Nigeria’s multi-billion-naira National Public Security Communication System, once sold to the public as a game-changing police communication and surveillance network, now stands across the country as a monument to institutional failure.

From Lagos to Maiduguri and the FCT, purpose-built communication centres, towers, and technical facilities lie idle or vandalised. What was conceived as a $470m (over N700bn at current rates) backbone for modern policing has instead become part of the story of how insecurity deepened nationwide.

The key question is no longer just who to blame — but why Nigeria repeatedly builds strategic security infrastructure it cannot sustain.

The NPSCS was initiated under President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and aggressively implemented during President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration between 2010 and 2015. It was financed largely through a China Exim Bank facility and executed by Chinese telecoms giant ZTE.

The project was designed to provide a digital trunked radio network for secure voice communication nationwide, command and control centres in all 36 states and the FCT, CCTV coverage in key cities, emergency call centres and tracking capabilities, and Integration of police, security and emergency services into a unified communication framework.

Thousands of specialist cadet inspectors and ASPs were reportedly recruited and trained to man these facilities. On paper, it was one of the most ambitious internal security infrastructure projects in Nigeria’s history.

Despite the impressive launches and political speeches, evidence shows that the NPSCS never became a consistently functional, nationwide operational system.

Several official inspections and legislative probes over the years highlighted major faults:

Many CCTV cameras and base stations worked only partially or for a short period.

Maintenance arrangements and funding were weak or non-existent.

Handover from the contractor to the Nigerian authorities was poorly managed.

By the end of the Jonathan era and into the early Buhari years, multiple components of the system were already failing, idle, or plundered. The infrastructure existed physically, but the network as a living, integrated security tool barely existed in practice.

This is a crucial point: the narrative that a fully functional, highly effective system was deliberately “switched off” overnight is not supported by the broader record. It was limping, under-maintained, and vulnerable long before.

The most explosive claim in public discourse is that the Buhari-led APC administration deliberately shut down Jonathan’s “police communication empire” to aid bandits and criminal elements.

There is no publicly available documentary evidence of a formal directive by President Buhari ordering the shutdown of an operational NPSCS.

What can be established is a pattern of continued neglect: failure to fund maintenance, failure to upgrade, and failure to prioritise the system as a central security asset.

Sources within the police claimed that instructions came from “above” to stop funding ZTE and allow the system to die. Those allegations are serious, but they remain anonymous, untested and uncorroborated in any court or official white paper.

It is also true that the Buhari administration inherited not just infrastructure, but the same security establishment — senior officers, civil servants, and contractors — that managed, compromised, or mismanaged the system under previous governments. Leaders at the top change; the underlying machinery often does not.

To say Buhari personally “shut it down to assist bandits” is therefore a political conclusion, not a proven fact. What is factual is that his government failed to salvage, reform, or transparently audit a system that was already in trouble. That is a serious failing, but it is different from a criminal conspiracy.

Former President Jonathan publicly complained while in office that his government and security architecture were infiltrated by sympathisers or agents of terrorist networks. If that is accurate, it logically follows that:

Sabotage of critical security infrastructure could have occurred internally,

And those actors may have remained in place across administrations, including under Buhari.

However, this remains in the realm of political intelligence and conjecture, not fact. No administration — Jonathan’s, Buhari’s or Tinubu’s — has successfully prosecuted a network of “fifth columnists” linked directly to the failure of the NPSCS.

The fairest conclusion today is that the system was brought down by a mixture of corruption, incompetence, poor project design, institutional decay and possible internal sabotage — a collective failure, not the handiwork of a single man or party.

It is also inaccurate to pretend that insecurity started under Buhari. Under Jonathan, Boko Haram reached its most territorially ambitious phase, controlling large areas in the North-East.

The 2014 Chibok girls abduction, arguably the most globally infamous kidnapping in Nigeria’s history, occurred on his watch and remained unresolved for years.

