Description
This paper contends that one of Nigeria’s overlooked security failures lies in the politics of language use in securitisation. Far less attention has been paid to the implications of language in framing/naming threats and how such framing/naming influences security policy. Building on critical security studies, securitization theory, and scholarship on the framing of political violence, the study examines how framings such as “terrorist,” “bandit,” “unknown gunmen,” and “insurgent” are selectively deployed by state actors and media outlets to construct narratives that amplify specific threats while obscuring structural drivers of violence. These linguistic framings normalise securitised and militarised responses, thereby foreclosing non-kinetic solutions that target inequality, corruption, and governance failures. This paper addresses this gap by making three arguments. First, the labelling of IPOB as a terrorist organisation illustrates the heuristic and politically contingent nature of terrorism discourse, narrowing legitimate political engagement while legitimising coercive state responses. Second, the construction of insecurity is inseparable from political leadership, with elites deploying securitising language to consolidate authority, as seen in the contrasting framings of IPOB and Fulani herders. Third, the language used to “name the enemy” fundamentally shapes governance, distorting policy priorities, and reinforcing state power by deciding which forms of violence are criminalised as terrorism and which are normalised within the political order. Ultimately, the study highlights how ‘naming the enemy’ (threats to national security) in Nigeria poses a core operational security challenge that necessitates a recalibration of how threats are identified and addressed.
