Deconstructing Buratai’s New Security Doctrine

By Louis Achi

When a battle-hardened retired Chief of Army Staff warns that Nigeria’s military is dangerously overstretched by internal security operations, the observation deserves more than routine headlines. It demands a national conversation.

Lt. Gen. Tukur Yusuf Buratai (rtd.), former Chief of Army Staff, and ex-Ambassador to the Republic of Benin delivered this warning recently in a lecture reviewed by Hassan Abdullahi, former director (Army) at the Ministry of Defence, who described the presentation as “one of the most coherent doctrine-level security blueprints ever articulated by a former Chief of Army Staff.”

For years, Nigeria’s response to insecurity has followed a familiar script: deploy soldiers, launch operations, acquire more weapons, neutralise some terrorists or bandits, announce victory – and then wait for the next attack. Buratai is essentially challenging the assumptions behind that cycle. His central argument is as simple as it is unsettling: Nigeria cannot shoot its way out of insecurity.

The retired army chief is calling for nothing less than a fundamental restructuring of the country’s security architecture, arguing that the military has been pushed too far into the domestic space and is being consumed by an internal-security burden that was never designed to be its permanent responsibility.

His intervention comes at a critical moment. From the North-East to the North-West, from the South-East to the Niger Delta, Nigeria is confronting a mosaic of security threats that increasingly overlap, mutate and regenerate.

Boko Haram and ISWAP continue to pose threats in the North-East. Banditry and mass kidnapping have entrenched themselves in parts of the North-West. Separatist violence remains a challenge in the South-East, while oil theft and criminality continue to undermine the Niger Delta.

The geography is different. The actors are different. The motivations may differ. But beneath the surface, Buratai discerns a common denominator: a security crisis nourished by poverty, unemployment, underdevelopment, weak infrastructure and ungoverned spaces. This candid diagnosis goes to the heart of Nigeria’s predicament.

The country has spent years treating insecurity as primarily a military problem when, in reality, much of it is a governance problem that eventually manifests itself as a military emergency.

As Buratai puts it: “The key threat is the system behind the gun, not the gun itself.” Nigeria must inevitably confront the fact that the military is becoming the default government.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the former army chief’s assessment is his warning that the military is currently involved in more than 32 routine internal operations across the country.

That is an extraordinary burden for a force whose principal constitutional role is the defence of Nigeria’s territorial integrity. The Nigerian military has, willy-nilly, become the country’s emergency response mechanism for almost every major security breakdown.

Process these scenarios: When bandits attack, soldiers are deployed; when terrorists strike, soldiers are deployed; when communal violence erupts, soldiers are deployed; when kidnapping escalates, soldiers are deployed; when civil authorities lose control of territory, the military is called in.

The consequence is obvious but rarely confronted: the military is gradually becoming the default institution of governance in Nigeria’s most troubled spaces. This is neither sustainable nor desirable. An army designed primarily to defend the nation cannot indefinitely function as a nationwide police force, community peacekeeper, counter-kidnapping unit, border guard and anti-bandit formation without paying a price.

That price is force fatigue. It is institutional overstretch. It is the gradual erosion of conventional war-fighting capability. And worse, it raises an uncomfortable strategic question: who protects Nigeria if the military itself becomes exhausted?

The answer of course cannot be to keep asking soldiers to do more. The answer must be to build institutions capable of doing what soldiers should not be required to do.

Buratai’s call for the gradual withdrawal of the military from routine internal security operations therefore goes to the centre of Nigeria’s unresolved policing dilemma – which is seemingly being addressed through executive and legislative actions.

The ex-COAS proposal to expand the Nigeria Police Force to about 1.5 million personnel, in line with the United Nations’ recommended police-to-population ratio, is ambitious. But ambition is not the same thing as feasibility.

Recruiting more police officers without reforming the institution itself would simply produce a larger version of the same problem. Nigeria needs a police force that is adequately staffed, properly trained, professionally equipped, intelligence-driven and sufficiently insulated from political manipulation.

Again, this is also where the debate over state police becomes unavoidable. If Nigeria is indeed serious about relieving the military of routine internal security responsibilities, it must examine every credible option for bringing policing closer to the people. From all indications, this process has kicked off.

But then state policing must not become a euphemism for governor-controlled armed formations. It must be built on constitutional safeguards, professional standards, independent oversight and clearly defined chains of command. The key objective should be to decentralise policing without decentralising impunity.

