On February 20, 2009, a funeral procession wound through a street in Maiduguri, Nigeria’s northeast. The deceased was a member of a small Islamic sect known for street preaching. Many mourners rode motorcycles. As they passed a checkpoint, police officers from Operation Flush stopped them to enforce a new rule requiring all motorcyclists and passengers to wear helmets.
A quarrel broke out. Tempers flared. The police opened fire. When the smoke cleared, several mourners were dead, others injured.
Among the survivors was a charismatic preacher named Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf (UMY). Furious at what he described as an unprovoked attack, Yusuf began to denounce the authorities in a series of cassette, CD, and live sermons. He accused the Nigerian state of injustice and persecution, likening his followers’ ordeal to that of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in Mecca. Soon, his tone hardened, and he began calling on his followers to “come to the jihad.”
The government’s response was swift—and predictably heavy-handed. Police raided Yusuf’s farm in Bauchi, which also served as a training camp for his followers, while armed units surrounded his compound in Maiduguri. The standoff quickly escalated into violence. Yusuf’s followers attacked police stations and checkpoints across the city.
On July 30, 2009, soldiers captured Yusuf and handed him over to the police. Minutes later, he was dead—his bullet-riddled body displayed for photographers. Police claimed he was shot while trying to escape; eyewitnesses said he was executed in cold blood.
That single act of extrajudicial killing turned Yusuf into a martyr and ignited a war that has yet to end. His followers declared total jihad on the Nigerian state, birthing the insurgency now known as Boko Haram.
A 2019 World Bank/UNDP report estimated that between 2009 and 2018, the conflict caused over $9 billion in economic losses across three northeastern states. It killed at least 300,000 children, displaced millions, and left entire communities destitute. By 2025, both figures have likely doubled.
All this because a few policemen made a poor judgment call at a funeral—and the state chose bullets over dialogue.
Déjà Vu in the Southeast
If Nigeria had learned anything from the Boko Haram catastrophe, it would never have repeated it. Yet, the Federal Government seems intent on doing just that—this time in the Southeast, a region once famed for peace, enterprise, and resilience.
Between 1967 and 1970, the area was the theater of the Nigerian Civil War. Over the next four decades, it reinvented itself as a hub of commerce and innovation. But by 2012, a new voice emerged—Mazi Nnamdi Kanu (MNK), founder of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
Kanu sought to draw attention to what he called the systemic marginalization of the Igbo people since the end of the war. He pointed to crumbling roads, the absence of major seaports in the region despite Nigeria’s long coastline, and the deliberate exclusion of southeasterners from top national leadership positions. He argued that if these injustices persisted, the people should have the democratic right to decide—through a referendum—whether to remain in or peacefully exit Nigeria.
In a democracy, such agitation should have sparked national reflection and reform. Instead, it invited repression.
Under President Muhammadu Buhari, security forces launched a fierce crackdown on IPOB. Peaceful demonstrators were shot at. Members were hunted down.
Kanu himself was arrested in Lagos on October 14, 2015, for “provocative statements” made on his Radio Biafra broadcasts. Though courts repeatedly granted him release and bail, security agencies ignored these orders. His home was later raided by the army and the DSS, leaving several family members dead. Kanu fled abroad, claiming a state-sanctioned attempt on his life.
From exile, he continued to broadcast. In response, the government militarized the Southeast, setting up countless checkpoints where young Igbo men were routinely profiled, harassed, and detained as “IPOB suspects.” Many have not been seen since.
Then, on June 27, 2021, in a shocking move, Nigerian operatives abducted Kanu in Kenya and illegally rendered him back to Nigeria. His ongoing detention, and endless court appearances, has only deepened resentment.
Since that rendition, IPOB has enforced a Monday “sit-at-home” protest across the Southeast—crippling economic activity, paralyzing cities, and costing billions in lost productivity. Four years later, the order still stands.
Ironically, Kanu—who has never carried arms—is detained indefinitely, while the same government negotiates and grants amnesty to terrorists in the North. The contradiction could not be more glaring.
Equally ironic is that President Bola Tinubu—who now presides over Nigeria and insists on exacting maximum punishment on Mazi Nnamdi Kanu—was once a frontline member of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO). In the 1990s, that same organization made similar demands, staged mass protests, and employed tactics not unlike those of IPOB in its defiance of General Sani Abacha’s military regime.
The revolutionaries of yesterday have become the revisionists of today. Apparently swayed by devious interests, both local and foreign, Tinubu has squandered every chance to act as a statesman and reconcile divisions. A shrewd Machiavellian, he seems equally unwilling to share the political stage with a charismatic figure like Kanu—especially with the 2027 elections on the horizon. Yet he misses the essential point: Kanu poses far less of a “threat” outside detention than within it. And if—God forbid—Kanu were to die in custody, the consequences could be dramatically worse for everyone.
A Republic That Breeds Its Own Enemies
The parallels between Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf and Nnamdi Kanu are striking. Both began with legitimate grievances rooted in social and political injustice. Both were met with state violence instead of dialogue. And both were transformed by that violence into symbols of resistance whose causes now outlive them.
This is the tragedy of Nigeria: a state that manufactures its own insurgencies.
In Nigeria’s warped security architecture, policemen and soldiers see themselves not as protectors of citizens but as enforcers for the ruling class. Security is defined not as justice or peace, but as control—measured by how many guns point at the people.
Year after year, billions of naira are budgeted for weapons, vehicles, and paramilitary equipment, while education, healthcare, and employment receive a fraction of the allocation. And year after year, insecurity worsens—because the true roots of violence—poverty, exclusion, and official arrogance—remain untouched.
Had Mohammed Yusuf been treated with justice, Boko Haram might never have evolved into one of the world’s deadliest terror movements. Had Nnamdi Kanu been engaged rather than hunted, the Southeast might still be stable. Instead, Nigeria’s leaders continue to mistake force for governance and punishment for policy.
The pattern is clear: when the state refuses to listen, it eventually liquidates; when it refuses to bend, it eventually bleeds – even breaks.
The Real National Security Threat
Each bullet fired in anger, each protest crushed in arrogance, and each dissenter silenced unjustly only sows the seeds of the next rebellion.
True security cannot be achieved through fear or firepower. It comes from justice, inclusion, and trust—the very things Nigeria’s leaders routinely deny their citizens.
Had the state apologized after the 2009 Maiduguri killings, compensated the victims, and engaged Yusuf’s followers, the billions spent fighting Boko Haram today could have gone into schools, hospitals, and factories. Had it handled Kanu with statesmanship, the Southeast’s economic arteries would not be choked by fear every Monday.
From Boko Haram, kidnapping and Islamic terrorism in the North, to IPOB, Niger Delta militancy and Yoruba Nation agitations in the South, Nigeria’s problem has never been a shortage of weapons—it has been a chronic shortage of wisdom.
Until the nation learns that repression is not the same as control, and that justice is the truest form of security, it will continue to breed new enemies faster than it can kill old ones.
Victor Anazonwu is a writer, public affairs analyst and author based in Lagos.
