Winning Battles, Losing the War: Nigeria’s Security Without Strategy By John Onyeukwu

The latest bombings in Maiduguri are not just another tragic security incident; they are evidence of a deeper policy breakdown in Nigeria’s approach to war. Over 20 lives lost and more than 100 injured, in a city that had only just begun to breathe again; is not merely a failure of vigilance. It is a failure of strategy.

Within days, the Nigerian Armed Forces announced the killing of scores of insurgents in a counteroffensive. As always, the response was swift, forceful, and operationally effective. But as always, it raises the same uncomfortable question: if Nigeria is winning battles, why does the war persist?

After more than a decade of sustained military operations and enormous public expenditure on security, the resilience and adaptability of insurgent groups such as Boko Haram and its variants suggest that the problem is no longer primarily tactical. It is conceptual. Nigeria is not losing for lack of effort. It is struggling for lack of a coherent strategy.

At the heart of the crisis lies a fundamental misdiagnosis: insurgency is being treated as a series of violent events rather than as a system.

Each attack triggers a response. Each response produces casualties. Each casualty count is presented as progress. Yet the underlying conditions; weak governance, local insecurity economies, ideological adaptation, and institutional fragmentation, remain largely intact.

Wars are not won by body counts. They are won by outcomes. And outcomes, in modern conflicts, are determined less by firepower than by whether the state can alter the system that sustains violence.

Nigeria today confronts not just insurgency, but what can only be described as an economy of violence, a system in which insecurity has become monetised, negotiated, and, at times, inadvertently sustained by the very structures meant to eliminate it.

Nowhere is this contradiction more evident than in the fragmented approach to dealing with armed groups across the federation. In several states, there have been persistent reports, sometimes openly acknowledged, of subnational authorities entering into arrangements with bandits, including financial inducements, in exchange for temporary peace or the release of abducted citizens. At the same time, the Federal Government of Nigeria maintains that paying ransom or negotiating with such groups is against official policy.

Yet, this policy appears neither uniformly enforced nor institutionally resolved. No clear sanctions. No coherent federal response. No legal clarity on the consequences of deviation.

The result is not merely inconsistency; it is the emergence of what can only be described as dual security doctrines within a single sovereign state. One doctrine fights insurgency. The other, however unintentionally, sustains its incentives. This contradiction has profound consequences.

Armed groups are not irrational actors. They respond to incentives. When violence yields financial reward, through ransom, negotiated settlements, or informal payoffs, it ceases to be merely ideological or opportunistic. It becomes structured. Kidnapping evolves into enterprise.

Even more damaging is the widespread perception; whether fully substantiated or not, that ransom payments have, at times, been facilitated or tolerated at different levels of the system. The inability of federal authorities to decisively and transparently refute such allegations deepens a dangerous public belief: that the state, ultimately, pays.

A state that is perceived to negotiate under pressure invites more pressure. A system that appears to reward violence will inevitably reproduce it. This is why tactical success does not translate into strategic victory.

Military operations are designed to neutralise threats, disrupt networks, and reclaim territory. They are not designed to resolve the political, economic, and institutional conditions that give rise to those threats. That responsibility lies with the state as a whole.

Yet, what Nigeria currently exhibits is not a whole-of-state strategy, but a collection of parallel efforts, military action, fragmented negotiations, underdeveloped reintegration programmes, and weak local governance, operating without a unifying doctrine. What Nigeria confronts, therefore, is not merely insecurity, but a federal system without a unified security strategy.

Any credible national security doctrine must answer three fundamental questions: first, what incentives drive violence? Second, what institutions are capable of sustaining order? Third, what outcomes define victory? Nigeria has yet to provide clear, coherent answers to these questions.

Is victory the total defeat of insurgents? Their containment? Their reintegration? Or simply the reduction of attacks to manageable levels? Without clarity, the war, by default, becomes endless.

There is also a constitutional dimension that cannot be ignored. Under Section 14(2) (b) of the Constitution, the security and welfare of the people remain the primary purpose of government. This obligation extends beyond the deployment of force. It requires coherence, consistency, and credibility in policy.

Security cannot be built on contradiction. Where one part of the state prohibits ransom payments while another appears to enable them, the legitimacy of the entire system is weakened. Where policy is declared but not enforced, authority becomes negotiable. And once authority becomes negotiable, insecurity becomes structural.

A shift in approach is therefore imperative. Nigeria must begin by restoring policy coherence, resolving once and for all its ambiguity on engagement with armed groups. If negotiations or ransom payments are to remain prohibited, that position must be uniformly enforced across all levels of government, without exception or quiet deviation. If, however, engagement is to be part of the national toolkit, then it must be formalised within a clear legal and strategic framework, subject to oversight and aligned with long-term security objectives rather than short-term political expediency.

At the same time, the incentive structure that sustains violence must be deliberately dismantled. As long as armed actors continue to derive material or political benefit from insecurity, the cycle will endure. Violence must cease to be profitable; its costs must be made consistently higher than its rewards. This requires not only military pressure, but economic, legal, and institutional alignment to ensure that no part of the system inadvertently subsidises instability.

Equally critical is the rebuilding of local governance as a core element of national security. Many conflict-affected areas remain defined by weak or absent state presence, creating vacuums that non-state actors readily fill. In such contexts, insurgents do not merely attack; they administer, tax, and adjudicate. Restoring legitimate, functioning local authority is therefore not ancillary to security, it is central to it. Without governance, military gains remain temporary.

Credibility must also be re-established in the information domain. Allegations of ransom payments or state complicity cannot continue to be met with silence, ambiguity, or denial without evidence. In an environment already shaped by distrust, transparency becomes a strategic necessity. The state must communicate with clarity and consistency, because in security matters, perception often shapes reality as much as fact.

Beyond its domestic obligations, Nigeria must also recognise its place within broader international counterterrorism norms, which require not only the suppression of violent actors but also the prevention of conditions that enable their persistence. A state cannot claim strategic success if its policies, however unintentionally, sustain the very threats it seeks to eliminate.

The events in Maiduguri are therefore not isolated; they are symptomatic. They reveal a state that has developed significant tactical capacity, but has yet to align that capacity within a coherent and disciplined strategic framework. They expose the limits of force in the absence of policy clarity and highlight the dangers of contradiction within a system already under strain. They also serve as a warning that resilience on the battlefield cannot compensate for ambiguity at the level of governance.

The Nigerian Armed Forces continues to demonstrate courage and resilience in extraordinarily difficult conditions, often at great human cost. But no military, however professional or committed, can secure a state that remains strategically incoherent. Force, without alignment, dissipates. Sacrifice, without direction, is prolonged.

No nation defeats an insurgency it continues, in part, to finance, fragment, and misunderstand. Until Nigeria resolves this contradiction, not rhetorically, but structurally, it will continue to record tactical victories that fail to translate into lasting peace. It will continue to win battles in the field, yet lose ground in the deeper contest for stability, legitimacy, and control. And so, the paradox endures: a country at war, demonstrating strength, yet unable to bring that war to a decisive end.

John Onyeukwu is a lawyer, governance, and policy analyst with interdisciplinary expertise in law, governance, and institutional reform. He has led and supported development projects focused on improving public finance systems, enhancing civic engagement, strengthening service delivery, and advancing accountable governance. His work bridges legal insight and policy impact, with a commitment to driving institutional effectiveness and inclusive development.