Ribadu and the logic of reclaiming Nigeria’s ungoverned forests

By Ronald K. Danjuma

IN the long and often frustrating search for lasting solutions to Nigeria’s lingering insecurity, moments arise when policy finally aligns with reality. The recent deployment of over 7,000 forest guards across seven vulnerable states reflects such a moment, portraying a clear official understanding of where Nigeria’s insecurity lives, how it mutates, and what it feeds on. The move, which is aimed at reclaiming Nigeria’s forests from an age-long criminal exploitation, bears the hallmark of a national security consciousness where strategy and structure are favoured over sentiment and improvisation. From intelligence coordination to diplomatic engagement and now to the reclamation of forest spaces, the initiative is guided by a simple but often ignored truth that Nigeria’s insecurity is forest-centric.

Sambisa, Nigeria’s most infamous conflict forest, has long served as the symbolic and operational heartland of Boko Haram and ISWAP factions, just as the Kamuku forest on the Kaduna–Niger–Zamfara axis has evolved into a major banditry and kidnapping corridor where armed groups use it as a launchpad for attacks on highways, rail lines, and rural communities, especially along the Abuja–Kaduna axis. Similarly, the Falgore Forest, which sits strategically between Kano and the troubled North-West belt has increasingly been used as a transit and hideout zone for bandits, facilitating cattle rustling, arms movement, and cross-border criminal logistics. Others include the Rugu Forest along Katsina–Zamfara Axis, one of the most active bandit strongholds in the North-West, which hosts multiple armed groups involved in mass kidnappings, village raids, and extortion; the Kuyanbana forest, widely regarded as the epicentre of high-value kidnapping operations in Zamfara and neighbouring states and the Alawa Forest in Niger State, which emerged as a safe haven for bandits and terror-linked groups fleeing pressure from military operations in other zones. It connects Niger State to Kaduna and the FCT hinterlands, making it strategically dangerous.

Attacks on farming communities and threats to Abuja’s outskirts have elevated Alawa’s security significance. Thus, to confront insecurity without confronting these forests is to fight shadows. It is therefore no coincidence that the forest guards initiative has emerged under the National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu’s watch, clearly as the logical extension of a worldview shaped by experience and dedicated service. Long before he became NSA, Ribadu demonstrated an uncommon ability to read his brief without ambiguity and pursue it to its logical end. As the pioneer chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), he demonstrated exemplary grit by understanding the system that sustains criminal enterprises. From following money trails to disrupting entrenched networks, Ribadu emerged as Nigeria’s finest anti-corruption czar to date. That same instinct is now evident in how he is approaching national security lately.

Ribadu’s emergence as Nigeria’s first non-military National Security Adviser since the 4th Republic signalled a symbolic nod to the diversity of background as much as it conveyed that his choice by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was a strategic decision that continues to justify itself daily. Ribadu brought with him a systems thinker’s mindset, one that recognises that beyond firepower, insurgency must also be fought by denying space, finance, legitimacy, and movement. The forest guards initiative – a brainchild of the NSA – fits squarely within this logic. Globally, counterinsurgency has taught a hard lesson: ungoverned spaces are not neutral. Where the state retreats, armed groups advance. In India, forest rangers were integrated into counterinsurgency operations against Maoist rebels, providing terrain intelligence that conventional forces lacked and helping to dismantle long-standing insurgent sanctuaries. In Kenya, wildlife and forest rangers became critical assets in denying Al-Shabaab access to forested border corridors, significantly disrupting logistics and movement. Colombia’s long war with FARC only began to turn decisively when jungles and forests were systematically understood, occupied, and controlled. Even in Indonesia, forest police units played a quiet but critical role in tracking and neutralising extremist cells hiding in dense terrain.

Reclaiming Nigeria’s forests is not an optional add-on to counterterrorism; it is a foundational and non-negotiable pattern that is consistent in every country where insurgency was defeated or significantly degraded. Ribadu understands this. He also understands that simply deploying men into forests without structure would only reproduce Nigeria’s long list of security failures. That is why the forest guards concept, as it has emerged, is not that of a loosely armed auxiliary or a politicised militia. It is conceived as a federally coordinated, intelligence-led, professionally trained force, clearly subordinated to the national security command structure. This distinction matters. Without it, forest guards would be symbolic at best and dangerous at worst. Early indications suggest that this framework is being taken seriously. Intelligence integration is central. Training is prioritised.

Command and control are clearly defined. The aim is not to create a parallel security structure, but to close a long-standing operational gap by inserting terrain specialists into a broader national strategy. Forest guards are not meant to replace the military or the police; they are meant to complement them by denying criminals the natural cover they have exploited for years.

Critics, as expected, have raised concerns, some genuine, others reflexive. Nigeria’s history with security outfits makes scepticism understandable. But to conflate this initiative with past failures without examining its design is to miss the point. What distinguishes this effort is not merely the uniforms or the deployment, but the thinking behind it which is clearly rooted in intelligence, informed by global best practices, and anchored in federal coordination through the office of the National Security Adviser.

This is where Ribadu’s leadership becomes central as he shapes responses and squarely addresses structural blind spots. His understanding that insecurity must be nipped in the bud, before it metastasises across communities and generations, informs this proactive approach. Forest guards are about prevention as much as confrontation, about denying terrorists the comfort of space before they strike.

Nigeria’s security challenges did not emerge overnight, and they will not disappear instantly. But policies and actions that reflect a deep reading of the problem, backed by institutional discipline and political will, deserve serious consideration. The forest guards initiative represents such an occasion. It signals a shift from episodic responses to sustained control, from reactive deployment to strategic occupation.

In supporting this initiative, Nigerians are not endorsing militarisation of nature; they are endorsing the reclamation of sovereignty over spaces long surrendered to criminality. And in Ribadu, they see a security chief who understands that leadership is not about tradition, but about results; not about uniform, but about understanding the brief and executing it to the letter.

If Nigeria is to finally turn the corner on insecurity, it will not be by ignoring its forests but by reclaiming them intelligently, systematically, and decisively. On this score, the forest guards initiative stands as one of the clearest expressions yet of a national security strategy that finally matches the reality on the ground.

•Danjuma is a security analyst based in Abuja