Under Buhari, the map shifted:

Boko Haram/ISWAP was gradually pushed back territorially,

But banditry, mass abductions, rural terrorism and kidnapping for ransom exploded, especially in the North-West and North-Central.

Both periods exposed deep structural weaknesses in Nigeria’s security and intelligence system. Neither government can credibly claim success on internal security, and neither can honestly be singled out as the reason the NPSCS failed.

Various signals show that the Nigerian state knows the NPSCS failure is a scandal:

The National Assembly has held multiple probes and issued reports calling for accountability.

Federal agencies have announced “revival” efforts more than once, often with media fanfare but little visible impact on the ground.

More recently, committees and project management teams have been inaugurated to reassess or concession parts of the infrastructure.

Yet ordinary Nigerians still see abandoned masts, dark CCTV poles and empty buildings. That tells you the gap between announcement and delivery remains massive.

Arguing endlessly about whether Jonathan’s team or Buhari’s team “killed” the project misses the urgent point: Nigeria still does not have a reliable, modern, nationwide security communication system in 2025.

With a fresh wave of kidnappings, rural attacks and urban banditry, the priority should be:

Independent technical and financial audit of the NPSCS assets — what is salvageable, what is obsolete, and what was never properly delivered.

Transparent accountability for officials and contractors involved in any fraud, sabotage, or gross negligence — across all administrations.

Designing a new, modern system, possibly with new vendors, incorporating: encrypted nationwide radio, integrated emergency response and tracking, CCTV and drone feeds into central and regional command centres, and remote operation and redundancy for when physical sites are attacked.

Ring-fenced funding and strict governance so that maintenance is not treated as an optional luxury.

It is entirely reasonable — and urgently necessary — to rebuild or replace Jonathan-era infrastructure with newer digital, networked systems, as security experts and civic groups like the National Patriots have proposed. What is not reasonable is to pretend the old system was a flawless masterpiece assassinated by one politician.

The NPSCS story is not just a Buhari problem or a Jonathan problem. It is a Nigerian state problem: a pattern of grand projects launched with fanfare, under-delivered, under-maintained, then weaponised in partisan blame games once they fail.

If Nigeria is serious about confronting insurgency, banditry and mass kidnapping, it must stop treating critical communication infrastructure as political property and start treating it as a non-negotiable backbone of national survival.

The collapse of Nigeria’s multi-billion-naira police communication network is not the failure of one administration but the consequence of years of institutional decay, sabotage, and neglect.

What was designed to give the nation real-time security intelligence was allowed to rot in silence while criminals evolved faster than the state. Blaming one regime distracts from the truth — the system was never protected, never maintained, and never prioritised. Nigeria cannot fight 2025 threats with a broken 2010 infrastructure. We need a modern, fully networked, fail-safe communication architecture now, backed by transparency, funding, and accountability. Until then, insecurity will continue to outrun governance.

It is incorrect and deeply misleading to claim that the APC-led Buhari administration deliberately shut down a ‘fully functional’ police communication system to aid bandits.  First, the system was never fully operational. Second, its collapse had already begun before 2015. Third, the failure was institutional, not personal. And fourth, blaming one administration is both incomplete and unfair.

Our rebuttal is based on evidence, not politics. Nigerians must get their facts right and stop circulating narratives built on partial information or economic truths, especially at a time when national security demands clarity, honesty, and responsibility.

It is incorrect and deeply misleading to claim that the APC-led Buhari administration deliberately shut down a ‘fully functional’ police communication system to aid bandits.

First, the system was never fully operational. Second, its collapse had already begun before 2015. Third, the failure was institutional, not personal. Fourth, blaming one administration is both incomplete and unfair.

Our rebuttal is based on evidence, not politics. Nigerians must ensure they get their facts right and refrain from circulating narratives based on partial information or economic truths for political reasons, especially at a time when national security demands clarity, honesty, and responsibility.

Princess Adebajo-Fraser, MFR, the founder of The National Patriots, writes from Lagos