A presidential aspirant on the platform of the Mohammed Hayatu-Deen has unveiled a wide-ranging security and economic blueprint aimed at tackling terrorism, banditry and kidnapping across the country ahead of the 2027 general election.
Hayatu-Deen, a former chairman of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, disclosed the proposals in a statement shared via his X handle on Tuesday.
The aspirant said Nigeria’s worsening insecurity was deeply connected to economic hardship, noting that poverty, unemployment and violence had continued to fuel one another.
“Nigeria’s security crisis is not separate from the economy. It is the same problem,” he stated.
According to him, insecurity has disrupted farming, trade and investment opportunities across several parts of the country, creating fertile ground for criminal groups and extremist networks.
Hayatu-Deen said that if elected president, one of his first actions would be to formally designate identified criminal groups as terrorist organisations under the Terrorism Prevention Act.
He specifically mentioned armed bandit groups, kidnapping syndicates linked to the Islamic State West Africa Province and other organised criminal networks operating nationwide.
“The Nigerian state must stop treating organised mass violence as ordinary crime,” he said.
The ADC aspirant also pledged to prosecute bandits, kidnappers and their collaborators under terrorism laws through designated courts with accelerated trial procedures.
“Terrorism charges carry life imprisonment. The days of light sentences, quiet releases and cases disappearing into endless judicial backlog are over,” he added.
Hayatu-Deen further promised to dismantle financial structures sustaining terrorism and organised crime, saying agencies such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Central Bank of Nigeria would be directed to trace and freeze assets linked to criminal financiers, ransom collectors and arms suppliers.
He said a joint intelligence and telecom surveillance task force would also be established to track ransom payments, criminal communications and interstate kidnapping operations using modern technology.
“You cannot aim to kill the foot soldiers while leaving the treasury intact,” he stated.
On regional security cooperation, the presidential hopeful pledged to revive the Multi-National Joint Task Force and strengthen intelligence-sharing arrangements with neighbouring countries including Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Benin.
“The MNJTF was working. It has been allowed to collapse. We will restore coordinated intelligence sharing and joint operations immediately,” he said.
Hayatu-Deen also vowed to end what he described as federal complicity in ransom payments and negotiated amnesties for criminal groups.
“Not one naira of federal funds will go to proscribed groups,” he said, adding that federal support to states would be tied to compliance with the proposed policy.
He equally proposed reforms in intelligence coordination among security agencies, including the military, police, DSS, immigration, customs and financial intelligence units, stressing that the country needed improved intelligence gathering and rapid response mechanisms.
The ADC aspirant further promised to strengthen policing capacity through improved training, technology and coordination between federal and local security structures.
“The military cannot permanently police every community in Nigeria. That is not a sustainable security architecture and we will end it,” he said.
Hayatu-Deen also pledged to introduce targeted economic recovery programmes in violence-prone areas, particularly for young people vulnerable to recruitment by criminal and extremist groups.
“These are not long-term aspirations or second-term promises. They are immediate actions,” he added.
