September 21 was the International Day of Peace. Across the world, governments, institutions and citizens were being reminded of an idea that ought to be ordinary: that people should be able to live without fear, with their dignity protected and their future not constantly threatened by violence. The United Nations chose “Invest in Peace: For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day” as this year’s theme, defining peace not simply as the absence of war but as the everyday experience of safety, dignity, opportunity and cooperation.
Nigeria marked the day too, but it is difficult to look at the country’s security situation and pretend that the occasion does not come with an uncomfortable question: how much peace can a country claim when so many of its citizens still have to organise their lives around the possibility of violence?
The National Human Rights Commission’s July 2026 dashboard recorded 382 killings and 230 kidnapping incidents, alongside continuing attacks affecting food security, education, religious and cultural rights and the lives of internally displaced people. Those figures came from a government-established human rights institution whose responsibility is to document violations across the country. They are therefore not opposition statistics assembled to embarrass the government; they are part of the official record of the conditions Nigerians are living through.
And that is where the International Day of Peace becomes relevant to the Tinubu administration.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu did not create Nigeria’s insecurity crisis. It was already deeply rooted before he entered Aso Rock, and no serious assessment of his administration should pretend otherwise. But he accepted responsibility for governing a country in which insecurity was one of the most urgent threats to national life, and he made security one of the clearest promises of his inaugural address.
“Security shall be the top priority of our administration,” he said on May 29, 2023, explaining that neither prosperity nor justice could prevail amid insecurity and violence. He promised to reform the security doctrine and architecture and to invest more in personnel, training, equipment, pay and firepower.
That statement matters because governments should ultimately be examined against the standards they set for themselves.
Three years into the administration, the question is therefore not whether Nigeria’s security problems began with Tinubu. They did not. The more relevant question is whether the measures taken since May 2023 have changed the security conditions that Nigerians actually experience, and whether the government’s considerable investment in security has produced a sufficiently visible improvement in the lives of those who remain exposed to kidnapping, communal violence, terrorism, banditry and other forms of criminality.
There is evidence of security operations, arrests, rescue efforts and continuing attempts to confront armed groups. Those efforts should be acknowledged and examined on their merits. But the existence of security operations is not itself proof that the security problem has been solved. The continuing figures from the NHRC show why the distinction matters.
For the Nigerian whose journey is interrupted by fear of kidnapping, the sophistication of a security operation is not the central issue. For the farmer who is uncertain whether it is safe to return to the land, the number of military formations in the country does not answer the question. For the parent wondering whether a child can travel to school safely, the language of renewed security architecture offers little comfort unless it is reflected in what happens on the road.
This is the uncomfortable gap between security policy and lived security.
It is also why the events in Minna cannot simply be treated as another item in Nigeria’s long catalogue of tragedies.
The Federal Government has confirmed that 37 people held by the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps in Niger State over suspected illegal mining died in custody. The Minister of Interior has constituted a ten-member independent committee to investigate the identities of the deceased, their arrests and detention, the cause and circumstances of their deaths, and any responsibility, negligence or misconduct that may emerge. Officers involved have been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation.
The investigation should be allowed to establish the facts before conclusions are drawn. That is precisely why an independent inquiry is necessary. But the circumstances raise a larger question about the meaning of state responsibility in a country already struggling with insecurity.
When the state takes someone into custody, it assumes responsibility for that person’s safety. That principle should not become less important because the country is dealing with illegal mining, terrorism, banditry or any other serious security problem. A government that asks citizens to trust its security institutions must also be prepared to answer difficult questions when those institutions fail.
This is where the International Day of Peace should take Nigeria beyond ceremonial language.
Peace cannot be reduced to the number of days without a major terrorist attack, the number of operations conducted by security agencies or the number of statements issued after another community has been attacked. It has to be visible in the ordinary decisions Nigerians make every day: whether a farmer can cultivate his land, whether a trader can travel home after closing her shop, whether a child can attend school without becoming a security statistic and whether a family can trust that a relative taken into government custody will come back alive.
The United Nations’ message this year is particularly relevant because it describes peace as something that has to be built and sustained, not simply proclaimed. Its Secretary-General, António Guterres, has likewise argued that peace requires investment in institutions and systems that people can trust, alongside protection of human rights and dignity.
That should be taken seriously in Nigeria.
The country has spent enormous resources on security over the years, yet insecurity continues to impose costs far beyond the security budget. It disrupts farming and food production, keeps children away from school, displaces communities, damages local economies and deepens the public’s distrust of institutions that are supposed to protect them. The cost is not captured only in the number of people killed or kidnapped. It is also found in the lives people begin to live differently because they no longer feel safe.
This is why President Tinubu’s 2023 declaration that security would be his administration’s top priority deserves to remain part of the national conversation. It was not a promise made by his opponents. It was his own statement of what the government would prioritise. The appropriate response now is neither to dismiss every effort made by his administration nor to accept every official assurance at face value. It is to examine the record against the promise.
That examination will not be settled by one Peace Day, one security operation or one government statement. It will be settled by whether Nigerians gradually regain something that insecurity has taken from them: the freedom to make ordinary decisions without first calculating the possibility of violence.
September 21 has come and gone. The international speeches have been delivered, the theme has been announced and the world has moved on to its next crisis. Nigeria, however, remains with the harder part of the conversation. Families still have to travel. Farmers still have to return to their fields. Children still have to go to school. Security agencies still have to account for those placed in their custody. And a government that declared security its top priority still has to demonstrate, in the daily lives of Nigerians, what that priority has achieved.
That is the real test of peace in Nigeria. It is not whether the country can mark a day dedicated to peace. It is whether, on the ordinary days when there is no ceremony, Nigerians can live as though their safety is something the state has finally learned to protect.
Stephanie Shaakaa shaakaastephanie02@gmail.com
08034861434
