The forest guard initiative

IN an apparent bid to halt the security drift which has seen a thousand and one nefarious activities conducted inside Nigeria’s forests, President Bola Tinubu, last week, approved the establishment of an armed forest guards unit. According to a press release issued by Mr. Sunday Dare, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Public Communication, on his official X account, the aim is to secure Nigeria’s 1,129 forests from terrorists and criminal gangs. “The President directed that the forest guards be well-trained and armed to carry out their primary duty of flushing out terrorists and other criminals hiding in the forests for illegal activities,” the release said. Dare also explained the architecture of the new security initiative, saying:  “The recruitment is a collaborative security effort between the federal and state governments. The Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) and the Ministry of Environment have been tasked with overseeing and ensuring the full implementation of the initiative. Thousands of young Nigerians are expected to be employed as personnel of the newly established outfit. President Tinubu had earlier warned that his administration would not surrender an inch of the country’s territory to terrorists, bandits, and other criminal gangs operating inside the forests.” The statement vowed that Nigeria would take back its forests.

Naturally, the announcement of this initiative has provoked mixed reactions in the polity. While many Nigerians have been studying it with cautious optimism, the Senate has thrown its weight behind it. It specifically saw the directive by the president to the National Security Adviser to go on with the establishment of the forest guards across the country as part of the measures to contain growing insecurity. The Senate also drew similarities between the president’s quest and a bill just passed into law by it named the “Nigerian Forest Security Services (Establishment) Bill, 2025”. According to the Senate, the law “can be brought back to accommodate Mr President’s line of thought regarding the setting up of the proposed forest guard.”

The widespread insecurity in Nigeria is a big cause for worry. Almost on a daily basis, Nigerians are confronted with a decaying security architecture that is apparently incapable of confronting the firepower of terrorists, bandits and criminals who invade communities at will. If Nigerians therefore welcome the initiative by the president, they do so recognizing how incapable and off-key the various security initiatives before this have been. They will be embracing this initiative hoping that it may just help to rid the country’s  forests of terrorists and other criminals. But there are concerns about how the advocacy for state police, which was felt to be on the way to fruition at some point, suddenly began to wane, even while the defects of the current centralised security architecture continue to stare everyone in the face, with Nigerians daily murdered and entire villages razed by terrorists scoffing at the authority of the Nigerian State.

While the forest guard initiative can hold some hope of flushing out outlaws who use the forests as a base for their terrorist activities, we do not think it is more urgent than state policing. As we have said time and again, Nigeria’s security architecture must be changed to accommodate regional and state policing, and take the pressure off the Federal Government which has for years bitten off more than it could chew and rendered the subnational governments helpless and prostrate. The state policing initiative has been lucidly articulated as the surest hope for Nigeria to tackle its internal security concerns and it is time the government stopped playing games with the issue. It certainly knows that establishing state policing outfits to tackle security crises in Nigeria is as urgent as it is imperative. The point cannot be overemphasised that Nigeria needs a decentralised security system as a solution to the incessant spate of insecurity. It is obvious that Abuja, the symbol of the national policing system, cannot handle the insecurity challenges across the country.

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Strategic as the forest guard initiative may be, it has come with some weaknesses, top of which is its coordination between the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) and the Ministry of Environment. Entrusting such an important national security assignment as this to two government offices may orchestrate severe operational challenges and breed conflict. The government must address this grey area and put the structure on a solid footing. Flushing terrorists out of the country’s forests is a major assignment that the government cannot shy away from, let alone handle poorly. We are, therefore, not against the setting up and equipping of forest guards. Only recently, Nigerians were told by the leadership of the military that Boko Haram and other nefarious characters who inhabit the country’s forests had been using equipment like drones to carry out their attacks. There is, therefore, a need for the government to confront them with every arsenal at its disposal. In this regard, the government must map out a clear mandate for the new outfit, backing it up by law and defining its relationship with the existing security agencies. It must think the proposal through. It must avoid going into such a consequential national assignment with a method that will erode public confidence and return Nigeria to the point of despair.