By Chido Onumah

The Federal Government is strengthening the connection between national security and food security through the AgriShield Initiative, led by the National Counter Terrorism Centre in the Office of the National Security Adviser, in partnership with TAG International.

The Borno State pilot focuses on a concern that reaches every Nigerian household: farmers must be able to reach their land, cultivate it and bring in the harvest without fear. By explaining the protection being provided and bringing community concerns into government planning, AgriShield supports agricultural recovery, safer livelihoods and a more secure national food supply.

AgriShield is a creative campaign under the NCTC strategic communication programme for counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism. Its central message, “Our Presence is Your Peace,” translates security from operational statistics into everyday outcomes.

For a farming family, security means an open road to the farm, crops tended through the season and produce reaching the market. The campaign measures progress by threats removed, harvests secured and ordinary life restored.

This approach is grounded in research. Between June and July, a baseline survey covered 1,409 residents in 18 wards across Maiduguri Metropolitan Council, Jere and Mafa Local Government Areas. Only 17 per cent of respondents were aware of any local action to counter violent extremism, and only about one-third of that group could identify a security-related intervention. Awareness of the NCTC itself was about two per cent. Yet 86 per cent expressed strong interest in information about how government protects them. The findings point to a serious visibility gap: substantial work is being done, but too little of it is understood by the communities it is meant to serve.

The survey also showed why food security provides the right frame for engagement. Unemployment concerned 81 per cent of respondents, the cost of living 70 per cent and food insecurity 57 per cent, while terrorism was named by 29 per cent. About 83 per cent rejected extremist groups and the harm they cause. Government therefore need not convince these communities that violent extremism is destructive. It must demonstrate a credible alternative built around protection, livelihoods, visible delivery and hope, particularly for young people vulnerable to recruitment, irregular migration, drugs and despair.

AgriShield will run initially from October to December in Maiduguri Metropolitan Council, Jere and Mafa. It will combine radio programmes, community town halls, locally performed drama, recorded testimony from farmers and frontline officers, and carefully selected national media content. Four radio stations will carry 24 talk shows and 80 jingle slots in Hausa and Kanuri. Six town hall meetings, two in each local government area, will enable farmers, traditional and religious leaders, young people, women and security representatives to discuss practical concerns directly. An endline survey in December will return to the same wards to measure changes in awareness, trust and public understanding.

The channel mix reflects local evidence. Radio reaches 67 per cent of respondents and is the single most trusted source for 41 per cent. Community and religious leaders form the next most trusted category, while Facebook and TikTok are important for people under 30. AgriShield will therefore use radio for broad reach, credible local voices for trust and short-form digital content for younger audiences. It will also incorporate SMS and telephone engagement so that subsistence farmers are not excluded by limited internet access. Communication will remain two-way: questions and criticism from communities will inform weekly editorial decisions and subsequent messages.

A major strength of the initiative is the breadth of federal institutions that have committed their capabilities to it. At the first inter-agency coordination meeting convened by the NCTC-ONSA on 17 September, the Nigeria Police Force offered its state commands and public-relations network; Defence Headquarters offered its strategic communication structures, monthly briefings, Armed Forces Radio and service platforms; and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps brought its Agro-Rangers mandate and field presence for the protection of farmers. The State Security Service committed intelligence support and early warning, while the Nigeria Immigration Service highlighted the cross-border dimensions of recruitment and youth migration.

The Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria offered its nationwide broadcast capacity in more than 25 Nigerian languages. The National Orientation Agency placed its 818 structures and over 4,000 personnel at the service of community mobilisation, dialogue, drama and local-language outreach. The Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution offered state-level peace structures, trained dispute-resolution stakeholders and an early-warning volunteer network. NIRSAL Plc also committed institutional support. These bodies join the NCTC-ONSA in an emerging whole-of-government platform that connects security operations, agricultural resilience, public information, community participation and conflict prevention.

The pilot also relies on partners with strong local knowledge. The Network of Civil Society Organisations in Borno State, which brings together about 200 organisations, will support mobilisation and community delivery. Its grassroots reach complements the NCTC’s continuing engagement with the Partnership Against Violent Extremism network. TAG International provides technical partnership in research, campaign design, content support, monitoring and evaluation. The initiative is also enabled by the Federal Government’s partnership with the United Kingdom Government in strengthening strategic communication, community resilience and counter-terrorism cooperation.

Inter-agency cooperation is itself part of the message. Communities often interpret contradictory statements or isolated agency publicity as evidence of disorganisation. AgriShield establishes a common message platform, nominated communication focal points and a single NCTC clearing house. Operational claims will be verified by the responsible agency before publication, and sensitive information will be escalated through agreed channels. Agencies will appear together at community engagements and amplify verified campaign material through their existing platforms. This arrangement preserves accuracy, protects operations and allows citizens to see a coordinated Federal Government response.

