By Law & Society Magazine Investigations
The abduction of a High Court judge from his residence in Kebbi State. A Shari’ah Court judge in Katsina escaping through a courtroom window after armed men reportedly stormed the premises. The kidnapping of a Bayelsa High Court judge only a year earlier. The killing of a senior military intelligence officer in Abuja. Engineers who left for an official assignment in Ebonyi and have not returned nearly five years later. Teachers murdered while trying to protect schoolchildren. Communities emptied by fear.
These are not identical crimes. They occurred in different states, under different circumstances and are being investigated by different authorities. Considered together, however, they reveal something that extends beyond individual criminal cases. Violence is increasingly touching the institutions through which the Nigerian state governs, administers justice and carries out its constitutional responsibilities.
That development deserves closer attention than it has received.
For much of the past decade, public discussion has understandably centred on the operational dimensions of insecurity: troop deployments, intelligence gathering, weapons procurement, border surveillance and the continuing debate over policing structures. Those issues remain important. Yet prolonged insecurity also places constitutional institutions under sustained pressure, often in ways that attract less attention than the attacks themselves.
A judge who cannot travel safely, a courtroom forced into panic, an engineer supervising a public infrastructure project who disappears while carrying out official duties, a military intelligence officer killed within the nation’s capital, teachers afraid to return to classrooms and communities abandoning ancestral homes all point to a broader concern. The question is no longer confined to how violence is contained. It increasingly concerns whether public institutions can perform the functions the Constitution assigns to them without intimidation or disruption.
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 in public discourse, yet its practical implications reach beyond political debate. Security is not measured solely by the number of operations conducted or suspects arrested. It is also reflected in whether courts sit without fear, schools remain open, infrastructure projects proceed under lawful supervision, farmers cultivate their land, and citizens move freely without treating ordinary life as an exercise in calculated risk.
Recent events involving members of the judiciary illustrate that concern with unusual clarity. Justice Faruku Hassan Bunza of the Kebbi State High Court was abducted from his residence in July, with his captors reportedly demanding a ransom. Days later, Shari’ah Court Judge Mohammed Muktar reportedly escaped an attempted abduction after armed men entered court premises in Katsina State. In June last year, Bayelsa High Court Judge Justice Ebiyerin Omukoro regained his freedom after spending nearly two weeks in captivity following his abduction in Yenagoa. Each incident has its own factual context, but together they raise difficult questions about the conditions under which justice is expected to function. Judges are expected to decide disputes impartially and without fear. That expectation becomes harder to sustain where those entrusted with administering justice increasingly face the same threats confronting the citizens who appear before them.
The implications extend beyond the judiciary.
Military officers engaged in intelligence gathering, engineers overseeing public projects, humanitarian workers, teachers, healthcare personnel and traditional rulers all occupy positions that enable the state to function. When they become recurring targets of organised violence, the immediate victims are individuals and families. The longer-term consequences are institutional. Projects are delayed or abandoned. Communities lose confidence in public authority. Skilled professionals become reluctant to serve in vulnerable locations. The cost of insecurity begins to accumulate not only in lives lost but in institutions gradually weakened.
Nigeria has experienced moments like this before, although in different forms. During military rule, constitutional lawyers challenged executive decrees that sought to place public power beyond judicial scrutiny. Their work demonstrated that national stability depends not only upon security agencies but also upon institutions willing to insist that the exercise of public authority remains subject to law. That history offers an important reminder today. Security operations and constitutional governance are not competing ideas. They reinforce one another when each functions within its proper sphere.
Around the world, courts have contributed to national resilience not by directing military operations but by strengthening the legal frameworks within which governments discharge their security responsibilities. Judicial decisions have improved policing standards, expanded victims’ rights, required greater institutional accountability and clarified the constitutional obligations of public authorities. The objective has never been to substitute litigation for security operations. It has been to ensure that constitutional guarantees remain meaningful even during periods of prolonged violence.
That conversation has only begun in Nigeria.
The legal profession has traditionally played a defining role whenever the country’s constitutional order has faced serious tests. The struggle against military rule, the defence of judicial independence and the expansion of electoral accountability all bear the imprint of sustained legal advocacy. Organised violence now presents another challenge, although of a different character. It asks whether constitutional mechanisms can contribute more deliberately to strengthening public institutions, protecting victims and reinforcing accountability without intruding into areas reserved for operational decision-making.
Those questions cannot be answered by the courts alone. They require engagement from the organised Bar, universities, civil society organisations, legislators, policy makers and citizens who understand that constitutional democracy depends upon institutions that are both lawful and capable of functioning under pressure.
The Republic’s strength has never rested solely on the courage of those who carry weapons. It also depends upon judges who continue to dispense justice, teachers who return to classrooms, engineers who supervise public works, journalists who document difficult truths and lawyers who insist that constitutional guarantees retain practical meaning even when fear threatens to reduce them to aspiration.
Tomorrow, in the concluding instalment of Endgame, Law & Society Magazine examines a question that has received far less attention than it deserves: whether the legal profession has fully deployed the Constitution as one of the Republic’s most important instruments in the struggle against organised violence.
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