Retired Army Colonel Tony Nyiam, a veteran and former member of the military coup attempt against the Gen. Ibrahim Babangida regime, has issued a stark warning that Nigeria is perilously close to the catastrophic events that unfolded in Sudan under former President Omar al-Bashir.

Nyiam asserts that similar to Sudan’s use of state-backed militias to enforce ethnic dominance, Nigeria faces a growing risk of widespread conflict and suppression of dissenting communities.

 

Speaking at a Pan-National summit, where he delivered a lecture titled “A Justifiable, Justiciable, and Result Oriented National Security Architecture for Nigerian People,” Nyiam drew direct parallels between the current insecurity in parts of northern Nigeria and the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region.

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Nyiam, who also served on the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Dialogue, recounted the harrowing experience of Darfur, where the al-Bashir regime armed the Arab Janjaweed militias. These militias unleashed terror on Black African populations, leading to widespread killings, the displacement of millions (estimated between 200,000 and 400,000 deaths, and over 2.7 million displaced between 2003 and 2008), and events widely recognized as genocide by international observers, including the International Criminal Court.

He specifically accused the Nigerian government, particularly under former President Muhammadu Buhari, of fostering policies that, he claims, enabled the resettlement of Fulani pastoralists from across West Africa into the ancestral lands of indigenous Nigerian communities without their consent. Nyiam argued that this situation mirrored the dynamics of Sudan’s Janjaweed militias, which received state support.

 

“We are dangerously close to repeating the tragedy of Sudan under Omar al-Bashir, where Arab Janjaweed militias were armed to displace Black Sudanese communities,” Nyiam stated.

“A similar dynamic emerged under President Buhari’s administration, where policies subtly aimed to resettle Fulani pastoralists from across West Africa into indigenous Nigerian lands without the consent of the host communities.”

Delving into the root causes of Nigeria’s persistent security crisis, Nyiam identified a colonial-era command structure within the military and an “uncritical loyalty” of the armed forces to the presidency rather than to the Nigerian populace.

He criticized the military’s current mode of operation as “arrogant, top-down, and disconnected from the people it claims to protect,” asserting that this structure allows the armed forces to be beholden to the President rather than the Constitution.

 

Nyiam contended that this distortion of constitutional principles, where “sovereignty belongs to the people,” has made it easy for any President to “capture the full apparatus of state security for personal or partisan ends.” He stressed that genuine national security can only be achieved through a system “designed by the people themselves, through inclusive democratic processes.”

“It must be the people, not political appointees, who determine the size, scope, and command structure of the armed forces,” Nyiam emphasized.

 

Concluding his address, Nyiam underscored that military effectiveness is not solely determined by arms and equipment but by the quality of leadership. Referencing Alexander the Great, he posed the question, “What kind of leadership have we had over our armed forces?”

He implored the Presidency to support a transparent and inclusive national summit on security reform, cautioning that a failure to act could plunge Nigeria into a deeper crisis.