The safeguards are equally important. The campaign will communicate verified operations and results without disclosing itineraries, compromising intelligence or exposing farmers and community messengers to retaliation. Planning will take account of possible extremist backlash, and field engagements will be limited to accessible locations agreed with the responsible security agencies. Local voices will be selected with care because formal gatekeepers are not equally trusted in every ward. Above all, the campaign will avoid exaggerated claims. Public confidence grows when official communication is accurate, timely and matched by visible action on the ground.

AgriShield reflects the Federal Government’s understanding that food security cannot be separated from human security. Military, intelligence and law-enforcement operations create the protective space; agricultural and financial institutions support production; communicators make verified progress visible; and civil society ensures that policy hears the people it affects. Each element reinforces the others. Farmers who feel protected are more likely to return to their fields. Communities that receive credible information are better placed to resist rumours, cooperate with authorities and report threats. Safe cultivation and harvests, in turn, strengthen livelihoods and reduce the economic pressures that violent groups exploit.

Through the NCTC-ONSA, TAG International, participating federal agencies, civil society and local leaders, AgriShield places the farmer at the centre of the national security conversation. The initiative recognises that every safely cultivated field contributes to stability and every protected harvest strengthens Nigeria’s food supply. That is the standard by which the campaign should be judged: credible information, responsive institutions, safer communities and more Nigerians able to produce food without surrendering their land or future to fear.

Chido Onumah is special adviser to the National Security Adviser on Strategic Communication and Civil Society Liaison.

By Uche Igwe

An interesting trend is going on in Nigeria in the name of democracy. Many observers have noticed it, but analysts and activists have either dismissed it or have not taken sufficient notice of it.

It is pervasive, progressive, and at times subtle. The outcome of the 2027 elections has been taken as a fait accompli. Almost all government agencies are acting as if they are under instructions to protect the ruling party’s interests and clamp down on the opposition.

This is why a section of the citizenry is said to be quickly resorting to hopelessness and losing faith in their democracy.

Almost everyone believes that their votes will not count. They have lost complete trust and confidence in their institutions – be they police, electoral institutions, anti-corruption agencies, and even the judiciary. The phenomenon is akin to what is known as state capture.

State capture is a deeper, more systemic form of corruption in which a narrow group of political elites or private-interest groups manipulates a nation’s laws, policies, and institutions to serve its own interests, rather than the public’s. Yet this phenomenon is not new in Africa or unique to the continent.

A classic case was South Africa under former President Jacob Zuma, when he had an infamous relationship with the Gupta family. It also happened in Zambia under late former President Edgar Lungu and is currently happening in Uganda under President Yoweri Museveni.

Nigeria has recently witnessed features synonymous with captured states, including the corrosion of democratic structures, the dismantling of checks and balances, including judicial independence, and the auctioning of the parliament.

The Nigerian National Assembly under Senate President Akpabio has become an enabler of executive recklessness, rather than providing any form of resistance or scrutiny. Agents of the ruling party have connived with the judiciary to disrupt opposition political structures and poison the democratic space.

Anti-corruption processes have been consistently weaponised, targeting key opposition figures and fuelling widespread distrust, apathy, disillusionment, and anger. These narrow interest groups invade the institutions and processes that make public policy to consolidate and entrench their hold on political power.

A wave of political violence is spreading in a calculated attempt to instil fear among the citizens. During the just-concluded elections in Osun State, 29 persons were allegedly murdered. Recently, a prominent social media influencer known for criticising the government, Ibrahim Khalil, was killed at his residence in Gaida Quarters in Kano State.

There are clear similarities between what is happening in Uganda and the unfolding developments in Nigeria. In 2025, Uganda’s military chief and son of President Yoweri Museveni, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, reportedly threatened to castrate and behead opposition leader Bobi Wine. Members of Nigeria’s ruling party have continued to threaten members of the public as the elections approach.

Sainna Buba, a serving commissioner in Borno State, reportedly threatened to cut off the fingers of those who do not vote for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state. Danjuma Shekwolo, chairman of Kuje Area Council in the Federal Capital Territory, warned residents to either vote for the ruling APC or leave the council.

A wave of political violence is spreading in a calculated attempt to instil fear among the citizens. During the just-concluded elections in Osun State, 29 persons were allegedly murdered. Recently, a prominent social media influencer known for criticising the government, Ibrahim Khalil, was killed at his residence in Gaida Quarters in Kano State.

State capture manifests as a collision between narrow political and economic interest groups, leading to a skewed distribution of economic power, while giving captors an advantage in shaping power dynamics.

