Femi Falana Demands 1,000 Forest Guards for Insurgency Hotbeds; Slams Federal Preference After Ogbomoso School Kidnapping Response

Human rights activist and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, has challenged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to maintain absolute equity in his administration’s approach to national defense, demanding the immediate recruitment of 1,000 forest guards to secure the highly volatile woodland borders of Borno State.

Falana’s intervention follows a high-stakes executive precedent set over the weekend. Following the horrific May 15, 2026, mass abduction of several school pupils and teachers within the Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State, President Tinubu dispatched a powerhouse federal delegation to Ibadan and Ogbomoso. Led by the Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu, and the defense chiefs, the taskforce announced the immediate approval of 1,000 specialized forest guards to execute a technical rescue and prevent future border breaches in Oyo.

While Falana heavily commended the presidency’s rapid mobilization and empathetic response to the Oyo school crisis, he insisted that the federal cabinet must deploy the exact same defensive manual to protect vulnerable rural communities in the North-East, which have endured over a decade of unrelenting terrorist incursions.

“The President has done remarkably well by sending a high-powered delegation to Oyo State and approving 1,000 forest guards to checkmate the spaces used by kidnappers,” Falana noted in a media brief issued on Monday, June 1, 2026. “However, the same security shield must be extended immediately to Borno State. The Sambisa forest and other northern woodland corridors cannot be left unmonitored. If 1,000 forest guards are necessary to salvage the security layout in the South-West, they are doubly mandatory to secure the trenches of Borno.”

The senior lawyer argued that the federal government’s current reliance on a heavily centralized policing structure has left massive gaps in rural defense lines. According to Falana, the Nigeria Police Force lacks the manpower footprint required to effectively patrol the country’s vast forest reserves, making the official adoption of localized, decentralized rangers an absolute necessity.

Furthermore, Falana took a direct swipe at the Office of the National Security Adviser over its contradictory handling of local security assets. He criticized the ongoing detention and prosecution of Dr. Joshua Osatimehin and other top commanders of the Nigeria Forest Security Service (NFSS), who were locked into cell trenches over the alleged possession of locally manufactured pistols used to fight bandits.

Falana concluded his brief by advising the president to halt the legal warfare against these local vigilante groups. Instead of treating domestic hunters and forest rangers as criminals, the veteran jurist urged the National Assembly and the presidency to fully operationalize the Forest Guards Bill, integrating these local forces into a unified, well-regulated security portal capable of acting as a permanent shield for schools and farmers across all geopolitical zones.