General Musa’s military résumé is long, recent and visible. Commissioned in 1991, he rose through operational and training appointments to command frontline formations in the Lake Chad theatre and Operation Hadin Kai, before being appointed Chief of Defence Staff in 2023. During his tenure he gave frequent briefings on the military’s operational outcomes — telling audiences that in the previous two years the armed forces had “neutralised over 3,000 terrorists and bandits, rescued more than 2,000 kidnapped victims, and recovered over 2,300 arms and 72,000 rounds of ammunition,” and reporting large numbers of insurgent surrenders.
By Abdulrahman Aliagan — Time Nigeria Magazine
When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu tapped General Christopher Gwabin Musa (rtd.) this week to replace Alhaji Mohammed Badaru Abubakar as Minister of Defence, the move read like an act of political triage: send in the man who already knows how the army thinks, fights and reforms.
The nomination — transmitted to the Senate on December 2, 2025 — comes at a perilous moment for Nigeria, as mass abductions, church assaults and brazen banditry have stripped millions of any sense of normalcy.
For families still waking to empty beds and shuttered classrooms, the question is blunt and urgent: can a former Chief of Defence Staff translate battlefield wins into national security that civilians actually feel? There is reason to believe he might.
General Musa’s military résumé is long, recent and visible. Commissioned in 1991, he rose through operational and training appointments to command frontline formations in the Lake Chad theatre and Operation Hadin Kai, before being appointed Chief of Defence Staff in 2023. During his tenure he gave frequent briefings on the military’s operational outcomes — telling audiences that in the previous two years the armed forces had “neutralised over 3,000 terrorists and bandits, rescued more than 2,000 kidnapped victims, and recovered over 2,300 arms and 72,000 rounds of ammunition,” and reporting large numbers of insurgent surrenders.
Those statistics, repeated in military statements and national press briefings, became the fulcrum of the argument in favour of his stewardship, that the security forces under his watch had regained initiative in many theatres. Yet numbers on a PowerPoint and the lived experience of fear do not always align.
In November 2025, gunmen took more than 300 pupils and staff from a Catholic school in Niger state — one of the largest mass abductions in memory — while separate attacks in Kebbi and other states saw schoolgirls seized and churches raided. The headlines were stark, schools emptied, parents prostrate, governors scrambling to shut institutions deemed too risky for learning.
These are not abstract security challenges; they are single, shattering human tragedies that ripple through communities and undermine confidence in the state’s capacity to protect.
“I came to the school, I am here, searching and looking whether I will see any child that returned, but I have not seen any child,” a mother told Reuters as parents scoured school compounds for signs of their children — a short, terrible sentence that captures the impotence felt by so many families.
Another parent told the Associated Press that the government had kept them “in the dark” about rescue efforts, and that the stress had become a health hazard in its own right.
These are voices that must shape any credible security policy: the state’s response is judged first by how it protects children, worshippers and ordinary citizens.
So what would success look like if General Musa is confirmed — and if, crucially, he is allowed to do the job without the fetters of partisan calculation or bureaucratic inertia?
First, success will not arrive simply by redeploying old tactics. The campaign must be recomposed around three hard facts: Nigeria faces multiple, overlapping threats (insurgency, banditry, kidnapping-for-ransom, communal conflict); the security services remain under-resourced and overstretched; and the social and economic drivers of violence — youth unemployment, weak governance, porous local institutions — persist. Any credible agenda must therefore be integrated, patient and political.
From the inside, Musa has already signalled priorities that, if translated into ministerial policy, would help. His watch as CDS emphasised joint-force coordination, creation of forward operating bases, and expansions in training and special operations — measures aimed at shortening the lag between intelligence and action. Those institutional gains could now be weaponised for a civilian protection strategy: rapid-reaction forces for threatened communities, intelligence fusion centres with civilian oversight, and investment in defensive measures around schools and places of worship. But such changes will require more than directives — they will require money, logistics, and a political roof from the presidency.
