Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu has declared a nationwide security emergency following a sharp rise in armed attacks, kidnappings and incursions by suspected terrorist groups across the country.
In a statement he personally issued on Wednesday, Tinubu announced sweeping measures aimed at strengthening the country’s security architecture.
He authorised a significant expansion of both the Nigerian Armed Forces and the police, directing the police to recruit 20,000 additional officers, increasing their new intake to 50,000 personnel.
Tinubu noted that the federal government had already approved upgrades to police training facilities nationwide and instructed the police to use National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) camps as temporary training centres to accelerate deployment.
He added that officers currently assigned to VIP protection duties would undergo intensive retraining to redeploy them to regions facing heightened insecurity, with the aim of improving frontline response and effectiveness.
The president also ordered the Department of State Services (DSS) to immediately deploy all trained forest guards to target armed groups operating from remote forested areas, describing the step as essential to flushing out terrorists and bandits who have exploited difficult terrain to evade security forces.
Nigeria has witnessed an uptick in violent incidents in recent months, with armed groups launching attacks on rural communities, highways and urban centres.
