Nigeria’s defence minister, Mohammed Badaru, has said President Bola Tinubu is unwavering in his drive to strengthen national security and restore the country’s stability.
Naijaonpoint reports that the minister made this disclosure at a regional security summit held in Kaduna on Saturday, where he revealed that the president had issued clear and firm orders to the defence establishment to construct a responsive national security design capable of dismantling banditry, terror cells, and organised crime networks.
“The president’s directive is to establish a strong, yet adaptive national security architecture to eradicate these threats,” Badaru said.
According to the minister, coordinated joint military offensives spanning several North-west states, Kaduna, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, and Kebbi, have restored movement on once-volatile road corridors.
Badaru listed the Kaduna-Kachia and Kaduna-Birnin Gwari routes among those reopened, as well as significant improvements on the Jibia-Gurbin Baure route and parts of the Sokoto-Illela corridor.
To buttress the tactical gains, he said market activity has surged in strategic trading settlements across the region. Revived Markets Include Kaura Namoda, Shinkafi, Batsari, Giwa and Kajuru.
These towns, he noted, “now record higher activity,” a visible indicator of improving local safety and economic trust.
Chair of the summit organising committee, Hussaini Babangida, confirmed that the forum served as a convergence point for key stakeholders to deliberate on the widening toll of insecurity and to develop actionable peace and recovery steps.
Babaginda also noted that a larger national security summit has been scheduled for Abuja on December 1.
He said the objective of the national forum would be to gather nationwide perspectives and produce a harmonised security improvement plan.
Professor of public administration at Ahmadu Bello University, Muhammad Isa, sharply criticised ongoing security strategies, stressing that structural inefficiencies are weakening long-term outcomes.
Isa said, “Even where tactical gains occur, they fail to translate into sustainable peace because structural drivers of insecurity remain unaddressed.
“Structural drivers of violence must be addressed if this region is to sustain peace.”
The professor said the region’s peace push is constrained by operational fragmentation, weak inter-agency alignment, overstretched institutions, and wavering policy direction.
He urged authorities to fix the broken systems behind the violence, warning that battlefield recoveries alone cannot secure the region.
He also pushed for a united regional defence strategy to curb the mobility of armed groups, dismantle bandit enclaves, and deal decisively with the humanitarian crisis created by prolonged violence.
The summit also hosted a broad coalition of policymakers, traditional rulers, academia, civil society actors, and crisis-recovery experts, said to be part of ongoing internal consultations between the presidency and defence institutions.
Babangida further said nationwide views would be assembled at the December 1 forum and transmitted to the Federal Government for national policy input.
© 2025 Naijaonpoint, a division of NOP Media Inc. Contact us via [email protected]