Perhaps the most compelling part of Buratai’s prescription is his insistence that Nigeria must attack the ecosystem behind criminal violence. For too long, security operations have focused on the foot soldiers: The bandit is killed; The terrorist is neutralized; The kidnapper is arrested.

But there are key posers which must not be glossed over: Who financed him? Who supplied his weapons? Who negotiated the ransom? Who provided intelligence? Who moved the money? Who facilitated illegal mining? Who protected the criminal economy?

These are the questions that can dismantle an insurgency or criminal enterprise permanently. As Buratai correctly observes, “Killing a hundred bandits at once achieves nothing if the money pipeline remains open; it is simply mowing the grass.” The metaphor is devastatingly apt.

Nigeria has often demonstrated the capacity to disrupt criminal groups tactically without dismantling the economic infrastructure that enables them to regenerate. This must change.

The country’s financial intelligence, anti-corruption, intelligence and extractive-sector institutions must work as a single ecosystem against conflict financing. The Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Department of State Services and Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, among others, should be empowered to trace illicit financial flows and expose the commercial networks behind insecurity.

The war against terrorism and banditry must increasingly be fought in bank accounts, financial records, telecommunications systems, mining sites and illicit trade routes – not only in forests and battlefields.

Significantly, Buratai’s broader argument is even more consequential. He rejects the artificial separation between security and development.

His words: “Building roads, railways, social services and job-creating industries is not an adjunct to security policy; it is the security policy.” There is considerable wisdom in that proposition. A young man without employment, education or hope is more vulnerable to recruitment by criminal or extremist networks.

A community without roads, schools, healthcare or economic opportunities is easier to isolate and exploit. A territory without effective state presence becomes an invitation to criminal governance.

This is why the war against insecurity cannot be won solely in military barracks. It must also be fought in classrooms, hospitals, farms, markets and factories. Nigeria’s development strategy is therefore inseparable from its security strategy.

A government that builds roads into isolated communities, creates legitimate economic opportunities for young people and restores effective state presence in neglected territories is doing as much for national security as a military commander conducting an operation.

The whole country must become part of the security architecture. Buratai’s call for a “whole-of-society approach” also deserves serious consideration. The state cannot secure every forest, village and urban slum through conventional security deployment alone.

Several layers of society must synergise to produce impactful security result. For instance: Traditional rulers know their communities; Religious leaders influence social behaviour; Civil society organisations understand local grievances; Journalists often identify emerging threats before government agencies do.

Young people are both potential victims of radicalisation and essential partners in preventing it. The answer, therefore, is to build a security architecture in which government institutions and society work together.

But here lies a caveat. Community vigilantes can be useful force multipliers, but they can also become instruments of abuse, ethnic mobilisation and local political violence if they operate without proper regulation. Any move to integrate them into the national security framework must therefore be based on strict vetting, training, legal authority and accountability.

The state must never outsource its monopoly of legitimate force to unregulated actors.

Buratai’s proposal for a National Defence Innovation Fund is another area where Nigeria must think beyond the immediate crisis. This journalist had put the question of technology’s place in security operations to Buratai in 2019 when he hosted media executives to a dinner in Maiduguri as the COAS. His response has been consistent – then and now.

According to him, the future of national security will increasingly be determined by technology. Drones, artificial intelligence, satellite surveillance, cybersecurity and advanced communications are already reshaping the character of modern conflict.

Nigeria cannot afford to remain permanently dependent on imported security technology. A domestic defence innovation ecosystem could strengthen national security while generating civilian applications in agriculture, telecommunications, transportation and healthcare.

But again, the challenge is implementation. Nigeria has no shortage of policy documents. What it often lacks is continuity. The country sadly launches initiatives with fanfare, changes governments and priorities, and then watches promising programmes fade. A National Defence Innovation Fund must therefore be protected from bureaucratic capture, political interference and poor accountability.

Buratai also proposes a National Emergency Command with direct presidential authority in conflict zones. This is potentially transformative – but also potentially controversial. A central command structure could eliminate the bureaucratic delays that sometimes hamper responses to rapidly evolving security emergencies.

But extraordinary powers must be matched by extraordinary accountability. Who exercises oversight? What are the operational boundaries? How would such a command interact with existing security agencies? What prevents it from becoming another layer of bureaucracy? These questions must be answered before the proposal moves from lecture hall to policy table.

Its then little wonder that in his review of Buratai’s lecture, Hassan Abdullahi praised its “diagnostic accuracy,” describing it as a landmark contribution to Nigeria’s security literature.

Buratai’s clearly enunciated security doctrine should provoke deep reflection and hopefully nudge new security policy footing.