This violence will not stop itself: Nigeria’s communities must act now (Part 2)

The law must work for citizens

A few years ago, in the wake of recurring herdsmen-farmers clashes in Southwest Nigeria, I had cause to contact the coordinator of the Amotekun corps in one of the states. He recounted to me an incident involving two of his men who had apprehended a herdsman whose cattle were said to have been illegally grazing on local farmland. According to the account, they arrested him and handed him over to the police. But at the station, it was the Amotekun men themselves who were detained, and one of them was allegedly shot in the leg by the police. It later emerged that the cattle belonged to a Yoruba traditional ruler, who had intervened to secure the herdsman’s release.

In that one episode lay a troubling picture of our security order: those trying to enforce the law were turned into culprits, while the well-connected offender walked free. The Amotekun men acted within the law establishing them in that state, and they did the needful by handing the offending herdsman over to the police. Yet it was they who suffered punishment, including bodily harm to one of them. I should add that this was the account relayed to me, and I could not independently verify it. Even so, we have seen enough in Nigeria to know that the legal and institutional system has not done nearly enough to empower citizens to assert and enjoy their most fundamental right of all: the right to live, which lies at the heart of the social contract between citizen and state.

A key function of the law is to restrain: to curb harmful conduct, deter wrongdoing, and raise the cost of predation. But law, in its fuller essence, is not meant only to restrain. It is also meant to enable. The legitimacy of a legal system rests partly on its duty to empower lawful citizens to organise, cooperate, and protect their lives within a recognised framework of order. In other words, the law should tie the hands of the violent and strengthen the hands of the lawful. In Nigeria, however, our security architecture too often does the reverse. It is weak where it ought to be firm and overbearing where it ought to be enabling. The criminal moves with audacity, arms, and networks. The law-abiding citizen is told to wait, comply, and trust a system that too often arrives late, looks away, or fails altogether.

That is why the issue before us is not whether law matters, but whether the law is working for the right people and toward the right ends. A legal order is fit for purpose only when it both restrains the outlaw and equips the lawful for protection within clear rules. Where it scarcely deters kidnappers, bandits, and arms traffickers, yet places heavy practical constraints on communities trying to organise for self-defence, neighbourhood vigilance, and local security, it ceases to serve justice effectively. It becomes, instead, a moral asymmetry: a shield too weak against predators, and a chain too heavy on the vulnerable. That, in no small measure, is the Nigerian predicament.

Of course, we cannot ignore the genuine difficulties the Nigerian state must grapple with. Questions around access to arms are always delicate for any nation. They are even more delicate in a multiethnic, multi religious society with a long history of communal tension. A more liberal gun regime could have unintended and incendiary consequences. Even communal mobilisation for legitimate security purposes can arouse suspicion among communities with a history of conflict. These are not frivolous concerns, and they should not be brushed aside.

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But neither should they be used to evade the harder truth. The first point is that weapons, including war grade arms, have already proliferated among criminal actors across the country. Their access to force, through back channels and illegal networks, is one of the chief sources of their power. This is no longer a matter of speculation. It is the reality before us. Because these weapons are procured outside the law, there is no reason to expect the problem to correct itself. Criminals will continue to obtain them through illicit channels. The people most likely to submit themselves to licensing, registration, and legal scrutiny are law abiding citizens who wish to act within the law for legitimate self-protection. No one can offer an absolute guarantee that any armed citizen will always act responsibly. Human beings are fallible. But on the balance of probabilities, who is more likely to misuse a weapon: a citizen who submits to legal vetting and traceability, or a criminal who acquires one in defiance of the law? And what is preferable: a situation in which criminals enjoy easy access to weapons while citizens remain exposed, or one in which lawful citizens are at least made less vulnerable?

The second point is about numbers. It is not only weapons that have proliferated in Nigeria. Criminal actors have multiplied as well. How this happened is an important but separate question. What is beyond doubt is that Nigeria does not have enough security personnel to meet the scale of the threat. Time and again, security operatives have been overwhelmed not only by firepower, but by the sheer numbers and mobility of those confronting them. In April this year, for example, armed men attacked villages in Shiroro, Niger State, for several hours and, according to residents cited by Reuters, overwhelmed security personnel in the area, a stark reminder of how thinly stretched the country’s security architecture has become.

In these circumstances, it is folly to resign citizens and communities to the role of sitting ducks when they can be mobilised as allies in the struggle against violent crime. This is one of the core arguments for community policing and related local security structures. The logic is not simply about weapons. Community based security depends heavily on trained volunteers, local intelligence, surveillance, liaison, trust, and rapid communication. We have seen the practical value of such local structures through Amotekun operations. Last December, Amotekun operatives reportedly rescued four kidnap victims and arrested five suspects in a short burst of coordinated operations in Ondo, showing how local knowledge and rapid response can make a tangible difference. In sheer numbers, the criminals remain a minority. Yet the Nigerian legal order has done far too little to make the numerical advantage on the side of citizens count.

The third point is finance and motivation. Money is the oil in the engine of terrorism and banditry, and one of the principal glues holding the various actors together. The economics of predation are plain enough. In March 2024, the abductors of the Kuriga schoolchildren reportedly demanded N1 billion for their release. The same profit logic was visible in the January 2024 abduction of pupils and teachers in Ekiti, where kidnappers were reported to have demanded N100 million. That raises two pressing questions. First, how is it that in a country that has preached the gospel of a cashless economy for years, criminal networks are still able to move enormous sums with such ease, and often without consequence? Second, why should communities not be enabled to mobilise lawful resources for their own protection? Nigerian communities have long supported collective initiatives through levies, contributions, and informal self-help. The need now is to scale that instinct within a lawful and transparent framework, backed by government policy and institutional support. This is an area in which traditional rulers, community leaders, professional associations, diaspora networks, and digital platforms can all play an important role, not only in raising funds, but in coordinating action and linking vulnerable communities to one another.

The law must work for citizens. It must not merely lecture them about order while leaving them defenceless before disorder. It must deter the outlaw, enable the lawful, and recognise that in a country as vast and as wounded as Nigeria, security cannot remain the monopoly of overstretched institutions alone. Citizens and communities must be treated as legitimate partners in protection, not as helpless spectators in their own survival. But legal empowerment, by itself, will not be enough. Communities must also learn how to organise from the ground up: from the household to the street, from the ward to the town, through layered structures of trust, intelligence, rapid warning, and coordinated response. That practical task of building a bottom-up protective web is the argument to which the final part turns.

Read Part 1 | Read Part 3