The Enugu State-style, AI-driven security structure, holds lessons for the nation, writes
Typical of the reactive style of our defence and security agencies, Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Olufemi Oluyede, Tuesday May 26, 2026, ordered the deployment of special forces and advanced surveillance assets to Oyo State. The Director of Defence Media Operations, Major-General Michael Onoja disclosed this during an engagement with the press, exactly one week after armed men abducted 39 students and seven teachers from schools in Ori-Ire local government area in the state. The bloodhounds would eventually behead one of the teachers, Michael Olugbade Oyedokun, to reinforce their mean-spiritedness. Such terrorism, such bloodletting has, very sadly, become normalised in contemporary Nigeria. *Statisense* estimates that 35,432 lives have been lost in the first three years of the administration of President Bola Tinubu. This works out at an average of 35 deaths per day.
Sunday May 31, 2026, the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, led a federal government delegation to the aggrieved communities and the families. Optics are critical to perception in communication and politics. That Gbajabiamila and National Security Adviser, (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu chose to appear in billowing *agbada* in the rural Esiele and Yawota communities where the victims were forcefully taken from weeks before, was totally at variance with the sombreness of the occasion. They were received by Abdulfatai Omotayo Buhari, Senator representing Oyo North Senatorial District, who has barely had a good night’s sleep since the unfortunate incident. He was dressed in simple *ankara* fabric, like the generality of his constituents. The federal government team should have seen the Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde who had earlier visited to share in the anguish and trauma of his people, who turned up in a tee-shirt and jeans trousers.
