The recent suggestion by Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff, General Christopher Musa, that the country should fence its land border to curb insurgency and criminal infiltration has sparked widespread reactions. While the security intent may be noble, the economic and logistical implications of such a project make it neither realistic nor sustainable.
Nigeria’s total land border spans 4,047 kilometers, shared with four countries: Cameroon (1,690 km), Niger (1,497 km), Benin (773 km), and Chad (87 km). This does not include Nigeria’s water border length of 853 kilometers along the Gulf of Guinea. To attempt to fence such an expansive and often rugged terrain is not only ambitious—it is near impossible under the country’s current economic realities.
To put this into perspective, the U.S.-Mexico border, roughly 3,145 kilometers, has taken decades and tens of billions of dollars to partially secure, with massive cost overruns and limited effectiveness. Nigeria’s borders are longer, more porous, and far less accessible, making such a fencing project a likely fiscal blackhole.
Beyond the cost of construction, maintenance alone would require enormous annual allocations. Nigeria is already grappling with budgetary deficits, mounting debt servicing costs, and underfunded sectors like health, education, and internal security. Diverting limited resources toward building and maintaining thousands of kilometers of fencing would be a gross misallocation.
Rather than fence building, Nigeria must invest in smarter border security alternatives:
- Enhanced surveillance technology (drones, satellite monitoring, thermal imaging).
- Deployment of trained border patrol agents in collaboration with local communities.
- Regional cooperation through ECOWAS is to manage cross-border threats more effectively.
- Investment in intelligence gathering, especially human intelligence (HUMINT), to detect and disrupt insurgent movements before they cross borders.
We must acknowledge the root causes of insurgency and border crime: weak governance in border areas, poverty, and arms proliferation. Fences cannot fix these. Smart policy, regional partnerships, and internal capacity-building will go farther than any wall.
Nigeria cannot afford to pour resources into a concrete dream while its people remain unsafe and underserved. A wall may sound strong, but it’s strategy, not concrete, that builds real security.
…And, Jokolo’s 20-year legal battle is a cautionary tale for judicial reform
The Supreme Court of Nigeria recently delivered a long-awaited judgment in the case between deposed Emir Al-Mustapha Jokolo and the Kebbi State Government—a legal battle that began in 2005 and concluded in 2025. That’s 20 years of litigation, appeals, cross-appeals, and judicial delay.
While the ruling has finally put the matter to rest, citing procedural breaches by Jokolo for bypassing administrative remedies before heading to court, the time it took to reach this conclusion raises serious concerns about judicial inefficiency and political interference in Nigeria’s justice system.
A 20-year litigation over a chieftaincy dispute is not just a waste of judicial time, but a clear indictment of the system’s inability to deliver timely justice. The adage remains painfully relevant: justice delayed is justice denied. And in Jokolo’s case, justice was buried under decades of bureaucracy.
Nigeria’s judiciary must urgently address the structural and procedural issues that enable such protracted disputes:
- Case Management Systems should be strengthened to flag and fast-track disputes involving public interest or political weight.
- Judges should be insulated from executive influence, especially in politically sensitive matters like traditional rulership.
- Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanisms must be actively encouraged in chieftaincy and intergovernmental disputes, which often drag through multiple court levels unnecessarily.
- Time-bound judgments must be enforced. A case that reaches the Supreme Court should not take two decades to resolve.
The Jokolo case is also a lesson in how unchecked political interference can muddy the legal process, where power struggles and shifting political alliances prolong legal conclusions. The outcome—while legally sound—is marred by lost years, diverted public resources, and judicial fatigue.
As Nigeria navigates its path to stronger democratic institutions, the judiciary must rise above systemic inertia. Swift, impartial, and procedurally sound judgments are the foundation of public trust. We cannot afford more Jokolos.
