Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has accused the Federal Government of repeating old errors in the fight against insecurity, warning that terrorists and bandits are adapting faster than Nigeria’s security institutions.

Atiku, who is the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress for the 2027 election, argued that the spread of terrorism, banditry and kidnapping from the North to virtually every region shows that the country’s security architecture is failing to evolve.

He said terrorists “study their successes and failures, refine their tactics, identify vulnerabilities, adapt and strike again,” yet the government has not shown a similar capacity to learn from past tragedies.

According to him, a grim pattern has taken root: each major attack is followed by national outrage, official condolences, promises of reform and the inauguration of investigative panels, only for fresh assaults to occur with the same vulnerabilities exposed.

“From Chibok to Oyo, from countless villages in the North-West to communities across the Middle Belt and beyond, the pattern has become tragically familiar. An attack occurs, the nation mourns, promises are made, committees are announced, then another attack follows. A nation that refuses to learn from its tragedies is condemned to relive them,” he said.

Atiku faulted what he described as an overreliance on centrally designed and often foreign-inspired counterterrorism models, saying they ignore the lived experiences of communities on the frontlines of insurgency and violent extremism.

He called for an urgent review of Nigeria’s National Counterterrorism Policy, insisting that future responses must be grounded in local realities and lessons drawn from previous attacks, including the abduction of schoolgirls in Chibok and more recent kidnappings of pupils and teachers.

Among his proposals is a Terrorism Violence Peer Review Mechanism to bring together affected communities, traditional and religious leaders, security agencies and civil society to document what went wrong after each incident and feed those findings directly into national security planning.

He also advocated specialised Counterterrorism Fusion Centres in all six geopolitical zones to enable real-time intelligence sharing among the military, police, intelligence services, paramilitary agencies and vetted community vigilante groups.

Atiku stressed that military deployments alone cannot defeat terrorism, calling instead for intelligence-led operations, tighter border controls and aggressive disruption of terrorist financing networks. He linked persistent insecurity to governance failures, citing poverty, unemployment and state neglect as drivers of radicalisation.

Questioning the impact of trillions of naira spent on defence, he described the situation as “a failure of strategy, coordination, accountability and leadership,” and urged President Bola Tinubu’s administration to move beyond rhetoric and implement reforms capable of restoring public confidence.