Beyond Force: Why Infrastructure Must Sit at the Heart of Nigeria’s Security Strategy

Lazarus Angbazo

I am not a security professional in the traditional sense. I have not served in the military, nor have I led a law enforcement institution. And the organization I lead—The Infrastructure

Corporation of Nigeria (InfraCorp)—does not have an explicit mandate in security operations. Yet Nigeria’s security challenge is too important to be left only to those formally tasked with

addressing it. It is a national burden—and a shared responsibility. Every institution, public or private, must ask a simple question: what constructive role can we play in strengthening stabilityand nation-building?

This reflection is offered in that spirit. It seeks to highlight an often underappreciated truth: that beyond force and enforcement, there exists a powerful—and frequently overlooked—pathway to stability. That pathway is infrastructure.

Nigeria’s security challenges are real, visible, and deeply felt across the country. From insurgency in the North-East to banditry in the North-West, from communal tensions in the Middle Belt to criminality in parts of the South, the instinctive response has been to strengthen security operations—and rightly so.

But there is a deeper question we must confront: Why do these challenges persist despite sustained security efforts? I believe the answer lies beyond force. Nigeria’s security challenge is, at its core, a question of economic inclusion, state presence, and the functionality of everyday systems.

Where roads are poor or nonexistent, communities become isolated and difficult to govern. Where power is unreliable, businesses struggle to survive, let alone grow. Where young people lack access to jobs and opportunity, frustration builds—and vulnerability increases. In suchb conditions, insecurity is not merely a threat; it becomes, for some, an alternative system.

This is why infrastructure must be understood differently. It is not only an economic asset. It is a mechanism for cohesion, inclusion, and the visible presence of a functioning state. This perspective is increasingly recognized beyond Nigeria. In a world of interconnected risks,

instability in large and strategically significant countries is no longer seen as a localized concern. It carries implications for regional balance, migration, economic flows, and broader global security. Within strategic policy circles in major economies, there is growing recognition that fragility in key nations can evolve into wider systemic risk. Nigeria, given its scale, population, and economic weight, sits squarely within that reality.

Encouragingly, Nigeria is beginning to move in the right direction. Under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, there is renewed emphasis on infrastructure as a catalyst for economic transformation and national integration.

The Benin–Asaba road project—supported through the Renewed Hope Infrastructure

Development Fund and backed by InfraCorp—offers a clear illustration. By improving

connectivity between western and eastern Nigeria, it reduces travel risk, enhances mobility, and unlocks economic activity across multiple states.

Similarly, the Federal Government’s Highway Development and Management Initiative reflects a shift toward structured private-sector participation in maintaining and upgrading critical road infrastructure—an approach that brings both sustainability and accountability.

At a broader level, the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway represents an ambitious effort to connect nine states while linking Nigeria more effectively into the wider West African corridor extending toward Dakar. Beyond its economic significance, such connectivity strengthens national integration and expands the physical reach of the state.

Taken together, these initiatives demonstrate a powerful but often underappreciated principle:

well-designed infrastructure does not only move goods and people—it reduces isolation, expands opportunity, and strengthens the conditions for stability. This is the deeper opportunity before Nigeria. Infrastructure must be seen not only as a driver of

growth, but as a foundation for national resilience. This requires a deliberate focus on connecting underserved regions to economic centers, enabling reliable power for industry and households, strengthening logistics corridors, and supporting industrial ecosystems that create jobs at scale.

It also requires a different approach to financing. Short-term capital cannot build long-term stability. What is needed is patient, domestically anchored capital—aligned with national priorities but delivered with commercial discipline. Institutions such as InfraCorp play a critical role in mobilizing such capital and ensuring that infrastructure projects are not only built, but built to endure.

Ultimately, Nigeria’s security will not be achieved by force alone. It will be achieved when more Nigerians have a stake in stability—when opportunity expands, when systems function reliably, and when the state is present not only through enforcement, but through development.

This is not an argument against security operations. It is an argument for complementing them with equal intensity in nation-building infrastructure. Infrastructure is one of the most practical and scalable ways to do so. If we are serious about securing Nigeria, then we must be equally serious about building it— because in the long run, the strongest defence of any nation is not only the force it can deploy, but the opportunities it can provide.

.Dr. Lazarus Angbazo is Managing Director/CEO of InfraCorp, Nigeria’s infrastructure

investment platform.