The Presidency on Sunday issued a sharp rebuttal to criticism from former President Olusegun Obasanjo and a group it described as “serial presidential contenders,” accusing them of hypocrisy and political grandstanding in their assessment of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s security record.
In a statement shared on X, Sunday Dare, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Public Communication, dismissed recent commentaries that portray the Tinubu administration as failing in its duty to protect citizens.
Such claims, he argued, deliberately overlook the reality that Nigeria is currently battling a complex, fast-changing network of domestic and transnational terrorist groups.
Dare insisted that many of those now positioning themselves as national security champions were in power when extremist ideologies first emerged, and yet “looked away” as the early seeds of terrorism were sown.
According to him, Nigerians “are not fooled” by attempts to shift blame or rewrite the origin of the crisis.
He also criticised suggestions that Nigeria should rely extensively on foreign governments for its internal defence challenges, describing such recommendations as surrender disguised as advice.
Any former leader promoting that view, Dare said, should first acknowledge his own missed opportunities to crush extremist movements when they were still small and containable.
Dare stated that Boko Haram’s earliest structures developed during Obasanjo’s administration, eventually mutating into a full-blown insurgency with global jihadist links.
He emphasised that individuals attacking communities, abducting citizens and undermining state authority must be labelled for what they are terrorists, regardless of how they identify themselves.
According to him, Nigeria now confronts a “multilayered terrorist environment” consisting of internationally recognised extremist groups, ISIS- and al-Qaeda-linked factions spreading across the Sahel, locally grown extremists disguised as bandits, cross-border militants exploiting weak boundaries, and hybrid criminal-terrorist organisations operating in neglected regions.
On the government’s response, Dare stated that President Tinubu has adopted a comprehensive strategy calibrated to the nation’s security landscape.
He listed improvements in military capacity, targeted intelligence operations, disruption of supply chains and recovery of key territories as evidence of progress on the kinetic front.
He added that non-military measures, such as restoring governance in remote communities, economic stabilisation initiatives, counter-radicalisation programmes and community-based trust-building, are also central pillars of the administration’s security architecture.
“Terrorists prosper where society is divided,” Dare noted, stressing that Tinubu’s “whole-of-government and whole-of-nation” plan is designed to unify the country’s response.
While Nigeria maintains cooperative ties with allies like the United States, Dare said the government will not hand over its sovereign responsibilities or “surrender simply because someone who once had the chance chose not to act.”
He warned that disparaging remarks from former leaders could embolden violent groups by creating an impression of national disunity at a critical moment.
“A true statesman offers support, not headlines,” he said.
Dare urged Obasanjo to acknowledge the missteps that allowed terrorism to germinate years ago and to contribute constructively rather than undermine ongoing efforts.
“If he wants to help,” he said, “let him use his voice and influence for Nigeria’s benefit, as he has done in other countries.”
He reaffirmed that President Tinubu remains fully committed to restoring security nationwide.
“This administration,” Dare concluded, “will not be sidetracked by selective memory masked as elder statesmanship, nor will it permit those who oversaw earlier security lapses to distort history.”
