Tinubu Orders Five-Year Defence Plan As Fresh Data Exposes Nigeria’s Insecurity Gap
President Bola Tinubu has approved yet another overhaul of Nigeria’s security architecture, ordering a new committee to produce a five-year defence plan within 90 days, even as fresh data and persistent gun violence cast doubt on whether another framework can address the governance failures that previous reforms left unresolved.
The directive, issued at Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council meeting in Abuja, sets up an 11-member committee to prepare a National Threat Assessment and a rolling five-year Strategic Defence Operations Plan. The panel is chaired by the Special Adviser to the President on Homeland Security, Major General Adeyinka Famadewa, and includes the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, the Minister of Defence, Christopher Musa, the Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, the Chief of Defence Staff, the service chiefs, and the directors general of the Department of State Services and the National Intelligence Agency. Tinubu cited the recent rescue of pupils and teachers abducted in Oriire, Oyo State, as evidence of what better coordination can achieve.
The plan follows other measures approved for the armed forces. According to the Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris, these include a pay rise for personnel, the expansion of military divisions from eight to 12, and about 600 additional housing units for servicemen.
The timing matters because the figures remain severe. The National Bureau of Statistics, in its Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey covering May 2023 to April 2024, estimated that 614,937 Nigerians were killed in violent incidents and about 2.2 million abducted, with victims paying roughly N2.23 trillion in ransom. Separate tracking by Nextier put deaths from violent conflict at 4,654 in 2025, with 3,141 people kidnapped in 1,274 incidents. Research by SBM Intelligence found that the North West alone accounted for 2,938 abductions between July 2024 and June 2025, more than 60 per cent of the national total, with Zamfara the worst hit at 1,203.
Weapons proliferation underpins much of the violence. The National Centre for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons says it has recovered more than 21,000 illicit and decommissioned weapons since inception and destroyed over 16,000, with the police supplying 11,907 of them, comprising 8,438 automatic firearms and 3,489 locally fabricated guns. The Centre’s Director-General, Johnson Kokumo, has linked illicit arms to porous borders, diversion from government stockpiles and increasingly sophisticated local manufacturing, while the Inspector-General of Police, Olatunji Disu, has ordered commands to remit recovered arms for destruction ahead of the 2027 general elections.
As the overhaul advances, the parallel debate over state police has drawn caution. At a town hall organised by Global Rights, the former chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Chidi Odinkalu, warned that creating state police without fiscal capacity could produce forces that states cannot pay, effectively arming men rather than policing communities. He argued that Nigeria’s core problem is weak law enforcement and the unequal application of the law, not the absence of another layer of policing. Kemi Okenyodo of Partners West Africa Nigeria described state police as no silver bullet, tracing insecurity to governance failures, impunity and joblessness. A retired commissioner, Emmanuel Ojukwu, said the country should first provide the legal framework, infrastructure and funding.
The persistence of gun violence was underlined in Osogbo, where sporadic shooting broke out during Governor Ademola Adeleke’s visit to the Ataoja after he collected his certificate of return for the 15 August election. The state government said security personnel repelled suspected hoodlums, though the police later confirmed a fatality and opened an investigation.
Nigeria has restructured its security response repeatedly over the past decade through new operations, changes of service chiefs and successive strategies. Whether the five-year plan marks a genuine departure will depend less on the document than on funding, coordination and accountability, the areas analysts say earlier reforms failed to fix. For now, the committee has 90 days to report.