President Bola Tinubu has urged stakeholders in Nigeria’s North-central region to adopt a collective approach to addressing insecurity, saying military operations alone cannot deliver lasting peace.
Mr Tinubu made the call on Monday at the 2026 North Central Regional Security Summit in Makurdi, Benue State, where he was represented by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume.
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The summit, organised by the Federal Ministry of Defence and the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Community Engagement, North Central, was attended by governors, security chiefs, traditional and religious leaders, community representatives, development partners and other stakeholders.
With the theme, “Collaborative Approaches to Strengthening Security and Regional Stability,” the summit focused on insecurity linked to banditry, terrorism, kidnapping, farmer-herder conflicts, organised crime and violent extremism.
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Tinubu seeks community involvement
Mr Tinubu said no single security agency, government or community could secure the region independently because criminal groups operate across state and local government boundaries.
“No single agency, no single tier of government and no single community can secure this region acting alone,” he said.
“Insecurity does not respect state boundaries or agency mandates. Criminals move freely across local government areas while our responses are too often slowed by rivalry, duplication and the withholding of information. That must end.”
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The president urged traditional and religious leaders to strengthen early warning systems and reconciliation efforts within their communities.
He also called on residents to provide security agencies with information about criminal activities and avoid shielding suspects because of family or community ties.
“Security begins with you. I call on every citizen to share information with the security agencies, to refuse to shield criminality out of kinship or sentiment, and to resist those who would recruit our sons into violence for a handful of naira,” he said.
Mr Tinubu urged women and young people to play a central role in peace-building. He said his administration would expand economic opportunities to reduce the vulnerability of young people to recruitment by criminal groups.
‘Military action alone won’t deliver peace’
The president said the government’s response to insecurity must combine military operations with measures addressing the conditions that fuel conflicts.
“Military action alone will not deliver lasting peace to the North-central. Force can suppress violence; it cannot resolve the grievances that produce it,” he said.
He identified competition over land and water, climate change, desertification, unresolved land-use disputes, weak local conflict-resolution mechanisms and the proliferation of illicit weapons as factors sustaining violence in the region.
Mr Tinubu cited the Federal Government’s livestock development programme, irrigation, mechanised agriculture, rural roads, and access to credit as measures aimed at addressing economic and social vulnerabilities.
He also highlighted the Ministry of Defence’s Reclaiming the Ungoverned Space for Economic Benefits Programme, which seeks to deploy retired military personnel to secure and revive communities recovering from violence.
Summit must produce measurable results
Mr Tinubu urged development partners and the private sector to increase investments in the region, saying economic opportunities were essential to sustainable security.
“Peace and investment reinforce one another. Every factory built, every farm expanded, and every young person employed in this region is a contribution to its security,” he said.
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He directed the Minister of Defence, Christopher Musa, to transmit the summit’s recommendations to him and provide updates on their implementation.
The president warned against producing another communiqué that would be “filed away and forgotten”, insisting that recommendations from the summit must have clearly assigned responsibilities, timelines and measurable outcomes.
“I expect this gathering to produce clear and practical recommendations, each with an identified owner, a defined timeline and a measurable outcome,” he said.
“We will be judged not by the quality of our deliberations here, but by whether a farmer in this region sleeps more soundly a year from now.”
The summit is the second in a series of regional security engagements by the Federal Government, following the South-East Regional Security Summit held in Umuahia, Abia State, on 30 July.
President Tinubu commended the Ministry of Defence, the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Community Engagement and the Benue State Government for organising the summit.
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