Beyond Bombs, Bayonets And Bullets

No Result View All Result Home News Politics Business Sport Football Health Entertainment Education Opinion Editorial Columns Others LeVogue Magazine Conferences National Economy Contact Us Hausa Edition Home News Politics Business Sport Football Health Entertainment Education Opinion Editorial Columns Others LeVogue Magazine Conferences National Economy Contact Us No Result View All Result No Result View All Result Beyond Bombs, Bayonets And Bullets by Joshua Ocheja 7 minutes ago in Backpage, Columns Share on WhatsAppShare on FacebookShare on XTelegram Asymmetric warfare is like a thief who enters a house not through the door, window, or roof, but through the pipes that run into it. It sounds impossible, so the owner spends his money on the gate, CCTV, bulletproof doors, burglar bars, and armed guards. Since the thief cannot match the guards, he avoids them and comes through the one route nobody is watching: the pipes that run into the house. In Nigeria, those pipes are the forests that run from the North West to the South West. In this article, I will explain how artificial intelligence (AI) can help us block them, and what we need to do as a country to enhance our national security.

It is true that as a country, the bulk of our security challenges are land-based. At least, terrorists, bandits, and kidnappers have not started flying aircraft over states. They move in the thick forest reserves interconnecting states. This free movement causes most of the security challenges in the country. We can disrupt the movement of criminal elements through the use of AI. Before I explain further, there is vital information I wish to share.

The forests of the North West do not stop at state boundaries. Reports name a belt of forests that share boundaries across states, among them Kamuku (Kaduna), Kuyambana (Zamfara), Rugu (Katsina, Kaduna, and Zamfara), Sububu (Zamfara), and Dansadau (Zamfara). Kamuku is described as bordering Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi, and Niger states. Niger State is also home to Kainji Lake National Park, which security reports describe as the next link in a chain running south.

Available information also indicates that this chain runs from Kainji Lake National Park in Niger and Kwara, through the Gbugbu/Babanla forest in Kwara and the Old Oyo National Park axis around Kishi, Igbeti, and Oriire, to forest and border areas in Osun, Ekiti, and Ogun, including around Imesi-Ile. This information gives us a clear idea of how criminal elements move freely and undetected by security forces because these areas are ungoverned spaces.

This is where we need AI tools. The concept of national security has evolved tremendously, and modern wars are not fought only by exchange of bullets. The big players in the world order have sustained their relevance through advances in their attack and defence capabilities. Intercepting a missile midair is not a manual enterprise: someone, somewhere is watching a target hundreds of miles away, and when it comes within radar range, the press of a button can wreak havoc. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly extending that reach without borders, and it works both ways: to attack and to defend. So what are those tools?

AI is a support tool. It processes data and provides actionable analysis. Let me use three examples to explain this. When you enter a destination into Google Maps, it studies the map and traffic data and gives you a roadmap to follow. The second example is this: every rainy season, forecasters warn which areas are at risk of flooding after analysing flooding patterns over many years. The third is in security. AI tools read drone and satellite imagery and flag changes, such as a new camp or a freshly cut track in a forest, so that analysts know where to look. In each case, the tool takes data and tells people where to look or what to do next. That is what we need in our forests.

Let me share an example from Uganda. In Queen Elizabeth National Park, rangers of the Uganda Wildlife Authority worked with researchers on an AI system called PAWS, short for Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security. It studied records of past poaching and worked out which parts of the park were most likely to be hit next. It then told the rangers where to patrol, and kept changing the routes so poachers could not easily predict the rangers’ next move. What stood out was that PAWS did not replace the rangers. It told them where to walk, and they still did the walking. That is a template our recently commissioned forest guards can adopt in their operations.

I have three recommendations on how the government can use AI to disrupt criminal movement through the forests. My first recommendation is a security audit of our forest reserves and their facilities. This can take the form of a presidential committee of researchers and technology experts with a mandate to study the reserves extensively, with a view to documenting their actual state and gathering the records of past attacks held by the different security agencies, upon which a suitable security policy can be built. What this does is give any AI tool the records it needs to learn from, as the records of past poaching did for PAWS in Uganda.

My second recommendation is for the government to create anchor areas in the forests of the North West and South West. This can come in the form of siting national projects in such identified areas to generate human activity. A road, a solar power plant, a telecom mast or an agro-processing centre would bring workers, traffic and daily life to places that have had little of it. What this does is disrupt those routes by creating a government presence and a commensurate security presence, and it gives us fixed points where AI tools can be put to use, with the power and network they need.

My third recommendation is the rejigging of the mandate of the Presidential Forest Guards Initiative, which in December 2025 graduated more than 7,000-armed guards to tackle bandits, insurgents, terrorists, and other criminals who exploit our vast, ungoverned forests. Boots on the ground are necessary, but they alone will not solve the problem. The mandate should require patrols to be guided by records of past attacks and predictions of where criminals will move next, as in Uganda, drawing on the records the audit in my first recommendation would provide.

In June 2026, at the Omniverse Africa 3.0 Summit in Lagos, General Christopher Gwabin Musa, the Minister of Defence, said the future requires us to complement courage with technology, foresight, industrial capability, and innovation. His message was simple and relatable: wars cannot be won through the use of force alone.

Worthy of mention is Terra Industries, a defence-technology startup founded in 2024 by Nathan Nwachuku and Maxwell Maduka. It designs and manufactures autonomous drones, sentry towers, and unmanned ground vehicles. In February 2026, it signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria (DICON) to set up a joint venture, a subsidiary of DICON, to produce and assemble drones, cybersecurity systems, and robotics in Nigeria. In April, it unveiled interceptor drones, mine-clearing vehicles, and battlefield intelligence software built for counter-insurgency. I am glad Nigerian innovators are already moving in this direction.

The forests are our pipes. Audit them, anchor them with national projects, and let data tell our guards where to walk. As things stand, securing Nigeria is fundamentally beyond bombs, bayonets and bullets, and that is the thesis of my upcoming book, “Beyond Bombs, Bayonets and Bullets: Perspectives on War and Politics.”

Ocheja holds dual PhDs: Military History from the Nigerian Defence Academy, and Leadership and Public Policy from the University of Abuja. He specialises in the security-development nexus in Nigeria and the Sahel.

We’ve got the edge. Get real-time reports, breaking scoops, and exclusive angles delivered straight to your phone. Don’t settle for stale news. Join LEADERSHIP NEWS on WhatsApp for 24/7 updates →