Terrorism and Moral Panic in Nigeria, is an investigation of the impact of terrorist attacks in the psyche of Nigerians. The sovereignty of the Nigerian state was threatened following the emergence of a terrorist group known as Boko Haram, which conquered a substantial part of Northeast Nigeria, using modern military hardware such as bombs, rockets, military tanks and high caliber machine guns. Boko Haram carried their terrorist attacks to many parts of Northern Nigeria, including Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), which made the entire country to panic by creating genuine fear of insecurity in Nigeria. The study was conducted in August and September, 2015, in Abuja. A cross-sectional survey method was used to select 276 respondents by accidental sampling technique through the use of administered questionnaire. The study indicates that there were rampant terrorist attacks in Abuja, and the frequency by which people felt panicked was high. Also, the study found the role of the mass media in spreading information about the activities of the terrorists to be high. The study indicated high perception of personal risk by the respondents with a greater percentage knowing at least one dead victim of the terrorist attacks in Nigeria. The study recommended the improvement of the nation's security network and public enlightenment as the panacea to the security challenges facing Nigeria at the moment.

The devastation of lives, livelihood and property in Nigeria caused by over a decade of insurgency by the Boko Haram terrorists is a subject of security, policy, humanitarian and academic concern. Several counter-measures have been adopted by both state and non-state actors to combat the insurgency with limited successes recorded. Consequently, studies have examined several efforts taken by the Nigerian government toward ending the Boko Haram insurgency, including the challenges confronting such efforts. However, Nigeria’s de-radicalization, rehabilitation and reintegration programme for ex-Boko Haram fighters, known as Operation Safe Corridor, has received marginal attention in literature. The Operation Safe Corridor programme which was established in September 2015 is aimed at de-radicalizing, rehabilitating and reintegrating repentant Boko Haram insurgents into society. Using a field survey method involving key informant interviews and focus group discussions as well as documentary reports, this article examines the progress and pitfalls of the Operation Safe Corridor programme. It argues that the failure to mainstream the concerns of local communities both in policy and programming of Operation Safe Corridor severely undermines the prospect of successful and effective reintegration of ex-Boko Haram fighters. The article concludes that if this gap is not addressed, the programme will succeed in terms of the number of ex-combatants graduating from it but will fail in terms of reintegrating the graduating ex-combatants into society. This poses significant risks to both Boko Haram defectors and society at large.

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In November 2017, there was an online protest against police brutality and highhandedness in Nigeria. By October 2020, the citizens’ discontent and dissatisfaction with the activities of the police led to a mass revolt against the institution, specifically against the Special Anti-Robbery Squads (SARS) of the force. The response of the Nigerian state to the protest was total repression and subjugation of the demonstrators. Given the scale of the protest and the government’s response, this momentous event has attracted scholarly attention. The extant literature has identified governance deficit, illiteracy of police officers, the dynamics of the political economy and youth activism as factors that fueled the protest. The present study, therefore, explores the character of the state in the post-colonial society as a link towards the understanding of the fundamental issues that triggered the protests. Through the use of secondary sources of data collection and content analysis, the work found out that there is a trend and pattern of authoritarian governance and violation of human rights by the Nigerian state, which seems to have emanated from the long years of military rule and colonisation. The implication of the foregoing is that the state ought to imbibe democratic ethos as a condition for upholding the fundamental human rights of its citizens.

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