President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s State House declaration on 26 November 2025 marks a decisive rhetorical escalation in Abuja’s response to a spate of mass kidnappings and church attacks that have convulsed parts of northern and central Nigeria.
The president made a wide-ranging statement. He declared a nationwide security emergency. He authorised immediate and expanded recruitment into the armed forces and police. He ordered the redeployment and crash retraining of police officers who were withdrawn from VIP duties. The president also empowered the Department of State Services to deploy “forest guards.” Their mission is to flush out militants and bandits from ungoverned woodlands.
He cited, by way of justification, the recent rescue of 24 schoolgirls abducted in Kebbi. He also mentioned the release of 38 worshippers seized in Kwara. He promised sustained operations to free students still held after the mass abduction from a Catholic school in Niger State.
This report examines in forensic detail what the declaration actually means operationally. It identifies where capacity gaps and practical risks lie. The report analyzes which policy failures created the vacuum that allowed the kidnappings to proliferate. It also assesses whether a rapid recruitment and forest sweep approach can be expected to deliver anything more than short term relief.
It is an argument and an indictment. The scale of violence now afflicts towns, churches, and schools in six or more states. This issue can’t be papered over with slogans. Tinubu’s emergency requires strategic clarity. It also needs financial realism and institutional reform, not only more boots.
The immediate facts and the scale of the crisis
Official and international reporting over the last 10 days documents an alarming cluster of mass abductions. Some 24 girls taken from a government girls’ school in Maga, Kebbi State, were reported freed; more than 300 pupils and staff were seized from St Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri, Niger State, of whom 50 pupils later escaped while many remain in captivity; and a violent attack on a church in Eruku, Kwara State saw worshippers seized and later freed after security action.
International news agencies have framed the incidents as part of a renewed wave of school and church abductions. These abductions have returned the country to memories of Chibok and Kankara.
These are not isolated acts of opportunism. Human rights monitors and reporting outlets have documented hundreds of abductions across northern and central states this year. They have also reported scores of killings.
Relief agencies and rights groups see a troubling trend. Mass school abductions have become a tactical mainstay of both ideological insurgents and criminal bandit networks since 2014. Conservative tallies estimate the number of schoolchildren abducted since Chibok at well over a thousand.
Amnesty and the National Human Rights Commission have repeatedly warned that impunity and weak accountability underpin the carnage.
Recruitment orders and capacity math
The president authorised the police to recruit an extra 20,000 officers. This brings the total to 50,000 for the current intake. The army has been given liberty to expand enlistment.
These headline figures are politically salveable. An inflow of fresh recruits signals action. It responds to longstanding complaints that far too many police personnel are diverted to VIP duties rather than community policing. But the arithmetic and logistics matter.
Independent reporting and departmental estimates place the Nigeria Police Force’s active strength in the low hundreds of thousands. Recent reporting cites figures around 370,000 to 375,000 officers nationwide.
Put against an estimated national population in the order of 235–238 million, the police to population ratio is already strained. Adding 20,000 officers to a single recruitment cycle is helpful. Nonetheless, it is marginal compared to the size of the challenge. It is also marginal to the systemic deficits that produce kidnapping and rural insecurity.
Beyond headcount, quality matters. Rapid recruitment and “crash training” risk producing ill-prepared constables. They are neither operationally competent for counterinsurgency in forested terrain. Nor are they trained in investigative policing that would help dismantle criminal enterprises and their patronage networks.
Security commentators and policing experts consistently warn about the limitations of numbers alone. They emphasize that numbers can’t substitute for intelligence. Community trust, logistics, air support, and a secure judicial pipeline are also essential. These elements are necessary to turn arrests into convictions.
The same analysts caution that mass hiring in a hurry raises the risk of corruption. It also increases the chance of infiltration by criminal actors or politicised deployment. These risks exist unless strict vetting and integrity safeguards are enforced.
NYSC camps as training depots — practical and political problems
Tinubu’s instruction that NYSC orientation camps be used as ad hoc training depots addresses an immediate facilities bottleneck. Police colleges are being refurbished. They can’t absorb mass intakes quickly enough.
Several national outlets and the presidency itself have signalled that NYSC camps will be used to expand throughput. But NYSC camps are not designed for paramilitary conversion.
They are orientation and civic platforms with an existing mandate to protect young people and to foster national unity. Using them as temporary barracks or training centres raises concerns about the safety of corps members.
There is also potential mission creep for the scheme. Additionally, there are legal questions about the separation of youth service and armed recruitment. The NYSC leadership has repeatedly insisted camps must stay secure and non-politicised.
Operationally, training police for rural counter-banditry involves various exercises and equipment. These include close terrain tactics, intelligence fusion, and small unit coordination with army aviation. Extra components are vetting, counter-IED, and negotiation training. All these elements can’t be compressed into a single crash course without consequence.
The president’s order to withdraw police from VIP duties and retrain them is correct in principle. Nonetheless, meaningful redeployment requires time and logistics. Crucially, it also needs an operational doctrine that protects patrols from predictable ambush patterns dominated by experienced forest fighters.
