Former Defence Minister and two-time Kano State governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, has declared that the Federal Government of Nigeria appears overwhelmed by the scale of insecurity gripping the nation. In a post on his official X (formerly Twitter) handle monitored on Monday, he accused the government of failing to contain violence, pointing to a proliferation of small arms and untrained vigilante groups that now threaten to tear the country apart.
Kwankwaso criticized the increasing reliance on state-backed vigilante security outfits, which operate, he said, with little or no professional training. He deplored the government’s tacit endorsement of these groups as a misguided policy that has inadvertently fueled a dangerous proliferation of small arms and light weapons across the country. According to him, such unchecked distribution of arms has opened the door for individuals and political actors to form militia groups, further threatening national peace.
Beyond the arms proliferation, Kwankwaso flagged another worrisome phenomenon: the rising tide of ethnic and regional profiling. He alleged that many citizens are being arbitrarily targeted, harassed, arrested, and, in some instances, tortured, simply because of their origin. The harassment, he warned, is compounded by growing intimidation, hate speech, and divisive rhetoric on social media, often fueled by ethnic and religious jingoism. These, he said, represent serious threats to national unity and cohesion.
For him, the scale, complexity, and interconnectedness of these security failures point to a broader collapse of control at the federal level. The challenges, he argued, call urgently for decisive leadership and effective cooperation among all levels of government. He said that the time to act is now, before the dangerous trends spiral further out of control. As a former Minister of Defence and the Chairman of the Committee on the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons, Kwankwaso described as “deeply alarming and unacceptable” the ease with which weapons are now circulating across the country.
Even as his criticism stung, Kwankwaso extended a cautious olive branch, congratulating Christopher Musa (retired), the newly appointed Defence Minister, expressing confidence that Musa’s background as former Chief of Defence Staff gives him the capacity to help restore stability, provided he receives necessary political support. Implicit in his message is a call for not just leadership but renewed commitment across government to tackle underlying structural failures, from the proliferation of weapons to weak vetting or training of security outfits, to ethnic polarization and social breakdown.
Samuel Aina