This violence will not stop itself: Nigeria’s communities must act now (Part 3)

How communities can build their own protective web

As a child growing up, the biggest and most immediate source of safety and security was not the police, even though we were aware of their presence. Indeed, police presence and intervention, on the few occasions we saw it in the 1980s, usually brought with it a sense of alarm and the realisation that something terribly wrong had happened. Hardly anything to do, from a child’s perspective, with the prevention of bad things, though I am sure, with hindsight, that the police did more of that than we realised. But for a pre-teen, the first line of safety was the community itself.

At the heart of that security architecture was a simple but powerful logic: everybody knew everybody, more or less, and the adults were connected in an organic, highly networked ecosystem of responsibility and informal chain of command. From parents as household heads to compound heads and then to higher tiers of authority, entire neighbourhoods and townships were woven into a relational web that served as one of the practical linchpins of social order.

In that system, it was difficult for a stranger to drift in unnoticed, and information travelled remarkably fast even in the analogue age. Norms and codes of behaviour were enforced across the social network, and consequences often followed swiftly for errant conduct. At the cry of “Ole! Ole!!”, the whole community seemed to rise as one. Criminal elements feared the community not because it possessed sophisticated weapons, but because it could mobilise with startling speed. That capacity rested on relational trust and structural coherence built over time.

It would, of course, be a mistake to romanticise the past. I recall occasions from childhood that I would now describe as brutal and regrettable mob action, especially against self-confessed “witches”. We should not gloss over such dark episodes in a fit of nostalgia. Yet it is also fair to say that those moments were aberrations in a wider system that otherwise functioned as a co-created web of protection for all, including children and other vulnerable members of society.

The hard truth is that terrorists, bandits and kidnappers are gaining the upper hand in many parts of Nigeria today not simply because they can unleash violence, but because they are often better organised, faster, and more coordinated than the communities they prey upon. If communities are to resist effectively, they too must organise. No ifs, no buts.

Here is the good news:  that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. What is needed is to repair the wheel, oil it, and get it moving again. The framework of organisation is already there. It must, of course, evolve with the realities of the twenty first century, including digital tools and the mobility of modern criminal networks. But the underlying principles remain the same: collective ownership, distributed responsibility, and layered coordination. Security must begin from the bottom up, not in theory but in practical structure, from the household to the street, from the street to the ward, from the ward to the town.

That means every street should know the households that make it up, their occupants, and the basic lines of contact in times of emergency. Streets should then be coordinated by small committees of trusted persons who, in turn, feed into ward level and area structures. The point is not to create another layer of local bureaucracy. It is to ensure that no household is isolated, no street is leaderless, and no community is blind to itself. A community that does not know who lives within it, who comes and goes, and who should respond when danger strikes is already conceding advantage to the criminal.

That is why some form of civic clean-up is necessary. Unknown individuals should not simply disappear into neighbourhood anonymity. In liaison with civil authorities, communities ought to know who resides among them, what legitimate business brings them there, and where basic lines of traceability lie. Property owners, whether resident or absentee, should bear responsibility for knowing and declaring who occupies their premises. Evil thrives in the darkness of the unknown. When the light is switched on and people can no longer hide easily behind anonymity, a large part of the risk is already reduced.

But even this basic structure will not be enough if it is fragile. The protective web must be built in such a way that it is hard to break. It must not depend on one powerful individual, one charismatic leader, or one communication line. Each level should have backups, deputies and cross-links. A street structure should not collapse because one coordinator has travelled. A ward should not be paralysed because one respected elder has been threatened. The goal is a web, not a chain. In a chain, once one link snaps, the system fails. In a web, pressure on one node does not bring down the whole structure.

Once the structure is in place, it should organise itself around four practical functions. The first is intelligence gathering. This does not mean espionage in some grandiose sense. It means disciplined local awareness: noticing suspicious movement, abandoned structures, strange camps, repeated unfamiliar faces, unusual transport patterns, odd financial behaviour, and early signs of danger. Most attacks are preceded by clues. The problem is often not the total absence of information, but the absence of systems for noticing, recording and acting on it.

The second function is rapid warning. Information that sits still is almost useless. Communities need simple but reliable channels by which verified concern can move quickly from household to street, from street to ward, and across adjoining areas where necessary. In today’s world, that can be helped greatly by digital tools, trusted WhatsApp clusters, call trees, coded alerts, and escalation protocols. But even the best technology will fail without discipline. The aim is fast warning, not chaotic rumour.

The third function is basic security training. Communities do not need random enthusiasm; they need prepared citizens. People should know how to report, how to verify, how to avoid panic, how to lawfully defend themselves, how to protect children and vulnerable persons, and how to interface responsibly with formal security agencies. Training turns numbers into capacity. Without it, even large communities can remain little more than frightened crowds.

The fourth function is swift, coordinated response. Response should not be reduced to gunfire. In many situations, the most important response is evacuation, communication, safe assembly, road blocking, emergency transport, or instant liaison with the police, Amotekun, vigilantes or military units. The value of organisation is that people know in advance who does what. Confusion is the ally of terror; coordination is its enemy.

This whole architecture must also remain non-partisan, community-owned and firmly within the bounds of law. It cannot become a private militia, an ethnic enforcement platform, or an arm of party politics. Once partisan capture sets in, trust erodes and abuse follows. The legitimacy of such a system lies precisely in its broad base: elders and youth, women and men, landlords and tenants, professionals and artisans, all seeing it as a shared protective structure rather than a weapon in local power struggles.

Nor is the aim to replace the state. The aim is to support, strengthen and pressure the formal security apparatus to perform better. A community-oriented protective web should serve as a force multiplier for lawful institutions, not to act as rival to state authorities. Indeed, one of the strongest arguments for such a system is that it gives the state what it often lacks: local eyes, local ears, local memory, local trust, and rapid community level coordination.

This is also where simple digital tools can make a real difference. Communities no longer have to rely only on analogue methods of coordination, important as those still are. With disciplined use, basic digital systems can help connect households, streets, wards and towns through trusted reporting, early warning, layered escalation and coordinated response. Technology alone will not save us, and it must never become a substitute for human trust, local knowledge, and shared responsibility. But when properly anchored in those foundations, it can help communities become faster, smarter, and far harder to penetrate.

ALSO READ: 2027: ‘Not a choice, but an obligation’, Atiku calls for opposition alliance

Criminals thrive where communities are fragmented, leaderless and slow to communicate. They find it harder to operate where people know one another, where information moves quickly, where responsibility is shared, and where no single point of failure can cripple the system. That is the heart of the matter. Fragmented communities are easy targets. Connected communities are harder to intimidate, harder to infiltrate, and harder to exploit. The real answer to organised insecurity, then, is not panic, not passivity, and not empty outrage. It is organised citizenship.

Response to 23rd April article (part 2)

Your intervention last week which is on security challenges pervading the country is quite timely. Frankly speaking you dissected the issues very clearly. However, I need to add that our current situation is a product of both internal and external actors. Let me be clear Sir, if you go to a remote village and decide to engage in any form of security infraction, you’re not likely going to succeed if there are no internal collaborators.

—Dr Babatunde Agbi, Ibadan Nigeria

Read Part 1 | Read Part 2