The anti-terror war has reached a critical stage where our security forces should stop their largely dovish tactics against the snippy terrorists and go completely kinetic. They just have to prove why our military is rated one of the strongest in Africa, go for the broke and end the infamy of the war lords.
President Bola Tinubu, as the commander-in-chief of the nation’s Armed Forces, must himself appreciate that he is at this stage on the cusp between history and its bad side. So, he must take the bull by the horns and galvanize our gallant security forces for an all-out onslaught against the implacable criminal gangs.
The nation must mobilize all resources and unleash its military might against the militants towards wiping them out once and for all before it is too late. Delay could be dangerous because the felons too are scaling up their game.
They are taking advantage of the nation’s semi-kinetic approach in negotiating with the irreverent elements and literally coddling them to restrategize and spread their tentacles. They are taking territories, imposing taxes on communities, while many are even running illegal mining sites.
They are also acquiring more sophisticated weapons by the day.
President Tinubu is currently up and doing, putting more boots on the ground. He has declared a state of emergency and taken some strategic actions, including approving massive recruitment of personnel —20,000 into the Police and 25,000 into the Army — to address the dearth of manpower in those forces.
And states that desire their own police can now have it as the National Assembly has got a presidential order to review relevant laws to accommodate the provision, among other measures.
Splendid! But critics are wondering why Mr President had dilly-dallied before now. They argue that these impish non- state actors would not have been this emboldened if Mr President had done what he is doing now three years ago, especially declaring state of emergency on security, when he assumed power to address critically yearning fissures that have been drawbacks to the anti-terror war.
According to critics, it took the military invasion threat by the United States President Donald Trump and the spike in mass abductions it engendered to jolt the government from the revelry of 2027 politicking into the reality of the worsening security maelstrom he had inherited from his predecessor.
This is the time to be decisive and get really brutal to beat the warlords and their sponsors to their grisly game. They are not letting their guard down at all. Our security forces must always be steps ahead of the war lords if we must defeat them.
Disturbing images circulating online recently, for example, showed bandits clutching what appears to be an IWI Tavor TAR-21/X95 bullpup rifle, a high-end, military-grade weapon said to be far more advanced than the typical AK-pattern rifles usually seen among criminal groups, insurgents and bandits, in the country.
According to security analysts, that spectacle raises critical questions about the sponsorship, supply chains and the rising technological sophistication of the terrorists. It is, indeed, a signal for a troubling shift in the nation’s internal security equation.
The IWI Tavor family is said to be a modern Israeli bullpup assault rifle used by elite units worldwide, including special forces in Israel, India, Colombia, among others. It is known for high reliability, compact design, accuracy, modularity and more expensive and harder to obtain than AK-47s.
Expert opinion says that kind of sophisticated weapon in the hands of a bandit presupposes terrorists’ access to a high-value international weapons pipeline.
It is also regarded as a signal that some people with resources, reach and intent are elevating the firepower of non-state actors in Nigeria, an indication that the terror war may be evolving into a dangerous and international phase. It is a terrifying signal that should bother our security forces.
The implication is that our security forces must without delay pull out all the stops, including seeking robust foreign aids or hiring sophisticated mercenaries outright.
Let us hope that our current dalliance with the United States will help along this line, especially in securing aids in the areas of intelligence, surveillance, sophisticated weapons and technology generally, not necessarily intervening with “guns-a- blazing.”
As we posited in our earlier editorial, we must pocket the arrogance about sovereignty for now and take the game higher than the militants if we must defeat them.
Otherwise, it is a matter of time, these heavily funded non- state actors could — God forbid — get so sophisticated and more emboldened that they may begin to square against the state, as has been happening in Sudan, where a somewhat rag tag paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been battling the Sudanese army in the last two years after the ouster of the country’s strongman, Omar al-Bashir.
The RSF, headed by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, had partnered with the Sudanese army to overthrow Bashir in 2019 after 30 years of dictatorship. Fighting, however, erupted in April, 2023 in the capital city of Khartoum when the Sudanese army and the RSF clashed over plans to integrate their forces. The violence quickly spread to engulf most parts of the country.
Sudan’s ugly civil war reached a genocidal turn on October 26,2025 when RSF men overran El Fasher, the last remaining stronghold of its rival, the Sudanese army, in the country’s western Darfur region. Anarchy descended on Sudan and is strutting across the land, spewing blood, tears and death, as the merciless RSF men bare their fangs.
Thousands of hapless civilians are trapped. And humanitarian crisis is heightening in the country, as famine, hunger and fear of epidemic ravage the people following a slew of dead bodies littering the streets. Yet, El Fasher bloodletting resulted from over two years of international dereliction in a war that has been left to fester.
We, therefore, have no more time to dither over the necessity of launching a total war against the terrorists. Enough is enough! We should stop listening to those propagating negotiations that have never worked.
Mercifully, Gen. Christopher Musa, the immediate past Chief of Defence Staff(CDS), is back stronger and battle-ready to coordinate the entire anti-terror war as the Minister of Defence.
From the reactions from the general public to his reappointment, this is one decision of President Tinubu that scored a bullseye. Majority of Nigerians actually felt disappointed when he was removed as CDS in the last rejigging of the security architecture.
Most people had thought that he was removed for his hardline stance against the terrorists. But his reappointment to a higher assignment in the security chain has dispelled that impression.
And from Gen. Musa’s utterances since his comeback as defence strongman, he has proved that he knows his onions. He has accurately dissected the task at hand, the hurdles standing in the way and exactly how to deal with those hurdles.
We thus believe that the President has got the right man to lead the anti-terror war, especially at this momentum. What remains is for the President,as the commander-in/chief, to back him with all he needs, especially as he has rightly vowed that negotiating with bandits and paying ransoms to them are not in his agenda.
The credo of this fine infantry strategist is: crush the bandits and other militants wherever you find them. Only the commander-in-chief, going by military tradition, can goad him on or stop him from pursuing this.
But we believe that Mr President, who himself is desperately desirous of results, will back him and and his team. We admonish him to so do. This includes supplying him the wherewithal needed to succeed and removing anyone in the team who may stand in his way in achieving his goal.
More importantly, he should be allowed the free hand to launch a no-breather, no retreat and all-out onslaught against all the criminal gangs holed up in our forests, North and South, until they are completely routed.