By Law & Society Magazine Investigations
On paper, the Constitution remains unchanged. It still guarantees the right to life, personal liberty, freedom of movement and access to justice. It still places the security and welfare of the people at the centre of public responsibility. Courts continue to sit. Elections are conducted. Legislatures meet. The institutions of constitutional government remain intact.
Yet across many parts of Nigeria, everyday life tells a more complicated story.
Parents weigh the risk of sending children to school against reports of recent attacks. Farmers leave fertile land uncultivated because armed groups control nearby forests. Commercial drivers exchange information about dangerous stretches of highway before setting out. Villages organise local vigilante patrols where residents believe official protection may arrive too late. These decisions are rarely discussed as constitutional issues. They are usually described as security concerns. Over time, however, they begin to reshape the practical relationship between citizens and the State.
The Constitution does not promise a life free from crime or conflict. No democratic charter can. It does, however, assume that public institutions will remain capable of protecting citizens, enforcing the law and ensuring that fundamental rights are more than aspirations recorded in a legal document. Where those assumptions weaken over an extended period, constitutional guarantees become increasingly difficult to enjoy in practice, even though they remain fully intact in law.
Nigeria’s prolonged struggle with terrorism, insurgency, banditry and organised kidnapping has brought that reality into sharper focus. Thousands of people have been displaced from their communities. Schools have suspended academic activities after repeated attacks. Agricultural production has suffered in areas where farmers fear venturing into their fields. Businesses have relocated or closed, while families increasingly organise ordinary routines around security briefings rather than convenience.
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These changes rarely occur overnight. They accumulate quietly, often appearing reasonable when viewed individually. A school installs additional security measures. A community restricts movement after dark. A transport operator alters established routes. Residents begin relying on informal security groups because they consider them more immediately available than formal institutions. Each response reflects an understandable attempt to reduce risk. Collectively, they reveal how prolonged insecurity can alter the way constitutional government is experienced at the local level.
Section 14(2)(b) of the Constitution declares that the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government. The provision is frequently cited after major attacks, but its significance extends beyond political statements. It expresses a constitutional expectation that the State will possess both the authority and the capacity to protect those within its jurisdiction. Security is therefore not merely another government programme. It is one of the conditions upon which the meaningful exercise of many other constitutional rights depends.
The consequences become visible across different sectors of national life. Education provides one illustration. The repeated targeting of schools has forced authorities in several states to rethink security arrangements, school locations and emergency response systems. The rescue of pupils and teachers abducted in Oriire Local Government Area demonstrated what determined coordination among security agencies can achieve.
Days later, however, another school came under attack in Kogi State while students were sitting for public examinations. The sequence of those events captured both the possibilities and the limitations of operational success. One rescue restored dozens of lives. It did not remove the conditions that continue to place other schools at risk.
The same pattern appears elsewhere. Communities affected by insecurity often adapt long before government policy changes. Markets close earlier. Religious gatherings adopt additional security precautions. Traditional rulers, youth associations and local vigilante groups assume responsibilities that once rested almost entirely with formal security institutions.
Many of these responses are practical. Some save lives. Others reflect an uncomfortable reality: where citizens repeatedly doubt the State’s ability to respond quickly, they begin constructing alternative arrangements to protect themselves.
Democratic societies confronted by prolonged violence have faced similar pressures. The United Kingdom during the IRA campaign, Spain’s long confrontation with ETA and Colombia’s conflict with insurgent movements all struggled to balance effective security operations with judicial oversight and constitutional restraint. Their histories differ significantly from Nigeria’s, but they share an important lesson. Public confidence depends not only on reducing violence but also on preserving confidence that institutions remain governed by law even during periods of exceptional danger.
That lesson deserves attention in Nigeria because terrorism seeks more than territory or ransom. It aims to weaken public confidence in the institutions responsible for maintaining order. Every attack carries an immediate human cost. Repeated attacks over many years risk producing something less visible but equally damaging: a gradual decline in citizens’ expectations of what constitutional government should ordinarily provide.
The Republic’s response cannot therefore be measured only by the number of arrests made or operations successfully concluded.
It must also be measured by whether constitutional institutions emerge from this prolonged conflict with greater public confidence, stronger accountability and a renewed capacity to protect the rights they were established to guarantee.
