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Nigeria’s Scaling Preferences: Either a Failed State or Sliding into State of Nature

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Nigeria today stands at a dangerous crossroads: either reform to restore legitimacy and justice or slide irreversibly into the chaos of a failed state and the Hobbesian “state of nature.”

Insecurity as the New Normal

Another day, another string of kidnappings and killings. How long must this continue? Kidnappings and killings have become routine across Nigeria. In November 2025, armed men stormed Government Girls’ Secondary School in Kebbi State, killing the vice-principal and abducting 25 students, while another raid on St. Mary’s Catholic School in Niger State saw over 50 pupils and staff taken hostage. Churches have been attacked, worshippers murdered, and ransom economies have flourished. These are not isolated crimes but evidence of organized armed groups acting as quasi-governments in ungoverned spaces.

Abuse of Power and Rule of Law

Nigeria’s institutions are hollowed out by corruption. Analysts describe the crisis as one of state legitimacy, where insecurity itself has become a profitable enterprise for elites through “security votes” and procurement fraud. Amnesty International estimates over 10,000 deaths in two years due to armed groups, while billions vanish into corruption.

The United Nations stresses that adherence to rule of law is vital for peace and development, linking governance failures to Nigeria’s instability. The European Union warns against complacency in protecting democracy, urging reforms to INEC and the judiciary. These external voices echo what Nigerians already know: the state is failing in its most basic duty of protection.

Double Standards in Justice: The Case of Nnamdi Kanu

The fate of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of IPOB, sentenced to life imprisonment in November 2025, epitomizes Nigeria’s double-standard justice. While separatist agitators in the Southeast face the harshest penalties, northern bandits and insurgents, responsible for mass killings and kidnappings, often receive lighter sentences or even negotiated amnesty. This disparity deepens regional mistrust and fuels the perception that justice in Nigeria is selective, harsher in the Southeast, lenient in the North.

Nigeria Among Failed States

Nigeria scored 96.6 on the Fragile States Index (2024), ranking alongside Libya and Afghanistan. Like Somalia, where Al-Shabaab thrives amid weak governance, Nigeria’s bandits exploit ungoverned spaces. The state’s inability to monopolize violence mirrors collapses seen in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Philosophical Lens: The State of Nature

When philosophers of the Enlightenment theorized about the origins of political society, they imagined what life would look like without the stabilizing force of government. Today, Nigeria offers a living laboratory of those theories, not as abstract thought experiments, but as daily realities for millions of citizens.

Hobbes: Fear and the Brutality of Survival

Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, described the state of nature as a condition where life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Nigeria’s insecurity mirrors this vision almost perfectly. Villages in Kaduna, Zamfara, and Niger States live under constant threat of bandit raids. Families sell farmland, livestock, and even their children’s future in ransom payments to armed groups. The state’s monopoly on violence has collapsed, leaving survival dependent on brute force or negotiation with warlords. Hobbes argued that only a strong sovereign could rescue humanity from this chaos. Nigeria’s weak military and fragmented police force demonstrate the absence of such a sovereign, leaving citizens trapped in perpetual fear.

Locke: The Betrayal of Natural Rights

John Locke believed that even in the state of nature, individuals possessed inherent rights to life, liberty, and property. Governments, he argued, exist to protect these rights. Nigeria’s reality undermines Locke’s optimism. Property rights are routinely violated: farmers in Benue and Plateau lose land to violent herders, while urban dwellers see homes demolished without compensation under arbitrary government orders. Justice is selective, Nnamdi Kanu, leader of IPOB, faces life imprisonment for separatist agitation, while northern insurgents responsible for mass killings often receive lighter sentences or negotiated amnesty. This disparity illustrates Locke’s nightmare: a government that fails to protect rights equally, eroding the very legitimacy of its social contract.

Rousseau: Inequality and Corruption as Social Decay

Jean-Jacques Rousseau warned that the social contract could be corrupted by inequality and elite-driven governance. Nigeria exemplifies this warning. Poverty maps reveal stark disparities: for example, Sokoto records over 87% poverty, while the Southeast averages 29%, notwithstanding that they receive higher or equal monthly federal revenue allocation. Elites across regions enrich themselves through corruption, siphoning billions from oil revenues and security budgets. Citizens see politicians living in opulence while ordinary Nigerians endure unemployment, inflation, and hunger. Rousseau argued that inequality breeds resentment and fractures society; Nigeria’s widening gap between elite privilege and mass suffering has already produced separatist movements, communal violence, and distrust in the state.

Citizens Outside Civil Society

The cumulative effect of Hobbesian fear, Lockean betrayal, and Rousseauian inequality is a Nigeria where citizens increasingly live outside civil society. In rural zones, survival is negotiated directly with armed groups, not through state institutions. Communities form vigilante militias, negotiate ceasefires with bandits, or pay “taxes” to insurgents. In urban centres, citizens rely on private security, bribes, or ethnic networks rather than the police or courts. This is a textbook return to the state of nature: the collapse of trust in government, the erosion of rights, and the dominance of brute force.

Nigeria’s Philosophical Crossroads

Nigeria’s predicament is not merely political, it is philosophical. The country is sliding back into the very conditions that Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau warned against. Unless Nigeria reforms its institutions, restores justice, and reclaims its monopoly on violence, it risks becoming a modern embodiment of the state of nature: a failed state where survival is negotiated daily, rights are disregarded, and inequality corrodes the social fabric.

Conclusion

Nigeria’s scaling preferences are stark: either reform to restore legitimacy, justice, and rule of law, or continued back-peddling into anarchy. The disparity of justice exemplified by Nnamdi Kanu’s life sentence, rampant insecurity, and corruption suggest that without urgent transformation, Nigeria risks joining Somalia and Afghanistan as a textbook failed state.


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