As Nigeria’s Police Force mobilises 15,000 personnel to secure Saturday’s Osun governorship election, questions are resurfacing over why a comparable show of force has not been directed at states battling relentless banditry and terrorism.
The Commissioner of Police overseeing the Osun election, Samuel Etaifo, announced this week that the state will see an unprecedented security presence for the governorship contest, which features 14 candidates including incumbent Governor Ademola Adeleke. Etaifo said the deployment would draw on conventional officers, specialised tactical units, canine teams, medical personnel, and the Police Mobile Force, with a Deputy Inspector-General and an Assistant Inspector-General flown in to supervise the operation.
Etaifo, who was deployed to the state ahead of schedule because of rising political tensions, issued a blunt warning to anyone considering electoral violence: offenders, regardless of rank, would be arrested and transferred out of the state entirely. He stressed that because it is a federal election, no violator would be permitted to remain in Osun following an arrest.
The scale of the deployment underscores how seriously security agencies are treating the vote, coming just over a year before the 2027 general election.
The announcement has drawn renewed criticism from Nigerians who argue that the same urgency and resources rarely materialise when it comes to protecting communities under sustained attack from bandits and armed extremist groups. A review of recent reporting shows why the frustration runs deep.
Kwara State has endured one of the deadliest stretches of violence in its history this year. In early February 2026, hundreds of militants attacked the villages of Woro and Nuku in Kaiama Local Government Area, an assault local media dubbed the “Kwara massacre.” Reports put the death toll above 162, with dozens injured and 38 residents kidnapped, in attacks attributed to a Boko Haram faction and the group Lakurawa. Two months later, gunmen struck again in Patigi LGA, where five residents and three soldiers were killed and several women and children abducted. In Ifelodun LGA, residents of Omugo community said their area had emptied out after repeated raids, with eight worshippers abducted in an incident that was the third such attack in six months. As recently as August 2, 2026 — just three days before the Osun deployment was announced — bandits raided Abudu community in Ilorin East, looting homes and abducting residents.
Niger State has faced a similarly grim run. In early January 2026, bandits killed dozens of people, including children, in coordinated raids on Agwara and Borgu LGAs, an attack that came less than a month after more than 300 pupils, students, and staff were abducted from a Catholic school in the same local government area. In mid-February, gunmen struck three more Borgu-area communities in dawn raids, killing at least 32 people. Analysts note Niger has for years ranked among the states hit hardest by both banditry and the wider Boko Haram insurgency.
Zamfara State remains widely described as the epicentre of Nigeria’s banditry crisis. A tally by the geopolitical research firm SBM Intelligence found Zamfara recorded 1,203 abductions between July 2024 and June 2025, the highest of any state in the northwest. The violence has continued into 2026: in early August, days before the Osun deployment, bandits abducted more than 70 residents and killed an army officer and a police officer during an attack on Kasuwar Daji district. In July, repeated raids forced residents to flee more than ten communities in Maru LGA, leaving them largely deserted, and in June, gunmen abducted seven students of the Federal Polytechnic in Kaura Namoda.
Plateau State, though not among the states named in the original complaint, has also seen a punishing 2026. A Palm Sunday attack on Ungwan Rukuba in Jos North killed around 30 people in March, and further raids across Bassa, Barkin Ladi, and Riyom LGAs killed at least eight more residents in April. A youth coalition later alleged that roughly 200 people were killed around the Barkin Ladi axis over a five-month stretch before state security services established a dedicated operational post in the area in May 2026 — a figure that could not be independently verified.
Set against this backdrop, critics say the contrast is stark: a single election in one state can summon 15,000 officers virtually overnight, complete with senior federal oversight and specialised units, while communities enduring months or years of documented, repeated attacks have often waited weeks for reinforcements, or relied on state governments to fund resettlement after the fact. The concern, as voiced by residents and observers, is that political stability and electoral optics are being prioritised over the physical safety of citizens in the country’s worst-hit regions.
The debate over Nigeria’s security priorities has played out against the backdrop of Washington’s renewed scrutiny of the country’s record on religious freedom. In October 2025, the United States redesignated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, a category reserved for governments found to engage in or tolerate particularly severe violations of religious freedom. President Trump cited the scale of killings affecting Christian communities in announcing the move, and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom — which had recommended the designation annually since 2009 — welcomed the decision.
Nigeria had previously held CPC status in 2020 before being removed from the list in 2021, a delisting that rights advocates say coincided with an escalation in religiously motivated violence in parts of the country’s north and Middle Belt. Congressional resolutions introduced since the redesignation have pointed to attacks attributed to armed groups and militias operating in states including Benue and Plateau, and have called for tougher accountability measures.
For critics of the government’s security posture, the CPC designation is emblematic of a broader pattern: a slow, under-resourced response to entrenched rural violence, contrasted with the rapid, well-funded mobilisation seen ahead of high-profile elections.
With Nigeria’s general election set for 2027, the disparity in security attention is likely to remain a flashpoint. Observers note that both domestic and international eyes will be closely watching how the country balances electoral security with its response to ongoing violence in Kwara, Niger, Plateau, Zamfara, and other affected states — a test, they argue, of whether security policy is driven by the safety of citizens or the optics of the ballot box.
