By Muhammad Mamman
In a sharp rebuke of the Federal Government’s new security emergency measures, Dr Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed has argued that Nigeria’s worsening insecurity is rooted not in a shortage of personnel but in entrenched corruption within the system.
Speaking in reaction to President Bola Tinubu’s recent declaration of a security emergency, the former vice-presidential candidate maintained that deploying more boots on the ground will amount to little if structural corruption continues to undermine operations, funding, equipment procurement, and intelligence coordination.
Baba-Ahmed insisted that Nigeria has “more than enough manpower” across the security services, but that years of mismanagement, leakages, and lack of accountability have rendered many interventions ineffective. According to him, the Federal Government’s inability to tackle the underlying rot is what allows criminality to thrive nationwide.
He further criticised what he described as a pattern of “surface-level solutions” from successive administrations, warning that without a thorough clean-up of the security architecture, emergency declarations will remain “political optics rather than real strategy”.
The Presidency has yet to respond to Baba-Ahmed’s remarks, but government officials have in recent days defended the emergency approach as necessary to confront the surge in violent crime, banditry, and insurgency.
As the debate intensifies, Nigerians continue to demand clearer strategies, better accountability, and tangible results in the battle to restore safety across the country.
