Sir Ifeanyi Ejiofor
Arming Miyetti Allah, affiliated herders with rifles to collaborate with vigilantes in a so-called joint operation in the forests of Kwara State, under the banner of a “hybrid forces” strategy against banditry, is not innovation. This is institutional amnesia masquerading as security policy.
It represents the tragic legitimisation of the very monsters whose ideological offspring have, for years, ravaged farmlands, sacked ancestral communities, and left blood-soaked trails across Nigeria’s rural landscape. It is a reckless security experiment that must be reviewed immediately and abandoned without sentimentality.
Across contemporary Nigeria, insecurity has metastasised into the most dominant national emergency of our time. From the North-West and North-East, through the North-Central, and spilling relentlessly into the South-East and South-West, no region has been spared. Despite enormous budgetary allocations, repeated policy interventions, and visible exertions by the Federal Government, the end still appears frustratingly distant.
A growing school of thought shared quietly by many Nigerians and voiced openly by a courageous few attributes this grim persistence not merely to capacity deficits, but to active internal sabotage.
It has become an open secret that elements embedded within the system, including compromised security actors, profit from the chaos: feeding off ransom economies, illicit arms trafficking, and displacement-driven land grabs. This corrosive internal betrayal explains why well-intentioned efforts are so often neutralised before they can bear fruit.
Wielding executive authority
It is precisely for this reason that many Nigerians continue to urge the Commander-in-Chief to wield the full weight of executive authority without fear or favour, regardless of whose ox is gored.
Against this backdrop, it is imperative to confront one of the most enduring and destructive sources of Nigeria’s insecurity: the organised violence perpetrated by armed herdsmen operating under the umbrella of Miyetti Allah.
For years, communities in Benue, Plateau, Southern Kaduna, Nasarawa, parts of Enugu State, and several locations in the South-West have endured coordinated attacks attributed to these armed groups.
Farms have been forcefully seized, entire villages emptied, livelihoods obliterated, and defenceless farmers murdered in cold blood. These are not isolated incidents. They constitute a clear and recurring pattern—repeatedly documented, consistently denied, and tragically normalised.
In response to this existential threat, many abandoned communities were compelled to establish local vigilante structures to defend their lives and ancestral lands. These indigenous security formations did not arise from rebellion or lawlessness, but from sheer necessity in the face of state failure.
It is therefore both ironic and deeply alarming that the same State that failed to protect these communities is now contemplating the arming of Miyetti Allah–affiliated elements with prohibited firearms, under the guise of security collaboration.
We must not forget that at a point, even the State Security Service found it necessary to take into custody a prominent leader of this organisation for open incitement and alleged involvement in terrorist activities—a matter that ultimately found its way to the courts.
These are the same actors who conveniently mutate in nomenclature: from “killer herdsmen,” to “bandits,” and now to the freshly baptised label of “jihadists.”
No justification
Granted, the Office of the National Security Adviser is constitutionally empowered to deploy creative and adaptive strategies, including the arming of vigilantes, to confront insecurity. However, what legal, moral, or strategic logic justifies incorporating herdsmen linked to Miyetti Allah into such operations?
You do not fight banditry by arming the ideological cousins of bandits.
You do not extinguish fire by handing petrol to the arsonist.
In Kwara State and its environs, credible indigenous security structures already exist including Amotekun and state-backed vigilante groups.
These formations understand the terrain, know the communities, and can identify the perpetrators. These are the forces that deserve strengthening and institutional support not groups whose antecedents inspire fear rather than public confidence.
It bears repeating: Miyetti Allah has, over time, functioned as a breeding ground from which armed herdsmen graduate into bandits, kidnappers, and trans-regional criminal networks.
Any decision—whether by omission or commission—to arm such elements with prohibited firearms under a so-called “hybrid forces” arrangement is not merely baffling; it is dangerously counter-intuitive.
This contradiction compels critical questions: Why were these armed herdsmen later arrested by state authorities? Why was their arrest publicly celebrated? And if they were truly safe and reliable partners, why the sudden recoil?
Something fundamentally wrong
Something is fundamentally wrong. Nigeria must draw a clear and uncompromising red line. All members of Miyetti Allah, or any affiliated structure, who have been armed under any security arrangement must be immediately disarmed, disengaged, and excluded from all present and future security collaborations. They are not part of the solution; they constitute a foundational pillar of the problem.
No nation defeats terrorism by outsourcing security to its ideological incubators. No State restores public confidence by blurring the line between protector and predator. And no government wins the war against banditry by legitimising the very networks that sustain it.
If Nigeria is serious about reclaiming its forests, securing its farmlands, and restoring the dignity of rural communities, then this dangerous experiment must end now before it matures into yet another avoidable chapter of national tragedy.
History will be unforgiving. The people are watching and posterity will ask – who spoke when silence was safer?
Disclaimer: All opinions expressed in this write belong to the author