Security experts point to another reality: military action can push back violent groups, but it cannot, on its own, seal the peace. “We cannot afford to normalise the abduction of children who simply want to learn. Schools must be safe spaces, not zones of fear,” said Plan International after the November spate of attacks — a reminder that donors, international agencies and civil society expect a protective posture focused on prevention as well as response. For the incoming minister, that translates into funding Safe Schools initiatives, coordinating with education ministries and state governments, and ensuring security protocols at boarding schools are bolstered and inspected.
A practical agenda for the new Minister of Defence — built from Musa’s operational strengths and the failures that the public has exposed — might look like this:
• Rebuild the intelligence architecture. Strengthen the fusion between military, police, and the Department of State Services so that signals and human intelligence move faster and are acted on decisively.
• Harden soft targets. Schools, churches and marketplaces require layered protection: perimeter security, trained local rapid-response teams, routine vulnerability audits and community early-warning networks.
• Scale joint logistics and mobility. The successes Musa cites — operations that netted weapons and surrendered fighters — were often enabled by improved mobility and supply. Sustaining that requires continuous investment in maintenance, transport, drones and comms.
• Institutionalise community engagement. Security is not only about kinetic results; it is about trust. Reinstate community liaison offices, incentivise local intelligence sharing, and tie security gains to tangible service delivery so that civilians have reasons to cooperate.
• Demand political continuity and fiscal clarity. The minister must have a direct line to the presidency to secure the resources needed and to prevent politics from hamstringing operations.
If delivered, those items could flip the narrative from episodic rescue operations to a managed, long-term security architecture. But the smoking gun is not in the list; it is in the presidency’s will to sustain pressure beyond headlines and emergency declarations. That political will — budgetary muscle, an appetite for difficult reforms, and the courage to prosecute corruption inside the security sector — is the real test. Without it, even the most competent minister will be bailing water from a boat with a hole in the hull.
There is also a human side to the ledger: the families and communities who measure success in the safe return of their children and the chance to rebuild livelihoods. “We just want our children back. Safe and sound. Nothing should happen to them. That’s what we want,” mothers and relatives have been saying on social media and in interviews — a raw plea that no strategy should ever be permitted to ignore. Answers that focus only on kinetic metrics risk treating people like collateral lines on a briefing slide.
Observers will also watch for how the new minister handles accountability. Military victories that go hand in hand with abuses erode legitimacy and fuel cycles of retribution. Musa’s public record as CDS included appeals to civil-military cooperation and an emphasis on training; now, as minister in civilian clothes, he must ensure oversight mechanisms — parliamentary committees, internal affairs, civilian observers — can operate without fear. That is how tactical gains become strategic; that is how trust is rebuilt.
Finally, there is the international dimension. Global partners — from bilateral allies to multilateral donors — are watching Washington, Brussels and others press for concrete reforms and effective action. Tinubu’s nomination of a proven soldier signals responsiveness; the next move is to translate that into a sustained whole-of-government campaign that includes diplomacy, development and domestic reform. In short: security cannot be outsourced to the military alone. It must be the axis around which a coherent national recovery turns.
The short, cold truth is this: the incoming defence minister will be judged not by a medal roll or press conference, but by whether a child can return to school without fear, a farmer can sleep at night without dread, and a congregation can worship in safety. General Musa’s record suggests he has the operational toolkit to contribute to those outcomes; what it does not guarantee is the political consensus and patient investment those outcomes require. That will be President Tinubu’s responsibility as much as the minister’s.
If the nomination is confirmed, Nigeria will have placed a seasoned soldier at the centre of civilian decision-making at a time when tactical competence matters.
Whether that appointment becomes the hinge of real change depends on two things: whether the minister can convert battlefield experience into policies that protect citizens, and whether the presidency will match that effort with the political will and resources needed to make those policies stick. For a country that has watched too many sunrise rituals turned into mourning vigils, the stakes could not be higher.
