Nigerian Army Launches Joint Security Training to Tackle Insurgency, Banditry, and Kidnapping

The Nigerian Army's 4 Special Forces Command in Doma, Nasarawa State, has launched a week-long Command Operations Planning Cadre for 2026, bringing together participants from multiple armed forces formations and other security agencies to build the kind of coordinated operational capacity that the country's fragmented security response has long needed.

Major General Olurotimi Awolo, Commander of the 4 Special Forces Command, made the announcement on Monday, framing the programme as a direct response to the reality that Nigeria's security challenges are too varied and too entrenched to be handled by any single agency working alone.

The course theme gives a clear sense of the intent: Tactical Leadership Capacity Building and Multi-Agency Approach to Asymmetric Operations in Joint Operations Area.

Asymmetric operations is the key phrase. It refers to confronting non-conventional threats, insurgency, terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, militancy, where the enemy does not fight like a conventional army and where standard military doctrine often needs to be adapted or abandoned entirely. Getting that adaptation right requires not just individual skill but coordinated action across agencies that do not always communicate well or share intelligence freely.

"The essence of including other security agencies in this training programme was necessitated by the notion that confronting the numerous security challenges across the nation requires integrated collaboration among all relevant stakeholders in the security domain," Awolo said.

That sentence is doing a lot of work. It is essentially an acknowledgement that the siloed approach to Nigerian security, where the Army does its thing, the Police do theirs, the DSS operates separately, and the various paramilitary agencies rarely coordinate in real time, has contributed to the gaps that armed groups exploit.

The commander was specific about the nature of the problem he is trying to address. Nigeria's security concerns vary significantly by geography and by the type of threat present, which means a solution designed for the North East does not automatically transfer to the North West, or to the South South, or to the South East.

Awolo said the training was designed to equip staff with the operational knowledge needed to handle emerging security risks across different theatres. He asked participants to pay particular attention to sessions on interagency cooperation and logistics planning, suggesting those are the areas where operational gaps are currently most acute.

He also tied the programme to the broader leadership philosophy of Chief of Army Staff Lieutenant General Waidi Shaibu, which aims to develop a professional, adaptable, and combat-ready force capable of functioning effectively in joint and multi-agency environments.

The Nigerian Army multi-agency security training in 2026 arrives against a backdrop that Infotresting has covered extensively in recent weeks: Operation HADIN KAI disrupting Boko Haram logistics in the North East, Operation Clean Sweep III pursuing bandits in Katsina after the killing of a retired general, Operation Enduring Peace responding to militia violence in Plateau State, and the Joint Task Force North West working across multiple states simultaneously.