The recent kidnapping of schoolchildren and teachers in the Oriire area of Ogbomoso, Oyo State, has once again brought the issue of insecurity in Nigeria to the forefront. While Oyo is often considered one of the more peaceful states in the South-West, the incident has sparked widespread concern and revealed a deeper malaise affecting the nation. This article, written by policy and economic freedom advocate Oluwatosin Ogundeyi, explores how insecurity is increasingly encroaching on the everyday lives of Nigerians, transforming normal activities into sources of anxiety.
Insecurity Becoming Normalized
For many Nigerians, freedom was once synonymous with democracy, elections, and constitutional rights. Today, freedom has taken on a more practical and fragile meaning. It is the ability to travel without fear of abduction, to send children to school expecting their safe return, and to drive on highways without mentally rehearsing emergency phone calls. This sense of freedom is quietly disappearing as insecurity becomes a constant companion.
The Oyo school kidnapping was not an isolated event; Nigeria has witnessed numerous such incidents. What stood out was the public response: calls for national prayers, the proliferation of private security, and discussions about safer schools. Citizens adjusted psychologically within hours, almost instinctively. This normalization of fear is dangerous. When abnormality begins to feel normal, society loses its ability to react appropriately to threats.
Living Around Danger Instead of Opportunity
For many Nigerians, fear is no longer abstract but a lived reality. Sending a child to school or going to work now comes with a burden of anxiety. Interstate travel has become a source of dread, farmers hesitate to go to their farms, and business owners calculate risks before opening shops. These new realities force citizens to organize their lives around fear rather than opportunity.
The damage extends beyond economics or politics. Over time, insecurity changes how citizens think, behave, and relate to society. When survival becomes the primary focus, the meaning of freedom fundamentally changes. As Thomas Hobbes argued, the first responsibility of the state is protection from violence and disorder. Without security, every other right becomes unstable. Nigeria exemplifies this contradiction: citizens possess rights on paper but lack them in practice.
Rights on Paper, Caution in Reality
Citizens still have rights constitutionally, but many can no longer exercise them. How free is a trader afraid of interstate travel, a student frightened by school insecurity, or a farmer unable to access farmland due to violent attacks? Gradually, insecurity transforms citizens into cautious survivors. The most disturbing aspect is how deeply this has been normalized into national consciousness. Nigerians now casually identify “dangerous roads” and associate certain states or communities with kidnapping risks. Friends and families routinely track journeys in real time, not out of affection alone, but out of genuine fear. Conversations that should sound alarming now seem normal.
What insecurity destroys first is confidence. Once people lose confidence in safety, movement becomes restricted, businesses suffer, and ordinary social interactions change. This explains why insecurity affects even those never directly attacked. A kidnapping in Oyo alters behavior of parents in Ogun; violence in Kaduna changes travel decisions in Lagos; attacks in Benue influence food prices nationwide. Even people far from the violence begin to change how they live.
When Survival Replaces Ambition
Nigeria, the giant of Africa, is known for its energetic, entrepreneurial, and adaptive citizens. However, insecurity slowly suffocates these qualities. Where uncertainty dominates daily life, people stop taking risks, businesses slow down, and survival becomes the priority. The long-term implications are worrying, especially for younger Nigerians. A generation is growing up that may see instability as normal. Many young people are learning survival instincts before civic confidence. This psychological inheritance may outlive the violence itself.
Hannah Arendt warned that fear weakens public life because frightened societies eventually retreat inward. Citizens withdraw from participation, trust declines, and collective purpose erodes. Nigeria increasingly shows symptoms of this retreat. People avoid public spaces, communities view unfamiliar faces with suspicion, and citizens rely on private security arrangements rather than government institutions. The wealthy buy layers of personal protection, while poorer citizens absorb vulnerability directly.
A Country Divided by Security
What emerges is unequal freedom. Insecurity creates two nations within one country: those who can afford protection and those who cannot. The Oyo incident should not merely provoke temporary outrage or placard display, as has happened after previous tragedies like the Chibok abductions. It should force a deeper national reflection about what Nigerians are slowly losing beneath the headlines. Security is not just about preventing attacks; it is about preserving the conditions that allow ordinary people to live freely.
No society truly progresses when parents fear schools, travelers fear roads, farmers fear land, and citizens fear uncertainty more than poverty itself. In the end, insecurity does more than take lives; it changes how people live. When citizens begin organizing their entire lives around fear, freedom itself starts to disappear.
