While terrorists and bandits become audacious and reckless with abductions and killings, the political class is trading blame. Politicians are abdicating their foremost constitutional responsibility to secure life and property of citizens. The government is unable to dominate and protect the territorial integrity of the geographic space known as Nigeria.

Twenty-seven days after the Ogbomoso schools kidnap, we are told the abductees and their tormentors were still lodged at the Old Oyo National Park. Governor Seyi Makinde said so last Friday. Terrorists have partitioned the country and government is not unnerved.

Elected politicians now project that their careers (offices) are the reason there is insecurity. They claim terrorists and their sponsors are doing what they are doing because of them, even when innocent citizens are beheaded and schools are forced to shut down. We do not deny that there is political content in insecurity.

Severally since 1999, militants and thugs have been used to instigate insecurity because of elections. But that does not equate terrorism and the invasion of the country from the Sahel. It is the refusal of government to call terrorism what it is that facilitated the spread.

The Governor of Edo State, Monday Okpebholo, again advertised the insensitivity and shallow thinking prevalent among the political class, when he stated categorically last week, that the insecurity bedeviling the country is the handiwork of opposition politicians.

He said so at the flag-off of the All Progressives Congress (APC), campaign for local government elections in Edo South Senatorial district. He said promoting insecurity to undermine President Tinubu cannot guarantee the opposition space in Aso Rock, which according to him is not vacant.

Hear him: “There is no vacancy in Aso Rock. They can even kidnap all of us, yes, there is no vacancy in Aso Rock. What is happening today is the handiwork of the opposition. They have failed. Have they not failed? Is it by kidnapping children? Then who are you going to govern? So, let them give us peace so that we can govern well.”

In his mind, it is the gospel truth that insecurity that has wrecked the country for close to 20 years is orchestrated by the opposition. The implication is that his phobia of and loathing for the opposition will not avail him the mental capacity to profile the insecurity that has enveloped Edo State. If care is not taken, the next step in his attempt to fight insecurity would be to discriminately deploy state resources to contain the opposition.

Edo State Government operates a local security outfit. Last week, the state announced the recruitment of 5,400 security corps and 500 forest guards across the 18 local government areas, to join the 1,500 vigilantes and hunters that were trained at the Police Training School in Benin City.

Altogether, the governor will have around 7,500 fighters at his disposal. Given the governor’s intense bias against the opposition, intelligent citizens can only imagine the curriculum and doctrine the outfit is fed on. It is a dangerous mindset for a supposed chief security officer of a state to go to town with.

We cannot forget that on February 24, 2026, leaders of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), including former Governor of Edo State, John Odigie Oyegun and Peter Obi, were attacked by armed militias and suspected political thugs in Benin City, Edo State. The thugs vandalised the ADC secretariat before they trailed the party leaders to Chief Oyegun’s GRA house, where they rained live bullets on vehicles and the home.

Governor Opkebholo had earlier warned Peter Obi not to come to Edo State without clearance from him. In case Obi failed to heed the warning, the governor declared he should blame himself for whatever he got. Despite the promise by the police to investigate what was reported as an assassination attempt, details of the case are not available.

It is not only in Edo that the insecurity conversation is distorted and politicised. Following the abductions in Ogbomoso, on May 15, 2026, politicians and their jobbers have continued to spin theories that serve their narrow political interests, instead of offering perspectives that would free the country from terrorists’ stranglehold.

Former Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, formulated the theory that governor Seyi Makinde might have orchestrated the kidnap and beheading of a mathematics teacher, to blackmail and embarrass President Tinubu.

It is like saying that the late Governor of Ondo State, Arakurin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, orchestrated the massacre of 40 worshippers at the Catholic Church of St. Francis Xavier in Owo, by terrorists on June 5, 2022, to embarrass and blackmail the late President Muhammadu Buhari.

It is unfair for leaders to reduce threat to life, abductions and killings to a political chess game. Fayose and Makinde haven’t been friends since their contest to lead South-West Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), at a point. But it is unconscionable and callous to insist that terrorism and banditry are solely the handiwork of those in the opposition. It is equally not good politics to seek political gain from terrorism. In the long run, the people suffer.

