EMBAR

Author:
Agugo William O
Faculty of Law, Abia State University, Uturu, Nigeria

DOI: doi.org/10.58924/rjhss.v5.iss1.p8

Published Date: 12-Feb, 2026

Keywords: : Human Rights, Banditry, Herdsmen Violent Attacks, Kidnappings,State Responsibility, International Human Rights Instruments

Abstract:
: The increasing spate of Terrorisms and violent crimes of banditry, herdsmen attacks and kidnappings in Nigeria are serious human rights violations and are undermining security and welfare guaranteed by the Constitution of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) especially Section 14 (2) and Chapter four as well as some International Human Rights Instruments. These violent crimes are responsible for a growing incidence of mass killings, People’s displacement and restrictions on the essential provision of services while State institutions set up as insecurity checks either lack the means to secure lives and properties, accountability or are even unwilling to do so. The result is that security agencies have failed both to stop the violence and to prosecute those responsible for it, creating an environment of impunity, consolidating criminal cartels, and minimizing the public's confidence in the judicial and security systems. Although insecurity has many drivers, including actors driven by the Nigerian State itself, the ongoing and persistent threats are exacerbated by weak and dysfunctional policing and security responses, the prevalence of corruption, a lack of attention to redundancies among security institutions, and an abject avoidance to fix complex root causes of criminal violence such as poverty, unemployment, and resource control conflicts. Nigeria's emphasis on militarized forms of security has never successfully addressed the root problems of violent crimes nor held accountable state and non-state actor’s violence perpetrated through criminal enterprises. Overall, this paper examines, (i) the scale and scope of crime and insecurity; (ii) the drivers and causes of criminal violence; and (iii) the legal implications of all these as continuing security challenges especially on human rights. It uses a rights-based frame to indicate the pathways to achieve adequate remedies, as well as judicial and law enforcement reforms and socio-economic reforms that should be part of an eventual rights-based pathway out of insecurity. The necessary solutions for Nigeria to address insecurity largely necessitate improvements in judicial and law enforcement institutions, community-based security systems, and the socio-economic conditions of affected communities. The issues of injustice and human rights violations resting on documentary evidence from global and national human rights data underscores the danger that state failures pose to the rule of law and democracy, and what is further urgent is that the state must act quickly to resume remedies and it does so through funding these immediate and holistic responses.

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