The Scale of the Killing: Data Points the Government Cannot Spin Away
The numbers coming out of northern Nigeria tell a story that no amount of government messaging can soften. In a single week, approximately 200 people were killed in Woro, Kwara State, while roughly 300 were killed in Taraba State — a combined toll of 500 lives in seven days across just two locations. Beyond these mass-casualty events, daily killings of 15 to 17 people have become so routine that they barely register in national discourse. PDP presidential aspirant Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, who has personal ties to affected communities stretching from Kebbi to Kwara, argues that if even one-tenth of this violence had occurred in Europe, it would have triggered a dedicated UN Security Council session. The geographic spread of the crisis has also shifted: while Sokoto, Kebbi, and Zamfara were the established theatres of terrorist activity, the new frontlines now include Kwara, Niger, and parts of Kebbi, with active terrorist cells reported across nearly all 19 northern states. In four to five of those states, armed groups have the operational capacity to carve out caliphate-style territories — administering their own laws, running justice systems, trying and executing people, and collecting taxes from local populations.
That last point — taxation — is perhaps the most damning metric of state failure. Terrorists are collecting taxes in Sokoto and parts of Zamfara, effectively exercising a core function of sovereignty in areas where the Nigerian government's writ no longer runs. They are also conducting international trade, exporting lithium and controlling gold mines, generating revenue streams that fund further expansion. Olawepo-Hashim's central charge is blunt: the Nigerian government is not fighting terrorism, it is on the defensive. The pattern, he argues, is reactive — people are killed, officials offer condolences, and the cycle repeats. There are no sustained offensive operations, no systematic destruction of terrorist camps, no significant weapons seizures being reported. Most governors in affected northern states, he claims, effectively control only their state capitals while rural areas are administered by armed groups. The implication is that Nigeria's sovereignty is already being eroded from within, making arguments against international security cooperation — on grounds of sovereignty — functionally hollow.
The Economic Disconnect: Oil Production Has Doubled, but the Naira Hasn't Followed
On the economic front, Olawepo-Hashim points to a glaring disconnect between Nigeria's oil output and its currency valuation. Under the Buhari administration, crude production sat at approximately 900,000 barrels per day, and the naira traded at around ₦700 to the dollar. Production has since nearly doubled to approximately 1.8 million barrels per day, yet the naira currently trades at roughly ₦1,300 to the dollar — a devaluation that Olawepo-Hashim has been publicly attacking since October 2025 as excessive and unnecessary. By his calculation, given the doubling of oil revenue capacity, the naira's fair market value should sit between ₦500 and ₦600 to the dollar. If that recalibration were to happen, he argues, consumer prices — which are heavily influenced by import costs for fertiliser, seedlings, and other agricultural inputs — would fall far more sharply than the gradual declines currently being celebrated by the government.
The agricultural sector has paid a particularly steep price for policy missteps. Olawepo-Hashim estimates that $5 billion in domestic agricultural investment has been lost over the past two years, driven by government policies that forced artificial price reductions through increased importation of finished food products like rice. While those imports temporarily eased consumer prices, they undercut years of progress in building local production capacity. Fertiliser, though now partially produced domestically by Dangote, remains unsubsidised and expensive. The net effect is an agricultural sector squeezed from both ends: input costs remain high due to currency distortion, while output prices are suppressed by cheap imports. For a country where farming remains the primary livelihood for millions, the data suggests that short-term political optics on food prices have come at the cost of long-term productive capacity — a trade-off that will be difficult to reverse ahead of the 2027 election cycle.