By Muhammad Mamman
Nigeria’s main opposition party, the African Democratic Congress (ADC), has lambasted the federal government’s handling of rising violence, saying recent mass killings in Kwara State expose a “total collapse” of national security under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. 
In a statement released on Friday, the party condemned the slaughter of around 170 people in the Kaiama Local Government Area, one of the deadliest attacks in the country in recent years. The ADC said the scale and frequency of such assaults underscore what it calls a failure of the administration’s security strategy. 
“The recent killings stand as painful testimony to the complete breakdown of safety across Nigeria,” the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, said. The statement questioned the status of earlier government measures, including a November 2025 state of emergency on security and plans to recruit thousands of police officers. 
The opposition accused the federal government of merely “redistributing terror” across regions, rather than neutralising armed groups responsible for the country’s escalating violence. It pointed to similar attacks and high-profile abductions in states such as Kaduna, arguing that persistent insecurity highlights gaps in intelligence, coordination and rapid response. 
Officials in Kwara have described the assault on remote communities as perpetrated by heavily armed gunmen. National authorities have deployed troops under Operation Savannah Shield to secure affected areas and pursue suspects. President Tinubu has condemned the attack as “cowardly and barbaric” and pledged stronger action against extremist elements blamed for the violence. 
The death toll from the massacre varies among sources, with government figures confirming at least 75 killed and humanitarian organisations reporting numbers as high as 170 as recovery efforts continue. 
Human rights groups, civil society organisations and some international partners have urged the Nigerian government to deepen its security response, improve protection for vulnerable communities and address the broader drivers of violence that have stretched the nation’s fragile security apparatus. 
