Nigeria and the Challenges of Internal Security in the 21st Century

This paper examines the various internal security challenges confronting Nigeria in the 21st century. The paper adopts historical method and content analysis to investigate how the abysmal failure of the poorly formulated and ineffectively implemented National Security Policy has hitherto exacerbated internal security challenges in Nigeria. The paper further attempts a critical review of major internal security challenges hitherto confronting the country; such as the Niger Delta crises, kidnapping in the South-East geo-political zone, Jos crises, Boko Haram crises and crises by Fulani Herdsmen in the Northern part of Nigeria. The result of the analysis shows that these internal security challenges have not only been difficult to address by the National Security Policy, but have also impacted negatively on the country's desired socio-economic development in the 21st century. The paper, therefore, recommends among others, the need for a careful review of the Nigeria's National Security Policy that will not only be integrative/comprehensive in outlook, but will also take cognizance of some domestic factors that are currently responsible for internal security problems in the country; such as unemployment, inequality, poverty, fraudulent electoral process, corruption, skewed federalism, porous nature of the Nigeria’s borders, sabotage among politicalelites, bad governance, religious intolerance, citizen-settler controversies, among others.