Nigeria’s Minister of Defence, General Christopher Musa, has identified a recurring pattern where insecurity escalates during political seasons, attributing the trend to internal sabotage and external interference.
Speaking during an interview on Arise Television on Tuesday night, April 14, Musa characterized the current state of the nation as a complex war against a determined enemy.
“We are fighting a war and we are fighting a determined enemy, who is getting support from outside and has nothing to lose,” he stated, emphasizing the difficulty of combating an adversary driven by extremist ideologies.
The Defence Chief pointed to insider collaboration as a primary driver of successful insurgent operations, noting that informants within local communities often provide tactical intelligence to attackers.
“These same individuals that people see as civilians are the ones telling them that this unit has only twenty soldiers,” Musa explained.
“Because of the information they are getting from those informants… they come over 200 [strong].”
He further noted that the high casualty rate among security forces is frequently due to Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) rather than direct combat, citing the recent death of a commanding officer in Monguno as a tragic example of an IED-related fatality.
Addressing the political dimension of the violence, Musa suggested that spikes in insecurity are often calculated to undermine the sitting administration.
“Individuals want to take advantage to make the government look weak or to show that there’s no need keeping the government,” he remarked.
He highlighted a recent incident involving three bomb blasts in a single day as evidence that these attacks are targeted for maximum political impact.
When pressed on the identity of those behind the instability, the General was blunt, attributing the chaos to “anybody who does not mean well for the country—and there are a lot of them, both within and outside.”
Despite the operational challenges, including the difficult balance of banning urea fertilizer, a key component in IEDs—while supporting local farmers, Musa maintained that the military remains committed to neutralizing those seeking to exploit the political calendar for strategic gain.