Elections become hollow rituals, reforms are cosmetic, and citizens find themselves living in states that look like democracies on paper but which actually function like cartels.

State captors divert resources away from citizens, distort economic decision-making, weaken public services, increase inequality, undermine the rule of law, weaken accountability, and erode public trust. These state captors deploy the resources they accumulate to buy votes and compromise electoral officers and security agencies during elections. 

Captors and their agents invest heavily in the media. By owning several media platforms, often through proxies, they seek to control narratives, promote favourable propaganda and suppress dissenting voices. They sponsor civil society groups who masquerade as activists, while acting as appendages that promote the views of these entrenched private interests.

State capture in Nigeria includes an interesting component worthy of attention. Captors and their agents invest heavily in the media. By owning several media platforms, often through proxies, they seek to control narratives, promote favourable propaganda and suppress dissenting voices.

They sponsor civil society groups who masquerade as activists, while acting as appendages that promote the views of these entrenched private interests. The central aim of these captors is to conspire with collaborators inside and outside the government to redirect state resources to serve their own interests – to gain control of political order.

State capture is the enemy of clean government and democracy itself. In Lagos State today, the long-standing oligarchic influence of the Tinubu political machinery controls public revenue generation through state institutions and diverse patronage networks.

His supporters often claim that he is coming to Abuja to replicate what he did in Lagos at the national level. After three years in office, the cancer of state capture is already eating deep into the tissues of our national life. The 2027 elections offer citizens an opportunity to either disrupt the ongoing invasion or prepare to hand over the soul of our nation to a parasitic club of private interests.

Uche Igwe is a political economy analyst based in Abuja. He can be reached at ucheigwe@gmail.com

 By Abujah Racheal

Every morning, Dr Adamu Inusa checks his phone, hoping to find the email that will define the next phase of his medical career.

For 18 months, he has scanned the recruitment portals of federal teaching hospitals for a residency position, but the offer he worked for years to secure has yet to arrive.

He spent six gruelling years in medical school, endured prolonged strike, and completed the one-year housemanship.

After taking the Hippocratic Oath, he expected to begin building a career in Nigeria.

Instead, he works 12-hour night shifts as a locum doctor in a private clinic in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), while struggling to meet his financial obligations.

“To keep from starving, I work 12-hour night shifts as a locum doctor at a makeshift private clinic in the FCT, earning less per hour than a rideshare driver, while treating complex cases without basic equipment,” he said.

Inusa’s experience is shared, to varying degrees, by other young doctors seeking specialist training after housemanship.

It exposes a less-discussed dimension of Nigeria’s health workforce crisis: the country is losing doctors to migration, while some qualified doctors who want to remain are unable to find a clear pathway into specialist training.

Data from the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) indicates the severity of the country’s doctor shortage, with the doctor-to-patient ratio remaining far below what is required to adequately serve the population.

Yet alongside the shortage is another contradiction: Nigeria has doctors who are qualified and available to work, but many face fierce competition for limited residency positions.

After medical school and housemanship, doctors can practise as general practitioners. Those seeking specialisation in paediatrics, surgery, oncology, orthopaedics, or anaesthesia must secure residency positions at accredited tertiary hospitals.

Residency is a critical stage in the medical career pathway. But passing the necessary examinations does not guarantee admission.

According to registry data from recent examination cycles, more than 900 Nigerian candidates sat for the West African College of Surgeons (WACS) primary examinations across major centres including Ibadan, Abuja and Enugu, with about 73 per cent recorded as successful.

Similarly, the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria (NPMCN) regularly clears hundreds of general practitioners who are academically and professionally qualified to proceed with specialist training.

At major training institutions such as the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) and University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, hundreds of doctors compete for positions across numerous specialities.

LUTH, for instance, opens applications across several specialised fields, including anaesthesia and maxillofacial surgery.

In highly competitive recruitment cycles, a single teaching hospital can receive between 400 and 600 applications from qualified doctors seeking residency positions.

However, experts say the number of available places could be dramatically smaller.

Because of budget ceilings, structural underfunding and stagnant departmental quotas, funded positions across specialities may be between 30 and 50.

In some departments, including paediatrics and orthopaedics, only two or three doctors may be admitted in an entire recruitment cycle.

Dr Judith Nalukwago, a dental surgeon who advocates for young medical professionals affected by health-sector funding cuts, said hundreds of qualified applicants could be turned away because there were simply not enough training places.

“The country needs more specialists, yet its major training institutions are often unable to absorb the doctors seeking to become those specialists,” she said.

Dr Mohammad Suleiman, National President of NARD, said the situation had created a serious mismatch between demand for healthcare and opportunities for young doctors to progress professionally.

“We have a situation where the demand for care is astronomical, yet young doctors are being locked out of training.

