Abuja, Nigeria – December 2, 2025 – Retired General Lucky Irabor, Nigeria’s immediate past Chief of Defence Staff, has accused certain politicians of deliberately exploiting and in some cases actively sponsoring insecurity to gain political advantage.
Speaking on Channels Television’s flagship programme Politics Today on Monday, December 1, the former CDS warned that Nigeria’s security challenges are far too complex to be reduced to a single cause or motive. His explosive interview came barely 24 hours after a senior presidential aide announced that the federal government will soon publicly name individuals and entities financing terrorism across the country.
Irabor, who led Nigeria’s armed forces from 2021 to 2023, insisted that the country is simultaneously battling multiple, overlapping threats that require different approaches. “If you lump the entire thing into one, the analysis would be wrong,” he said. He listed ideological terrorism (Boko Haram and ISWAP), purely criminal banditry, deliberate community displacement for land and political control, economic sabotage, and targeted religious persecution, particularly against Christian communities in parts of the North-Central and Northeast.
While firmly rejecting the notion that all insecurity in Nigeria is politically motivated, General Irabor made a damning admission: some politicians have indeed taken advantage of the chaos. “That does not mean some politicians have not taken advantage of the insecurity to perhaps gain some sort of leverage; to give the impression that they can do better,” he said. He added that others deliberately instigate crises to portray the government as incompetent and incapable of providing security.
The timing of Irabor’s remarks could not be more significant. On November 30, Daniel Bwala, President Bola Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Policy Communication, revealed during a television appearance that the federal government has concluded arrangements to publicly expose terror financiers. “In the coming days, Nigerians will know who the terrorists are and those funding them,” Bwala declared, describing the move as part of a series of decisive interventions aimed at cutting off the financial oxygen sustaining insurgencies.
Nigeria’s security landscape remains one of the most complex on the continent. In the Northeast, Boko Haram and its splinter group ISWAP continue to launch deadly attacks, including a massacre in Yobe State in September 2024 that claimed over 170 lives. In the Northwest, heavily armed criminal gangs popularly called bandits have turned kidnapping into a multi-million-dollar industry, with hundreds of schoolchildren, women, and travellers still in captivity as of December 2025. The North-Central region continues to burn from recurring farmer-herder clashes that have displaced millions and turned once-fertile farmlands into killing fields.
Economic factors have further deepened the crisis. With inflation soaring above 34 percent and youth unemployment exceeding 53 percent, many young Nigerians have become easy recruits for criminal and terrorist networks. Oil theft in the Niger Delta, estimated to cost the country over $3 billion annually, provides another steady revenue stream for armed groups, while separatist agitation in the Southeast continues to stoke violence despite the life imprisonment handed to IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu earlier this year.
General Irabor also dismissed long-standing rumours that the military was absorbing “repentant” Boko Haram fighters into its ranks, describing such claims as baseless and damaging to public trust. He blamed decades of neglect at the local government level and the near-collapse of community policing structures for creating the vacuum that criminals and extremists now exploit.
Civil society organisations and opposition politicians have seized on Irabor’s comments, renewing calls for thorough investigations into allegations of political sponsorship of violence. On social media, clips of the interview went viral, with many Nigerians expressing outrage and demanding that names be named without further delay.
As the federal government prepares what it calls “explosive revelations” about terror financing, analysts warn that simply publishing names will not be enough. Sustainable peace, they argue, will require addressing the root causes poverty, unemployment, ethnic mistrust, and the collapse of governance at the grassroots that General Irabor and many others have repeatedly highlighted.
With the 2027 general elections already casting a long shadow, the former defence chief’s warning serves as a stark reminder: unless Nigeria confronts both the guns and the greed behind them, the cycle of violence will only grow worse.
