The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has declared that Nigeria is in a "state of war" due to escalating insecurity, urging the federal government to make security the nation's top priority. The statement was issued on Wednesday at the close of the ACF's 38th Board of Trustees meeting and signed by Chairman Bashir M. Dalhatu. The forum, comprising prominent northern leaders, former government officials and security experts, cited widespread violence across the country, particularly in the North-East, North-West and North-Central regions. It pointed to recent attacks during the Easter period in Borno, Kaduna, Katsina and Benue states, which resulted in 16 deaths, including five policemen, and displaced dozens. On March 17, simultaneous explosions at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH), the Monday Market Roundabout and the Post Office in Maiduguri killed at least 25 people. Boko Haram and ISWAP have carried out coordinated attacks on military formations in Borno State, killing senior officers, including Major U. I. Mairiga, Lt-Col Umar Faruq, Lt-Col S.I. Iliyasu, Brigadier General Oseni Omoh Braimah and Col. I.A. Mohammed. Military operations in the Sambisa Forest, Timbuktu Triangle, Mandara Mountains and Lake Chad Basin have led to the deaths of numerous insurgents and the destruction of major terrorist camps. The ACF noted that hundreds of thousands have been killed or displaced in states like Borno, Plateau, Niger and Kwara, with severe disruptions to agriculture, food shortages and economic decline.
Bashir M. Dalhatu and the ACF are no longer speaking as regional elders but as alarm bells for a nation sleepwalking through a war it refuses to name. Their declaration that Nigeria is in a "state of war" is not hyperbole — it follows the deaths of at least 25 in Maiduguri on March 17 and the confirmed killings of five senior military officers in Borno, a level of sustained loss that surpasses isolated incidents and points to systemic collapse in national defence.
The ACF's emphasis on economic ruin in the North is grounded in visible reality: farming communities have been emptied, supply routes severed, and food inflation has become a daily tax on survival. When the forum states that insecurity is undermining Nigeria's economy, it reflects the lived experience of farmers in Niger and Kwara who cannot till their land, not abstract theory. This is not just a security failure but a cascading breakdown of governance, where military losses and civilian displacement feed a cycle of impoverishment that no short-term operation can reverse.
Ordinary Nigerians, especially in the North, are paying with their lives and livelihoods. The loss of senior officers means prolonged military strain, which translates to weaker local protection and more room for armed groups to entrench. Displaced families in Borno and Benue are not temporary victims — they are part of a growing population trapped in a permanent crisis with no roadmap to return.
This moment fits a longer pattern: northern elite bodies like the ACF have repeatedly sounded the alarm, only for their communiqués to gather dust while violence escalates. The difference now is the specificity — naming dead officers, citing exact attack dates, linking farm collapse to national inflation — which strips away any excuse for inaction. The state of war may already be here; the question is whether anyone in power will act like it.
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