The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has declared Nigeria to be in a "state of war" due to escalating violence across multiple regions, urging the Federal Government to treat the security crisis as a national emergency. Following its 38th Board of Trustees meeting in Abuja, chaired by Bashir Dalhatu, the northern socio-political group issued a communiqué warning that insecurity had evolved beyond regional concerns into a threat to national survival. Prominent attendees included former Inspector-General of Police Mohammed Abubakar, former Chief of Army Staff Tukur Buratai, former UN General Assembly President Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, and Mahmud Ahmed. The ACF cited persistent insurgency in the North-East, banditry and mass kidnappings in the North-West and North-Central, and recurring communal clashes as evidence of a nationwide breakdown. Hundreds of thousands have been killed or displaced in states including Borno, Plateau, Niger, and Kwara, with significant casualties among security forces. The forum emphasized that families have been shattered, livelihoods destroyed, and entire generations traumatized. It also linked insecurity to economic decline, particularly in northern agriculture, noting disrupted farming, weakened supply chains, and rising inflation. The ACF called for a wartime strategy, recommending the reallocation of national resources and the suspension of non-essential spending to prioritize security. "Extraordinary threats require extraordinary measures," the communiqué stated, stressing that security is foundational to sustainable development.
Bashir Dalhatu's ACF is not merely sounding an alarm — it is effectively declaring that Nigeria's current governance model has failed to protect its people, and that the country is now operating under de facto war conditions without the corresponding national response. The forum's use of the phrase "state of war" is not rhetorical flourish but a direct indictment of a security architecture that has allowed violence to metastasize unchecked for over a decade.
The fact that former top military and police officials are now aligned with a regional body demanding wartime measures reveals a deep fracture in confidence — not just in current policy, but in the coherence of the state's monopoly on force. The ACF's focus on economic collapse in the north ties insecurity directly to survival, shifting the narrative from abstract governance failure to immediate, tangible ruin for millions who depend on farming and local trade. When a group like ACF, traditionally cautious in federal matters, calls for suspending non-essential projects, it signals desperation, not strategy.
For ordinary Nigerians in conflict zones, this is not about policy debates — it is about whether they can sleep without fear of attack, farm their land, or send children to school. The trauma and displacement described are not temporary setbacks but generational setbacks with no clear path to recovery.
This moment fits a broader pattern: as federal authority weakens in practice, regional and elite bodies increasingly step into the void, offering diagnoses and demands once reserved for government. The ACF's intervention is less about influencing policy than exposing the state's diminishing credibility in the face of a crisis it can no longer downplay.
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