A recent military press release contained a startling detail. A Nigerian Army Brigade Commander, operating in the insurgent-held Sambisa Forest, reportedly used a WhatsApp video call and shared his live location via the app to communicate during an operation.
Let that sink in.
In a theatre of war, against an enemy known for electronic interception, a senior officer relied on the same unsecured, commercial technology you use to call a friend. This isn’t just a tactical misstep; it’s a glaring symptom of a profound and systemic national failure.
The immediate question is: whose fault is this? Is it the personal failure of the soldier or officer making the call? Or is it a catastrophic failure of the security architecture meant to protect them and, by extension, us?
The depressing truth, upon dissection, points to a resounding both—but the lion’s share of the blame lies not with the individual, but with a rotten system that makes such incompetence not just possible, but inevitable.
The Symptom: A Tactical Betrayal
On the surface, using an unsecured mobile phone is a gross violation of operational security (OPSEC). It’s a personal failure in judgment. Signals can be intercepted, locations triangulated, and missions compromised. A single call can betray an entire unit.
But to stop the analysis here is to miss the forest for the trees. Why would a trained commander resort to an app like WhatsApp? The answer reveals the architecture of the failure.
The Disease: A System Designed to Fail
The reliance on unsecured phones is a microcosm of Nigeria’s broader governance and infrastructure crisis. It’s a failure built on three collapsing pillars:
1. The Funding Paradox: Budgets without Results
Nigeria allocates billions of Naira to defence annually.Yet, the boots on the ground often lack basic, secure equipment. Where does the money go?
The open secret is systemic corruption. Procurement processes are riddled with kickbacks and inflated contracts. Funds meant for satellite phones and encrypted radios are siphoned off, leaving our soldiers with the same tools available to any civilian—a personal smartphone and a data plan. The soldier is not just making a poor choice; they are often making the only choice available.
2. The Crumbling Backbone: Power and Digital Decay
The military does not operate in a vacuum.It depends on the nation’s infrastructure, which is in a state of advanced decay.
· The Power Crisis: Sophisticated military communication gear is power-hungry. How do you keep it charged in a country with a notoriously erratic power supply? The logistical nightmare makes personal phones, which are easier to charge with portable power banks, a pragmatic, if reckless, alternative.
· The Digital Desert: The absence of a secure, state-owned military communication network forces our armed forces to piggyback on vulnerable commercial cellular networks. We have not built the dedicated, encrypted digital infrastructure that modern warfare demands.
3. The Human Factor: Morale and Training in Freefall
Technology is useless without trained,motivated people.
· Inadequate Training: Are our troops receiving cutting-edge training on communication security and electronic warfare? Or is the training as outdated as the equipment they lack?
· Crippling Morale: When soldiers are underpaid, underequipped, and feel abandoned by the very system they serve, morale plummets. A lax attitude towards protocol sets in. Why follow strict, cumbersome rules for a system that has failed you at every turn?
The Vicious Cycle of Failure
These elements create a self-reinforcing loop of incompetence:
1. Systemic Failure (corruption, poor governance) leads to…
2. Infrastructure Failure (no secure hardware, poor power) which causes…
3. Morale & Training Failure (demotivated, poorly trained personnel) resulting in…
4. Personal/Operational Failure (use of unsecured phones).
This operational failure then leads to compromised missions and lost lives, which the system uses to justify even more funding without accountability, thus continuing the cycle.
Conclusion: An Architecture of Absence
Blaming the individual soldier for using an unsecured phone is like blaming a passenger for drowning on a sinking ship with no lifeboats. They are guilty of poor swimming technique, but the real crime was the vessel’s fatal flaws.
The Nigerian soldier on the frontlines, resorting to WhatsApp, is making a rational choice within an utterly irrational and broken system. The problem is not a few incompetent individuals, but a systemic absence of competence, accountability, and adequate facilities across our governance landscape.
The unsecured phone is not the problem. It is the most visible signal of a deeper, more terrifying reality: that at every level, the architecture designed to hold this nation together is crumbling, and until we muster the courage to rebuild it from the foundation, we will continue to see these tragic symptoms of a state in crisis.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 