Securitization of Politics and Insecurity in Nigeria: The Boko Haram Experience

Abstract

Security is one of the cardinal projects necessary for engendering an organized society and everybody is a critical stakeholder. However, it appears that this project has been politicized in Nigeria and the politicization has led to sporadic emergence of injurious ethnic militias who have equally become tools in the hands of the political elite group for achieving what was impossible at the polls. The study used Boko Haram insurgence to problematize the politics of securitization and relying on extracted axioms from the Marxian theory of social production and reproduction, the work discovered that the quest for primitive accumulation arising from the use of state power by the political elite group is responsible for the politicization of security in Nigeria. Among others, the study recommended that as a practical step to reduce securitization, good governance rooted in the will of the governed should be institutionalized.

Keywords: security, securitization, politics, Boko Haram.