“When the system creates administrative bottlenecks around the Medical Residency Training Fund (MRTF) and slot allocations, it leaves brilliant minds completely stranded,” he said.

Doctors waiting outside the residency system must keep applying, paying examination and application fees, and looking for ways to survive while their professional progression remains uncertain.

A doctor may complete years of training, housemanship and professional examinations, yet access to postgraduate training can ultimately depend on whether a hospital has an accredited and funded vacancy.

Doctors may be qualified to practise as general practitioners while remaining unable to enter the specialist programmes they need to advance their careers.

The problem is therefore larger than unemployment in the conventional sense. It is a question of whether Nigeria’s medical education system, postgraduate training capacity and workforce planning are moving in the same direction.

Medical schools produce graduates; housemanship prepares them for independent practice; residency develops the specialists Nigeria needs.

But when residency places fail to keep pace with the number of qualified doctors seeking them, a gap opens between graduation and professional advancement.

The Federal Government says it is investing in healthcare infrastructure, recruitment and workforce development.

The Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Iziaq Salako, announced a N43 billion release for health-sector reforms, including N10.6 billion earmarked for the 2025/2026 MRTF.

Under the Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative, the government granted special recruitment waivers that added more than 20,000 healthcare personnel to the public-sector payroll.

Funding doctors already admitted into residency is different from creating additional accredited positions for doctors waiting outside the system.

With limited access to residency, some doctors turn to private facilities for locum work.

Stakeholders estimate that doctors working in parts of Lagos and Abuja may be earning between N80,000 and N150,000 monthly, depending on the facility, workload and number of shifts.

A clinical psychologist, Mr Phillip Dimka, said some private hospitals, aware of the desperation among young doctors, employed them on poor terms.

“Private hospitals, acutely aware of the desperation brewing in the medical community, recruit these overqualified general practitioners to run their entire facilities for a fraction of standard pay.”

Dimka said some doctors worked long shifts with inadequate equipment and limited access to consultant supervision.

“In these underregulated settings, young doctors face immense medical and legal risks,” he said.

Behind the statistics are graduates who invested years of their lives and significant family resources in becoming doctors.

Mr John Umoh, a civil servant and father of a 200-level medical student, said parents often sacrificed savings and other opportunities in the belief that their children would eventually become financially independent professionals.

“For some graduates, that expectation is delayed indefinitely. They continue to depend on ageing parents, struggle with rent and transportation, and accept whatever locum work is available,” Umoh said.

Mrs Martha Yohanna, a human resources manager, said the impact was also professional.

“Doctors who remain outside residency may continue to gain clinical experience through locum work, but they lack the structured progression, supervision and specialist development provided by formal training programmes.

“The longer they remain outside the system, the more difficult it can become to plan their careers. For a country already struggling to retain doctors, which represents another form of loss,” she said.

Stakeholders say the situation is worrisome as doctors continue leaving for the UK, the U.S., Canada and other countries in search of better opportunities.

Records indicate that more than 10,000 Nigerian-trained doctors are registered with the UK General Medical Council, while NARD has documented the continuing departure of resident doctors from Nigeria.

A doctor who cannot secure residency may eventually look abroad not because the desire to build a career has disappeared, but because the opportunity to build one at home has.

NARD has repeatedly linked migration to poor remuneration, difficult working conditions, manpower shortages and inadequate career prospects.

Dr Augustine Uchenna, a health entrepreneur, said the country needed accurate workforce projections showing how many doctors were graduating, entering housemanship and seeking residency, as well as how many specialists would be required.

“Recruitment processes must be transparent and predictable so that doctors understand how positions are allocated and why applications succeed or fail.”

He said private hospitals that depended heavily on locum doctors also needed stronger oversight to ensure temporary employment did not become a substitute for safe staffing and fair professional conditions.

“The objective should not be to force every doctor to remain in Nigeria. Rather, it should be to ensure that leaving is a choice, not the consequence of a system that has left qualified professionals with no viable route forward,” he said.

Recently, Inusa received information about registering for the Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board (PLAB) examination, a key requirement for doctors seeking to practise in the UK.

He said the message was not the residency offer he had been waiting for. It represented a different future.

It is about whether Nigeria can provide a professional future for someone it has spent years training.

For outside observers, Inusa’s departure from Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport would likely be categorised as just another statistic in the country’s medical brain drain.

However, that label oversimplifies his journey. Leaving wasn’t his initial goal; his first instinct was to find a reason to remain in Nigeria.

This highlights the true gravity of the nation’s healthcare workforce crisis.

Analysts say Nigeria is not just losing doctors to only active emigration—it is losing them because systemic delays leave them waiting so long that departure becomes their only viable path forward.(NAN)