African Democratic Congress presidential candidate and former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar told BBC Hausa, in remarks reported across Nigeria on Friday 28 August 2026, that he would end the country’s insecurity within one year of taking office if voters choose him in the 2027 general election.

The Atiku insecurity vow is the sharpest deadline yet from a candidate who has spent months arguing that leadership failure, not a shortage of soldiers, explains why farms, schools and highways remain unsafe.

Also read: Lawmaker, lawyers reject Atiku’s fresh Tinubu credentials claims

Atiku Abubakar, 79, said extra personnel, better kit and paid work for idle young people would form the core of that first year.

“I will not take more than one year to end it. We will recruit additional security personnel and provide them with the necessary equipment. We will also provide adequate funding to support youths to establish businesses because many of them are involved in criminal activities due to lack of employment,” Atiku Abubakar said.

The same interview cycle has been reported in two registers. Outlets quoting a Hausa-language appearance on the PAP programme around 19 August recorded a first-100-days plan to swell the ranks and arm them properly.

The later BBC Hausa account stretches that plan into a full year and adds a regional military layer. Both versions rest on the same claim: more force, more jobs, firmer command.

Atiku Abubakar said he would press Economic Community of West African States leaders to revive the old Monitoring Group, ECOMOG, and to knit together armies from countries that once sent peacekeepers to Liberia and Sierra Leone.

He argued that Nigeria should not freeze ties with Niger because of the junta there, and that Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali should be brought back into ECOWAS so the Sahel does not remain a rear base for guns and fighters.

That regional pitch will be hard to deliver. The three junta-led states have already walked away from the bloc. A standing force would need money, a common command and political consent that is not on the table today.

The security crisis that frames the promise is grim and measurable. SBM Intelligence counted 7,825 people abducted and at least 1,142 killed in kidnap and kidnap-related incidents between July 2025 and June 2026, with about N7.78 billion paid in ransom. The north-west recorded the heaviest share of victims.

Independent monitors have also logged thousands of conflict deaths in 2025 and early 2026, while UN agencies still place millions of Nigerians among the internally displaced.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government rejects the charge of collapse. After mass killings and abductions in Borgu, Niger State, in late August, President Tinubu said terror would not cow Nigeria and ordered a coordinated rescue.

In early August the Presidency said security agencies had killed between 13,000 and 20,000 terrorists over three months and rescued thousands of captives, including 308 people taken in Kwara and Niger states.

Those official tallies are contested by opposition figures, but they are the government’s public record of progress.

Atiku Abubakar has used that record as a campaign weapon since winning the ADC ticket in May 2026 with 1,846,370 votes against Rotimi Amaechi and Mohammed Hayatu-Deen.

In his acceptance speech he called the present insecurity the worst in the country’s history and promised mass recruitment, modern equipment and better welfare.

He has also asked the federal government to give field commanders a freer hand. Critics reply that he served eight years as vice-president, has sought the top job across several parties since the 1990s, and has never held sole executive power.

Asked about the Independent National Electoral Commission, Atiku Abubakar was blunt. “INEC will not do the right thing because it is this government that brought them. But what I want to tell Nigerians is that they should come out and vote. They should ensure that their votes count, protect their votes and make sure that the person they vote for is the person who is eventually declared the winner.”

He said 2027 would be his last run and that he would advise younger politicians if he lost.

On fuel prices he accused President Tinubu of ripping off the subsidy in one stroke and promised to restore it after what he called the worst hardship he had seen in nearly 80 years.

Aides have since tried to describe any new support as a capped aid to local refining rather than a return to the old import subsidy. The Presidency has called the shift political and inconsistent.

Whether a one-year deadline can outrun banditry, jihadist factions and ransom economics is the test voters will apply. Recruitment and equipment can be ordered. Restoring trust on the roads, in classrooms and on farms is slower work.

Also read: Lawmaker, lawyers reject Atiku’s fresh Tinubu credentials claims

The Atiku insecurity vow now sits on the record as a sweeping promise, timed for a weary electorate and for a contest that he himself has framed as his final attempt.