The recent massacre in Yelewata, Benue State, where scores were killed over the weekend, has been attributed to porous borders, weak intelligence, and systemic failures in Nigeria’s security framework.
Speaking on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief, Kabiru Adamu, Managing Director of Beacon Security & Intelligence Limited, criticized the lack of accountability and poor diagnostic response from security institutions, warning that without reform, such tragedies will persist.
“Threat elements come in, they attack, they kill… They are not arrested, not prosecuted. That deterrence element in our system is not functioning,” Adamu said.
He noted Benue’s geographic vulnerability, being bordered by the troubled states of Nasarawa and Taraba, as well as sharing an international border with Cameroon, making it a soft target for cross-border militants and armed herders.
Adamu pointed to chronic under-policing in rural areas, with some local governments having fewer than 10 security personnel, despite the existence of multiple federal and state-level security outfits like the police, military, DSS, Civil Defence, and Operation Zenda.
He also raised alarm over the politicisation of security, alleging that certain militias have been integrated into public security networks by politicians for ulterior motives.
“There’s an absence of intelligence… To have 100 people killed in three days with no video, no voice recording, no evidence — we must admit that our public security system is failing,” he added.
Adamu urged the creation of a framework that ensures accountability at both the state and federal levels, stressing that without consequences for failures, mass killings like those in Yelewata will remain a recurring national tragedy.
