The North’s glut of military institutions has never guaranteed security—only the preservation of privilege. President Tinubu’s restructuring is a welcome first blow against decades of distortion.
The North’s suffocating concentration of military institutions has long been one of the crudest instruments of domination ever deployed against the South. Nowhere illustrates this distortion more vividly than Kaduna: a fortress of guns, bristling with barracks, academies, and armories—yet reduced to a playground for bandits. That grotesque paradox is the ultimate indictment of Nigeria’s military imbalance: where power is massed, security is absent.
Kaduna alone groans under the weight of at least ten elite military establishments: the Nigerian Defence Academy, the Armed Forces Command and Staff College in Jaji, the 1st Division of the Nigerian Army, the Nigerian Army Training Depot, the Air Force Institute of Technology, the Defence Industries Corporation (DICON), the Army School of Artillery in Kachia, the Naval School of Armament Technology, and more. Zaria, too, boasts the Nigerian Military School and the Army School of Military Police. Yet, for all this military muscle packed into one corner, Kaduna and its environs remain terrorised by kidnappers and killers. What better proof that these fortresses were never built to protect the people?
The truth is plain: Nigeria’s rulers built fortresses in the North not to secure the nation, but to secure power. The glut of military presence has been about preserving privilege, not providing safety. And the result is tragic and absurd—generals are trained in Zaria while children are abducted in Chikun.
This is why the recent restructuring is a political thunderclap. For over a century, Zaria’s Army Depot—established in 1924—stood as the sole training ground for recruits into the Nigerian Army. A century-long monopoly, funnelling training, power, and privilege northward, unchallenged and unquestioned. That monopoly has now been broken with the creation of a second Army Depot in Osogbo. It is more than an administrative adjustment—it is a deliberate act of restructuring, a crack in the northern wall of entitlement.
Think of the symbolism: one hundred years of exclusive military training in Zaria, ended by a single stroke that plants an equivalent institution in Osogbo. For once, power has been used not to perpetuate imbalance, but to begin correcting it. This is no token gesture; it is a fundamental redrawing of the map of privilege.
Kudos to President Tinubu. With this decision, PBAT has demonstrated rare political will—the will to take a saw to the crooked scaffolding of Nigeria’s misfortunes. But this must be only the beginning. There are many more distortions waiting to be straightened, many more sacred cows yet to be led to slaughter.
Nigeria deserves no less.
—
Olufemi Adefemiwa is a global Nigerian, public communicator, and advocate for good governance. He is the author of “Remote Working From Africa: A Practical Guide” and writes from New York. He can be reached at jerome.adefemiwa@gmail.com.
