The rescue of seventeen abducted passengers along the Lokoja–Obajana highway has once again illuminated both the fragility of life in Nigeria and the gallantry of those who risk everything to safeguard it. What began as a terrifying ambush of travelers ended in a daring joint operation by the Nigerian Army and the Nigeria Forest Security Service, who stormed the kidnappers’ hideout and secured the release of all victims without casualty. The survivors, still shaken by the ordeal, speak of the intervention as though light had pierced a suffocating darkness. One described the soldiers and NFSS operatives as lions charging into the forest to reclaim lives from the hands of wolves. Their testimonies are more than expressions of gratitude; they are a resounding call to government to translate bravery into structure and temporary rescue into permanent policy.
The forest in Nigeria has become more than a natural ecosystem; it has been transfigured into a theatre of terror. What should be a sanctuary of biodiversity has degenerated into a sanctuary for bandits and kidnappers, a shadow state where criminals set their own laws and dictate the rhythm of fear. In such spaces, ordinary citizens are reduced to prey, and every journey is a gamble with mortality. To allow these forests to remain ungoverned is to allow insecurity to sprout roots that no army, however courageous, can easily uproot. It is here that the indispensability of a specialized force such as the Nigeria Forest Security Service comes into focus. The Lokoja–Obajana rescue was not an accident of fortune but a demonstration of what is possible when expertise is matched with will.
Security scholars have long warned of the perils of leaving vast territories unmonitored. Professor Musa Abdullahi of the University of Abuja captures the dilemma succinctly when he observes that no modern state can afford to have blind spots where criminals operate as sovereign powers. The NFSS bill, currently awaiting presidential assent, was conceived precisely to close such gaps, to transform forests from criminal havens to secured corridors of national life. To delay assent is to play politics with blood. Survivors of Thursday’s attack know this truth too intimately; their testimonies echo with the urgency of those who have walked through the valley of death and returned by the courage of strangers. One survivor, still recovering, declared that if NFSS had been fully empowered years ago, countless others would not have perished in the forests.
The argument extends beyond NFSS to the Nigerian Peace Corps, another security innovation left stranded in legislative purgatory. Like the Forest Security Service, the Peace Corps was envisioned as a citizen-driven complement to overstretched state forces, a way of embedding vigilance at the grassroots level. Yet both remain suspended at the threshold of assent. Dr. Aisha Suleiman, a respected policy voice, calls this hesitation an abdication of responsibility, noting that while Nigerians bleed, the instruments of their protection are gathering dust. The tragedy of delay is that every day without assent is a day when criminals tighten their grip on unprotected spaces, when another bus on another road may be dragged into another forest.
The Nigerian Army, tested and brave, cannot forever shoulder this burden alone. Its energies are already consumed by multiple insurgencies in the North-East, communal clashes in the Middle Belt, piracy in the Gulf, and rising criminality in urban centers. The forests require specialization, not improvisation. As retired Major-General Emmanuel Okafor rightly insists, just as navies defend the seas, so must a dedicated corps defend the forests. This is not duplication of effort but the logical evolution of national security. To reject such specialization is to insist on perpetual weakness.
The voices of the rescued passengers, trembling yet resolute, carry the weight of moral testimony. They know the face of terror and the sound of rescue, and their appeal to government is beyond rhetoric. One victim likened the intervention to divine light piercing a valley of shadows, urging that the state must not allow that light to go dim. In their cry lies a profound reminder: security is not a privilege dispensed at convenience but a fundamental right, and to delay its guarantee is to betray the covenant between state and citizen.
The lesson of Lokoja–Obajana is clear. It is not enough to praise bravery after each crisis, nor is it enough to mourn lives lost to preventable abductions. The nation must move beyond applause into action. The president must assent to the NFSS bill, must breathe life into the Peace Corps, and must provide both with the tools to function as bulwarks against the rising tide of forest insecurity. Anything less is a dangerous luxury in a time when luxury is unaffordable.
As survivors embrace their families again, their ordeal must not vanish into the haze of forgotten headlines. Their story is not only of personal deliverance but of national instruction. Nigeria’s forests cannot remain havens of terror. They must be reclaimed as sanctuaries of safety, and that reclamation begins with the courage of assent.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
08152094428 (SMS Only)
