Nigeria’s duty to end terrorism, by Dakuku Peterside

Every year on August 21, the world pauses to honour victims of terrorism. In many countries, this is a solemn day of reflection, a chance to pay tribute to lives cut short and to stand with those who bear the scars of violence. But in Nigeria, remembrance cannot simply be about ceremony. It cannot be reduced to symbolic gestures, fleeting headlines, or the recitation of names in hushed tones. Here, remembrance must be more than ritual—it must be resistance. It must be the moment when the nation confronts its ongoing nightmare and demands that the government act with the urgency and resolve befitting a sovereign state. We live in a country where the graveyards of terror are not confined to history but are freshly dug week after week. To remember in Nigeria is not a passive exercise in mourning; it is an indictment of the state’s failures and a call for a radical shift from managing terrorism to eradicating it. Anything less is betrayal—of the dead, of the living, and of the future generations who deserve to inherit a country free from the constant shadow of fear.

The stories are endless, painful, and familiar. A wedding in Gwoza turned into a bloodbath; the same day, a hospital and a funeral were attacked. In Katsina, a community security group returning from a condolence was ambushed and killed. In Benue’s Yelewata, a displacement camp was overrun, the number of dead running into hundreds. Near Maiduguri, farm workers were slaughtered. In Mafa, entire wards were set on fire. These tragedies pile on each other, not as isolated events, but as proof that terrorists have dared to rival the state for the monopoly of violence.

When we speak of victims, we do not mean only the dead. We speak of widows struggling to raise children in IDP camps where food is scarce and education is broken. We talk of abducted girls who return to stigma, boys forced into insurgency who live with trauma, men whose shops or herds have been wiped out, and children drifting in and out of classrooms because displacement has no timetable. They do not need sympathy as a performance; they need a state that restores their safety, dignity, and livelihood.

To end terrorism, government must choke its lifeblood. Violence requires money, fuel, weapons, phones, motorbikes, and informants. The state must trace and freeze these pipelines in plain sight, not in whispers. No more vague “work in progress.” Nigerians deserve to see convictions, assets seized, financiers jailed, and proceeds legally diverted to victims. Nothing undermines public confidence more than rumours of “big men” involved in terror financing while communities bury their dead. Justice cannot be selective; no surname should be powerful enough to shield collaborators.

Ending terrorism also requires denying sanctuary and mobility. Forward operating bases must hold ground in hotspots, borders must be policed with real-time intelligence, and fuel and motorcycle restrictions must be enforced without leaving farmers destitute. Aerial and ground surveillance must make terrorist movement costly and visible. Communities must be given early-warning systems linked to response teams that are bound by time standards—alerts logged within minutes, responders mobilised quickly, reinforcements arriving predictably. The state must measure itself against these standards and publish the results.

Livelihoods must be protected where people live, not in abstract plans. Protected farm windows, secured market days, safe school corridors—these are the measures by which ordinary Nigerians will know their government is serious. Compensation must not be tied to documents IDPs no longer have. Case workers must go to survivors, not drag survivors through bureaucracy. Trauma care, psychosocial support, and resettlement must be steady and guaranteed. Community guards must be trained, insured, and monitored to prevent them from being turned into militias or abandoned as cannon fodder.

We must also heal the way we tell our stories. Terror is not the property of any tribe or religion. Collapsing events into ethnic or sectarian frames invites reprisals and feeds the fire. Precision matters: there are perpetrators, there are victims, there are grievances, there are atrocities. A day of remembrance must refuse to weaponise grief.

What Nigeria needs is remembrance with remedy. A memorial must rise, yes, but more importantly, a Victims’ Charter must be written into law—one that guarantees care, compensation, and safe resettlement. Government must invite judgement by outcomes, not announcements: fewer incidents, longer farming seasons, fuller markets, children in classrooms, response times that save lives, financiers in prison, terror assets confiscated.

This is not about managing a crisis. It is about ending it. The state must reclaim its monopoly of violence, not as a slogan but as an everyday reality. Terrorism thrives on chaos, but government exists to impose order, to protect life, and to secure dignity. If we honour the dead by protecting the living, if we match remembrance with remedy, then perhaps next year the roll call of names will be shorter, farms will be planted without fear, schools will not close at the sound of gunfire, and families will gather without dread. That is the only memorial worthy of Nigeria’s victims of terror, and the only proof that the government has fulfilled its most basic duty—to end the nightmare, not manage it.

If Nigeria chooses eradication over endurance, if it marries remembrance to remedy, if government reclaims and proves its monopoly of violence, then the future will not be defined by the graves of terror but by the resilience of a people finally free. That is the only tribute worthy of the men, women, and children whose lives were stolen, and the only assurance that those still alive will not become the next chapter in a book of grief. Anything short of this is failure; anything equal to this is justice fulfilled. Only then will we be able to say, with truth in our mouths and conviction in our hearts, that Nigeria remembers its victims not by mourning alone, but by ending the terror that made them victims.

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