The Semantics Of Terrorism In Nigeria
If you hear the word “terrorist” in Nigeria, what comes to your mind are forests, guns, bombs and other related things. But there is a dimension we must now begin to see, especially in the wake of recent happenings in our society. The other half of the semantics of the word has to do with those who sit in offices, who wear polished suits and ties, who are robed in agbada, who sit in air-conditioned offices, and who terrorise the nation with their complicities and inactions.
To simply categorise this, we would have the bush terrorist and the office terrorist. The former can abduct 50 or 60 lives at once, but the latter will slowly abduct thousands of lives. The bush terrorist will abduct children in a school and force hundreds of students who are willing to learn to stay out of school. The terrorists in offices have forced not less than 15 million children out of school in Nigeria. The Federal Ministry of Education admitted this a few months ago when they promised to reintegrate these children into formal education.
A bush terrorist kidnaps school children, then throws the security personnel and the society into confusion of how to rescue them. The terrorist in office kidnaps the children’s future. The impact is not immediate, so there is no one to raise an immediate alarm about the leaders of the “future” who are unable to receive quality education.
The bush terrorist may plan to blow up just a bridge. But the office terrorist will leave a bad road for decades, so that it will continue to “suck” the blood of the people. Or how do we account for 5,081 traffic-related deaths in 2023, which increased to 5,421 in 2024, and 5289 deaths in 2025? These were the ones officially captured and recorded by the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), excluding survivors with varying degrees of disability.
An ironic part of our fight against terrorism in Nigeria is mobilizing billions to fight terrorists in the bush while we underrate those in offices. The bush terrorist is limited in scope and geography. The terrorist in office is unlimited. Their reach is wide. It can be felt by over 200 million people at a time. This definitely calls for the redefinition of terrorism. Terrorism should not be limited to physical acts of violence. It is the deliberate creation of conditions that make normal life impossible. The notion of this “normal life” is even difficult to explain in Nigeria. When electricity is restored for 2 hours, we shout “Up NEPA” to show our excitement; when abnormality becomes our baseline, the terrorist has won without firing a shot. The next time you hear the word, “terrorist”, your conception must not be limited to mask-wearing individuals. Also remember those in suits and ties, or agbada. They all have the same aim: to make sure that the people live in perpetual fear.
As we pray and demand that our children, brothers and sisters in captivity return home safely, we must be honest about attending to the terrorists in offices. The office terrorist will never go after their cousin-terrorist in the bush. Sometimes, insecurity justifies their security votes. To defeat terrorism, we must redefine it. After this, we must then fight both factories. The terrorists in offices are not invincible; we have not just been critical enough to examine them. Elections are approaching, and everyone must bear in mind that until the office is clean, the bush may not be empty. We cannot afford to fight only half the war.
Matthew Alugbin, PhD, teaches at Edo State University, Iyamho.