Nigeria is drifting into a prolonged crisis marked by mass violence, institutional weakness and collapsing public trust, and the country’s legal community must help pull it back from the brink, law teacher and rights advocate Prof. Chidi Anselm Odinkalu warned in a keynote address on Tuesday at the Nigerian Bar Association’s Section on Public Interest and Development Law (NBA-SPIDEL) conference in Uyo.
Speaking under the theme “A Banner Without Stain: Justice, Accountability, Development,” Odinkalu delivered a stark assessment of Nigeria’s trajectory, describing a country “at war or in a very active state of non-international armed conflict” and struggling to provide basic security to its citizens. The former chairman of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission argued that the country’s current condition demands urgent intervention—especially from the legal profession, which he said carries civic obligations embedded in its very existence.
“Civilian government is now in its 26th year, the longest unbroken stretch in our history,” he said. “Yet citizens are entitled to ask whom this longevity has actually rewarded beyond politicians themselves.”
A Country Counting Its Dead
Citing data from Nigeria Mourns, a coalition tracking nationwide violence, Odinkalu said 4,410 people were killed and 1,011 abducted between January and June 2025. Among the dead were at least 189 security personnel. The figures, he argued, resemble those of a country in an undeclared civil conflict.
He noted that October alone saw the killing of a Nigerian Army general and several soldiers in Borno State, along with separate attacks that forced school closures across several states. More than 339 students and teachers were abducted from schools in Kebbi and Niger States within weeks. The result, he said, is a spreading climate of fear in which education itself is becoming untenable.
“These are not abstract statistics,” Odinkalu told the packed hall. “They represent our neighbours, our colleagues, our fellow citizens.” He urged conference attendees to pause in silence to honour victims nationwide.
‘Crippling and Chronic’ Violence
The escalating insecurity, Odinkalu argued, exposes “levels of governmental incapacity reminiscent of Weimar Germany,” with non-state armed groups contesting the state’s authority to impose law, ensure safety, or even collect taxes. He noted that nearly half of the federal unity schools have been shut due to inability to guarantee student safety.
The trend, he said, is a direct attack “on enlightenment in Nigeria” and shows how extremist violence is undermining national identity.
A Dysfunctional State Revisited
Odinkalu traced the roots of the crisis to long-standing structural issues. He recalled that political scientist Peter Lewis described Nigeria as a “dysfunctional state” in 2006—an assessment Odinkalu believes has since hardened rather than diminished.
“In governance, elections, the economy, security, institutions, and civic ethics, the sense is clear that the country is not doing well,” he said. Nigeria’s extractive economic structure, he added, continues to privilege rent-seeking, producing a political culture in which “the wrong way of doing things” faces few consequences.
Odinkalu also invoked the 1975 Supreme Court case of Rauph Gaji v. State, a landmark criminal decision involving individuals from different Nigerian regions, to argue that the country once had stronger cross-regional cohesion. “What are the chances of a similar case being prosecuted at all in today’s Nigeria?” he asked.
Origins of SPIDEL and a Call to Action
Odinkalu recounted the founding of SPIDEL in 2008 under the administration of former NBA president Olisa Agbakoba. At the time, Nigeria was emerging from the widely criticised 2007 elections, and SPIDEL was envisioned as the NBA’s mechanism to address national issues beyond internal professional matters.
Seventeen years later, he said, the need for such engagement has only intensified. The country now faces a “triple crisis” of state fragility and legitimacy, institutional incapacity and multi-dimensional impunity—exactly the themes underpinning the current conference.
He argued that the legal profession must help rebuild the “shared ownership” required to give meaning to Nigeria’s national banner. Without a common identity, he warned, “the banner is guaranteed to suffer stain” from competing ethnic and regional interests.
Failure of Institutions and Elections
A significant portion of Odinkalu’s address focused on Nigeria’s justice system. He argued that the country’s democratic legitimacy is compromised by elections that are regularly disputed and decided in court. As a result, ordinary voters feel sidelined while the judiciary—increasingly accompanied by what he called “judicial consultants”—determines political outcomes.
The courts, he said, are burdened by delays, poor case management and declining public trust. He urged SPIDEL to pursue reforms aimed at improving judicial performance, including measuring and reporting how long cases take to move through the system. “It is no use going into court if you are stuck there until the day after eternity,” he said.
He also called for the revival of recommendations from the 2008 Mohammed Uwais Electoral Reform Panel, many of which originated from early SPIDEL advocacy and remain unimplemented.
Accountability for Atrocity Crimes
In the short term, Odinkalu urged Nigeria to confront the reality that it is engaged in multiple non-state armed conflicts. While politically sensitive, he argued that such recognition would allow authorities to apply the Geneva Conventions Act of 1960, enabling trials of insurgents under military law rather than the current “appeasement” approach.
“Appeasement will not end this reign of atrocities,” he said. “We must move toward genuine accountability.”
The Unfinished Work of Nationhood
Odinkalu situated Nigeria’s identity crisis in its colonial origins, highlighting the 1898 Selborne Committee Report and subsequent amalgamation of 1914 as the foundation of a political entity lacking organic unity. More than a century later, he said, Nigerians remain more committed to ethnic, regional or “indigene” identities than to national citizenship.
What results, he argued, is a zero-sum competition for federal appointments, security positions, university admissions and public funds. “The most endangered minorities in the country,” he said, “are those willing to identify themselves as Nigerians.”
Education, Legal Pedagogy and the Future of the Profession
Turning to the long term, Odinkalu called for major reforms to Nigerian legal education. He argued that law faculties still operate with inherited colonial frameworks that erase African legal traditions while failing to prepare students for a globalized profession influenced by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
“The rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria may one day fall into disuse,” he said, noting that global market forces and technology will reshape legal practice in ways Nigerian institutions must anticipate.
A Country Without Consequences
Odinkalu closed by warning that impunity threatens Nigeria’s very survival. Public officials respond to atrocities not with solutions but with silence, denial or “gaslighting,” he said, leaving citizens to negotiate their own safety. The NBA and SPIDEL, he argued, must lead by modelling reforms capable of slowing or reversing the country’s deterioration.
“Absent course correction,” he concluded, “the country on its present trajectory is not sustainable.”
