For years, Nigeria has responded to rising insecurity with the same prescription: spend more money.
Successive budgets have poured record sums into the military, police, intelligence agencies and internal security operations, driven by the belief that more funding would eventually overwhelm insurgents, bandits and kidnappers. On paper, the commitment has been extraordinary. Between 2021 and 2025, the federal government allocated roughly N17.36 trillion to security and defence, while annual spending rose from N1.5 trillion to *N6.57 trillion,