We saw that towards 2015, when the opposition that is now APC used propaganda to distance itself from a national calamity, which President Goodluck Jonathan grappled with at the time. They formed and funded the #BringBackOurGirls campaigns to make Jonathan look clueless and incompetent.

Tinubu, as the leader of opposition spared no opportunity to traduce and harass Jonathan over insecurity. Tinubu said Jonathan was incompetent and exhibited “unwatchful eye” when he allowed insecurity to become severe, turning large areas of Northern Nigeria into “no man’s land.”

He also called for Jonathan’s resignation because, according to him, a president who controlled the armed forces and allowed parts of the country to remain under occupation showed a total lack of capacity and creativity. He should resign. He faulted the intelligence gathering method under Jonathan, which he said alienated the people and their elected governors from the intelligence loop. Tinubu said it was a “potentially destructive path” for the government to take.

On one occasion, Tinubu said: “No governor of a state in Nigeria is the Chief Security Officer. Putting the blame on the governor for the abysmal performance of the government at the centre, which controls all the security agencies, smacks of ignorance and mischief.”

That was on May 15, 2023. Yes, what goes around comes around, but insecurity is one challenge that must not be trivialised, because terrorists don’t ask for their victims’ party membership.

It gets sorely ridiculous when a non-state actor, the partisan Yoruba Nation activist, Sunday Igboho, claims to know the politicians who sponsored the Ogbomoso abductions. He said the attacks were staged to sabotage the government of President Tinubu and make the country ungovernable. He claimed that he volunteered his local security outfit, Iru Ekun, to dislodge the bandits from their forest hideouts, but was blocked by the government of Oyo State. He warned the sponsors of terrorists to repent or he would expose them.

He should go ahead to expose them. Sponsors of terrorists who beheaded an innocent teacher deserve to be exposed. But government cannot surrender its responsibility to Igboho, no matter how good intentioned. Since he is working for Tinubu regarding 2027, his efforts are likely to be compromised. Let him share intelligence with the Department of State Security (DSS) and the Department of Military Intelligence (DMI).

It is unfortunate that rather than go headlong to deal with terrorism and insurgency, the Tinubu government is hesitating. His June 12 Democracy Day address betrayed a president that struggled to be politically correct.

The President restated the state of emergency he declared on insecurity on November 26, 2025, when he approved recruitment of more than 50,000 new police officers and thousands of military recruits. Between that time and now, the country has lost multiple soldiers in daredevil operations by terrorists. More civilians have been killed and abducted across the country.

The President said: “We have moved from training with our allies, the United States, France and other European countries, to precision targeting. In Arege, Borno State, we degraded ISWAP’s command centre. Terror-related deaths are down by 81% since 2015. Over 13,000 terrorists have been neutralised in the past year. But we also keep the door of surrender open. Over 124,000 fighters and dependents have laid down their arms since 2023 through Operation Safe Corridor.”

Maybe the President lives in another country. Terror-related deaths have climbed higher in the last three years. Yes, collaboration with the U.S. and others have enhanced precision.

He added: “To bandits, kidnappers, and sponsors of terror: Surrender or face the full force of the Nigerian State. These windows of surrender will not remain open forever. No mercy will be shown to those who trade in the blood of Nigerians.’’

Let the President be precise on surrender by terrorists. The window has remained open long enough. President Umar Yar’Adua declared amnesty for Niger Delta militants when there were reasons and justification to do so. Yar’Adua did not create an open-ended political window for amnesty. President Tinubu should close the door and window, and deal precisely with terrorists who have no regard for Nigeria.

And this: “At a time like this, let us not assign blame or point fingers. Crime has no ethnicity. We must stand united and be assured that the enemies of our nation shall soon be history. We will triumph over terror and continue to build a more prosperous nation.”

President Tinubu that has assigned blame and pointed fingers at the opposition for sponsoring insecurity is now preaching that crime has no ethnicity. That is dubious. Those who terrorise Nigeria have been identified long ago. They don’t even hide their ethnicity.

They post videos of themselves and their activities.

Sheikh Gumi knows them. He has demanded amnesty for them. This brand of terrorism advertises its source and history. The owners don’t hide it. It is left for Tinubu to play politics with it because of 2027. Maybe there will still be a country!