FOR years, Nigeria’s North has burned while its leaders slept. Bandits rode unchallenged across the region’s eastern flank. Boko Haram and its splinters turned Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa into killing fields. Farmers abandoned their fields, children fled classrooms, and millions became refugees in their own country.
Over 100,000 Nigerians have died from terrorist violence since 2009, according to Vice-President Kashim Shettima’s own chilling admission. Yet, until very recently, the region’s governors treated the crisis like a public-relations problem rather than a war.
They will meet, issue communiqués, and go home. On March 1, 2018, after the Dapchi schoolgirls’ abduction, Shettima, then-Governor of Borno State, chaired a security summit. But many more schoolchildren were taken afterwards. Subsequent summits followed the same script: solemn faces, tough words, zero results.
In May 2025, nine northern governors even flew to the United States for yet another “security meeting,” earning nationwide scorn for turning a crisis into a jamboree while their people died.
Worse still was the appeasement. Governors conferred chieftaincy titles on known bandit kingpins. Cash changed hands in forest enclaves. One former governor, Bello Matawalle—now ironically the Minister of State for Defence—was accused of sponsoring the same Bello Turji whose gangs terrorised Zamfara. Matawalle denies the charge.
Terrorists were promised contracts, amnesty, even the highest office in the land if they would only “lay down their arms.” Governments do not negotiate with cancer; they excise it.
The National Bureau of Statistics delivered a statistic so staggering it should have provoked a national emergency: 2.2 million Nigerians were kidnapped between May 2023 and May 2024, the overwhelming majority in the North.
Schools remain shut from Sokoto to Maiduguri, including the Federal Capital Territory.
And then, suddenly, something shifted.
After fresh abductions in Kebbi, Niger, and Kwara, the 19 northern governors and the region’s most powerful traditional rulers gathered on December 1 in Kaduna. For once, they did not just pose for cameras and disperse. They took decisions that, only months earlier, would have been dismissed as politically impossible.
They resolved that all mining activities should be suspended across the North, an industry widely believed to fund banditry through illegal operations and extortion.
More importantly, they pledged a staggering N228 billion annually to fight terrorism: each state and every local government area will contribute N1 billion, deducted at source. The money will fund regional surveillance, strengthen border patrols, and procure the tools needed to take the war to the enemy.
Crucially, they finally endorsed state police—an idea they had blocked or dilly-dallied over for decades. They also promised to set aside partisan differences and collaborate across party lines.
No more room for half-measures and photo-ops. The governors must now walk the talk with unwavering consistency.
First, they must lobby the National Assembly to amend the Constitution and give state police immediate legal backing—and then ensure the new force is professional, well-paid, and insulated from political interference.
Second, they should copy the South-West’s Amotekun model and improve on it. The late Rotimi Akeredolu did not beg Abuja for permission; he built a regional security outfit, funded it, and dared anyone to stop him.
The North needs its own Akeredolu—someone with the clout, courage, and contempt for red tape. They must mobilise the state police, local hunters, and vigilantes into a coordinated force that will drive bandits and jihadists out of the forests and mountains.
Third, they must confront the monster that stares them in the face. “We have 20 million out-of-school children in Nigeria—80 per cent of them are from Northern Nigeria,” said Ango Abdullahi, leader of the Northern Elders Forum.
Millions of youths from the region are unemployed. These are not just statistics; they constitute Boko Haram’s infinite recruitment pool.
Massive emergency schooling and skills programmes must start today.
The December 1 resolutions are a promising dawn. But the governors must not relapse into business-as-usual—back to titles for terrorists, cash for calm, and endless meetings with nothing to show.
Terrorists must be crushed, not cuddled. Youths must be educated and employed, not abandoned, to boost terrorists’ ranks. Farmers must return to their fields, and children to their classrooms.
Now that the North appears to be stirring from its slumber, it must rise, fight, and win.
The choice is stark. The time is now.
