WHEN WAR BECOMES WEALTH

Nigeria’s insecurity crisis has lasted too long for citizens not to ask uncomfortable questions.

For over a decade, governments have announced fresh military operations, increased defence budgets, emergency security meetings and renewed tactical strategies against terrorism, banditry and kidnapping. Yet, across highways, villages and farmlands, blood continues to flow with terrifying regularity while citizens travel their own country with growing fear and uncertainty.

At some point, society must confront a painful possibility: wars do not persist endlessly without structures sustaining them.

What began years ago as isolated security threats has gradually evolved into a violent ecosystem fed by weapons proliferation, porous borders, intelligence failures, ransom economies, institutional weakness and, disturbingly, profitable networks operating quietly beneath the national tragedy.

This is why many Nigerians are no longer persuaded by routine official assurances alone. They now ask deeper and more troubling questions.

How does a war that impoverishes ordinary citizens also mysteriously produce sudden elite affluence? How do some individuals emerge from strategic conflict postings into luxurious lifestyles, hidden investments and choice Abuja properties that appear inconsistent with legitimate earnings?

The concern is no longer merely about insecurity itself, but about the political economy growing around insecurity.

Criminal groups now operate with frightening coordination across multiple territories. Communities are attacked repeatedly with little resistance. Kidnappers establish camps within forests for months. Intelligence appears compromised too frequently. Attacks occur despite prior warnings. In some cases, armed groups seem better informed about local movements than the very institutions created to stop them.

Naturally, citizens begin suspecting that the capabilities and contraptions of certain officers may sometimes collide with the complicity of informants, collaborators, profiteers and institutional enablers who benefit indirectly from prolonged instability.

This perception may be uncomfortable, but government cannot ignore it.

Terrorism survives not only because criminals possess weapons. It survives where accountability weakens, where procurement processes become opaque, where operational failures carry no consequences and where silence protects those who should ordinarily face scrutiny.

This should not be interpreted as an attack on the military institution itself. Many officers and soldiers have served Nigeria with extraordinary courage and sacrifice. Many have lost their lives defending communities abandoned to violence. Their patriotism deserves honour and national gratitude.

But patriotism must never become immunity against accountability.

Who conducts comprehensive audits of wartime expenditures?

Who investigates unexplained wealth connected to conflict postings?

Who tracks intelligence leakages after repeated attacks?

Who ensures due diligence against abuse of office within security structures?

And why does accountability often appear selective and distant from powerful interests?

No nation can sincerely defeat insecurity while negligence escapes scrutiny and complicity hides comfortably behind uniforms, bureaucracy or political protection.

The first responsibility of any government is the protection of lives and property. Once citizens begin living like prey inside their own homeland, leadership itself stands morally indicted.

Nigeria cannot continue normalising bloodshed while demanding silence from grieving citizens. The dead deserve justice. The living deserve truth. And history will remember not only those who pulled the trigger, but also those who looked away while a nation bled.