrupted agriculture, displaced families, and forced some communities to negotiate directly with armed groups to survive. This fog of terror is spreading across Nigeria with alarming impunity and must be confronted.
External evidence confirms how grave the crisis has become. In its May 2025 report, Amnesty International documented at least 10,217 deaths from attacks in seven states over the preceding two years, along with extensive abductions, displacement, and villages affected by banditry in northern communities (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/05/nigeria-mounting-death-toll-unchecked-attacks-armed-groups/?utm). The European Union Agency for Asylum’s 2026 assessment likewise concluded that Nigeria continues to face multiple, concurrent security challenges, with Islamist insurgency persisting in the North and banditry becoming increasingly lethal and widespread (https://www.euaa.europa.eu/country-guidance-nigeria/security-situation-nigeria-recent-events?utm).
Something important is unfolding, however. Northern citizens, older adults, community organizations, and political voices are increasingly opposing the status quo. In June 2026, the Northern Elders Forum urged the Federal Government to declare a national security emergency, warning that escalating banditry, kidnapping, and other violence threatened Nigeria’s stability and economic survival. The Forum also questioned the government’s ability to fulfill its basic responsibility to protect lives and property. Governor Peter Obi, a presidential candidate, anathematized the incessant killings of innocent Nigerians (https://springnewsng.com/kwara-killings-peter-obi-condemns-bandit-attack-calls-for-national-security-emergency/).
Later, prominent northern leaders meeting at Arewa House in Kaduna linked the region’s insecurity, poverty, and underdevelopment to failures in leadership and governance. At the August Arewa Awareness Summit on Unity Against Insecurity, participants argued that military operations alone could not resolve the crisis. Instead, they called for community-based security, which I have elsewhere conceptualized as ubiquitous policing, alongside intelligence-led policing, education, economic empowerment, and stronger community participation.
Ordinary citizens have also expressed their frustration. In Katsina State, youths from Malumfashi communities took to the streets after deadly bandit attacks, blocking roads and protesting persistent insecurity. Across social media and other public forums, younger northern Nigerians are increasingly questioning the sources of insecurity, including inadequate schools, poverty, and governance failures, as well as the failure of political leadership to improve the conditions in which ordinary citizens live.
These voices are significant. They suggest the discourse is steadily shifting away from deeply entrenched ethnic fault lines that have long framed Nigeria’s political problems. Northern Nigerians who challenge insecurity and government failure are not necessarily advancing an Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani, or southern agenda. They are demanding the most basic obligation of any legitimate state: the protection of human life.
Herein lies the paradox of Nnamdi Kanu’s message. The effort to silence him and confine his political influence may have been intended to contain a separatist message. Yet confinement cannot eliminate the social conditions that produce political grievance. A government may restrict a messenger; it cannot indefinitely suppress the questions that give the message its resonance.
Those questions have become larger than Kanu, IPOB, the Igbo, or Biafra. They also raise a broader question about whether the Nigerian state responds consistently to political agitation and grievances across regions. Why should citizens of a country as richly endowed as Nigeria live in persistent fear of kidnapping, terrorism, banditry, and communal violence? Why should farmers abandon their land when armed groups control the countryside? Why should families negotiate with criminals for the lives of their loved ones? And why should Nigerians condemn injustice most loudly only when its victims belong to their own ethnic, religious, or regional communities?
The killing of innocent Nigerians in Katsina, Zamfara, or Borno must concern citizens in Imo and Lagos. Insecurity in southeastern communities must concern citizens in Ondo and Sokoto. Violence in Benue and Plateau must trouble Nigerians across the federation. That is what I call true citizenship, rooted in nationalism.
A nation cannot survive when its citizens treat others’ suffering as someone else’s problem. Put another way, a society fractures when its people grow indifferent to their neighbors’ struggles. This is why emerging northern voices opposing insecurity should be welcomed rather than ethnicized. They offer an opportunity for a broader national conversation about citizenship, accountability, security, poverty, and the responsibilities of government.
The central issue should not be whether Nnamdi Kanu was correct in every allegation he made. He was fallible, and many Nigerians strongly reject aspects of his rhetoric and his separatist prescriptions. The more significant question is whether the underlying conditions that gave his message political resonance still persist.
Increasingly, Nigerians from different regions appear to identify similar failures despite their separate histories. That convergence may offer Nigeria an opportunity. The answer to the country’s insecurity will not come from the Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Fulani, Ijaw, Tiv, or any other group acting alone. Nor will Nigeria overcome insecurity by shielding one region while allowing another to bleed, if Nigeria truly belongs to all of us.
Security must become an inseparable national responsibility. When citizens in Katsina protest killings, Nigerians in the Southeast should hear their voices. When communities in the Southeast protest against insecurity or injustice, Nigerians in the North should listen. The same principle must apply across all regions.
Nigeria’s greatest hope may therefore lie not in agreeing on Nnamdi Kanu, Biafra, restructuring, or even the country’s history. Nigerians may continue to disagree passionately about those questions. What they cannot afford to disagree on is the value of a Nigerian life.
The messenger may be confined. His message may remain deeply contested. But the conditions that produced grievance have not disappeared. The most important development today is that more Nigerians, across the country’s historical divides, are beginning to ask the same fundamental question:
Who will protect the Nigerian citizen?
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■ Ihekwoaba Declan Onwudiwe, Ph.D., of the School of Public Affairs, Texas Southern University, is a Professor and Director, Africa Institute for Strategic Security Studies (AISSS). He is also on the EDITORIAL BOARD of the WAP
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