Nigeria’s security crisis has reached a disturbing stage where the abnormal is now routine: soldiers patrol streets, man checkpoints, and enforce civil order. This dangerous drift has now been openly acknowledged by a former Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai, whose warning exposes the depth of institutional failure confronting the country.
At the 2026 Armed Forces Celebration and Remembrance Day lecture in Abuja, Buratai admitted that the continuous deployment of the Armed Forces of Nigeria for internal security may offer short-term calm, but it steadily weakens the Nigeria Police Force, drains military capacity, and entrenches a culture of dependence that is corrosive to democracy.
In any functional state, internal security is the business of the police. In Nigeria, that order has collapsed. Years of neglect, underfunding, poor welfare, and policy failure have left the police overstretched and ineffective. Rather than confront this decay, successive governments took the easier path—sending soldiers into civil spaces they were never trained to manage.
The cost has been devastating. Soldiers exposed to routine policing have seen discipline erode, while civilians increasingly bear the brunt. The killing of 13-year-old Timothy Daniel by a soldier in Akwa Ibom on New Year’s Day stands as a tragic symbol of what happens when military force replaces civilian law enforcement.
Meanwhile, insecurity has spiralled out of control. Vice-President Kashim Shettima estimates that the Boko Haram insurgency alone has claimed over 100,000 lives and displaced more than two million Nigerians. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that between May 2023 and April 2024, the country recorded an estimated 2.24 million kidnapping incidents, with families forced to pay huge ransoms to stay alive.
Yet the police remain impoverished. Stations lack fuel, basic tools, and operational funds. Officers often kit themselves. “Bail is free” exists more in theory than practice. A police constable earns less than ₦120,000 monthly—poverty wages in the face of extreme danger.
Buratai’s intervention also revives an uncomfortable truth: the military once resisted efforts to strengthen the police, fearing a powerful civilian force. Today, that resistance has backfired. The military is overstretched, the police are incapacitated, and the nation bleeds.
Nigeria now faces a stark choice. Either it urgently reforms, funds, and empowers its police—while setting a clear timeline for withdrawing soldiers from internal security—or it continues sliding into a dangerous normal where the gun replaces the law.
When soldiers become policemen, it is not strength the state displays. It is failure.
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