Forest guards, the DSS role and contradictory signals
The president empowered the Department of State Services to deploy “forest guards already trained.” He also authorized them to recruit more personnel to clear forests. This is an effort to activate a forest security architecture that has been discussed publicly for months. But the public record is messy.
Several government announcements earlier in 2025 signalled plans for a forest security service and state level recruitment. Fact checkers warned that widespread online adverts were not always genuine. They also warned that mass recruitment claims were not always genuine.
That ambivalence can be deadly. If citizens believe the state is recruiting en masse, they will expect a flood of unvetted recruits. As a result, operations will fail, and the population will lose confidence. If, on the other hand, the state moves slowly, militants will strengthen sanctuary.
Africa Check’s earlier reviews show how misinformation around “forest guard” recruitment has already sown confusion this year.
There is also a constitutional and command question. The DSS is an intelligence and counter-espionage service, not a kinetic army. Using it to field large numbers of armed forest personnel creates oversight and accountability problems. It also risks blurring lines between intelligence gathering, law enforcement, and military action.
Without clear rules of engagement, air support, and robust judicial follow-up, forest sweeps produce temporary body counts. Yet, they do not dismantle criminal economies that sustain kidnapping for ransom.
The political dimension and the state police debate
The president’s call on the National Assembly is to review laws. These laws would allow states that need state police to set up them. This feeds a long simmering constitutional debate. Many governors, particularly in the south and parts of the middle belt, have argued for devolved policing powers for years.
Proponents say state police would be more responsive and less to be siphoned off for VIP protection. Critics argue devolution risks politicisation of police and local partisan control.
The constitution review process is already moving through state assemblies and national debates. Tinubu’s invocation will add fuel to an already heated conversation.
The president’s statement is politically adept. It offers immediate, popular remedies — more policemen, boots on the ground, and state police. Yet, it deflects deeper institutional questions about governance, corruption, intelligence failure, and prosecution. That is why careful scrutiny is required.
Religious dimension and allegations of persecution
This recent wave of attacks has a marked religious dimension in the public narrative. Large numbers of victims in the most recent incidents were pupils at Catholic institutions or worshippers in churches.
The Catholic hierarchy, the Christian Association of Nigeria, and international figures, including the Pope, have publicly appealed for releasing the abducted individuals. They have also warned against sectarian targeting.
Church leaders and many analysts describe the pattern as targeted persecution of Christian communities in specific regions. They call for a recognition of the scale and the character of the violence.
International outlets report on church attacks and school abductions. These events feed a perception among many Christians that they are being deliberately targeted. Whether the legal threshold of “genocide” is met is a matter of international law and rigorous evidence.
The pattern of attacks on Christian schools and churches is alarming. There have been sizable numbers of Christian victims in recent incidents. Additionally, the state can’t guarantee sanctuary to places of worship. These issues demand that authorities take seriously claims of religiously-targeted violence. They must guarantee protection for soft targets.
Comparative perspective and what works
Across the world, durable reductions in kidnapping and insurgent sanctuaries usually need a set of complementary policies. They do not result from a single act.
Successful cases combine intelligence driven policing, community protection schemes, and judicial follow-through that ends cycles of ransom and impunity. They also include targeted socio-economic interventions to undercut criminal recruitment. Precise use of air and mobility assets is essential.
Simply pouring recruits into the setup without simultaneous investment in intelligence, oversight and rule of law risks repeating past failures.
Independent reports from rights organisations and academics make clear the factors driving banditry and mass abductions in Nigeria. These factors include poverty and mass youth unemployment. They also encompass the proliferation of small arms, porous borders, and strained local governance. Any credible national emergency strategy must be multi-sectoral.
The real test: transparency, prosecutions and the politics of ransom
A final and critical point. Governments have historically been judged not by how many press statements they issue. They are assessed by whether arrests translate into prosecutions and whether ransom economies are broken.
If the administration is serious about ending the cycle, it must make public its rules on negotiation. It should also reveal prosecution statistics. Additionally, it needs to publicise its anti-corruption safeguards for security contracts and recruitment processes. That will not be politically easy. But it is the only path to sustainable security.
Conclusion and recommendations
President Tinubu’s declaration is necessary and politically understandable. It answers public anger and signals a willingness to act. But as a national security strategy it is incomplete. Recruitment and forest sweeps will do little without:
- A publicly published recruitment and vetting plan with integrity safeguards and civilian oversight.
- A transparent doctrine for the DSS forest operations that defines roles, rules of engagement and judicial follow up.
- Rapid investments in air mobility, persistent surveillance and intelligence fusion centres focused on kidnapping networks, not merely ground patrols.
- A national anti-ransom policy backed by accountable prosecutorial capacity to end the market that funds more abductions.
- A constitutional timetable for police devolution should be established. It must include safeguards against politicisation. Additionally, a funding formula is needed to guarantee capacity, not just to create more patronage posts.
If these measures are implemented they will mark a turning point. If they are not, the emergency risks being a short term media success and a long term failure.
The families of the kidnapped deserve more than platitudes and processed press releases. The communities who have lost loved ones deserve more too. They deserve a state capable of protecting life, prosecuting the guilty and rebuilding the social trust that violence has torn.
Additional reporting by Osaigbovo Okungbowa, Peter Jene and Suleiman Adamu.
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