A presidential aide admitted terrorists may have people inside Nigeria's security agencies. The opposition wants to know who, and what happens to them.

Daniel Bwala did not plan to make news. He was a guest on a podcast, The Link Up with EchoRoom, fielding a fairly ordinary question about whether Nigeria's security forces have been infiltrated. His answer was not ordinary at all. You cannot rule out the fact that terrorist groups may have agents inside the army or elsewhere, he said. Our police and soldiers have occasionally been arrested for exactly that.

He was trying to normalise the admission by comparing it to other countries. Edward Snowden happened in America, he said. This can happen anywhere in the world. That comparison did not land the way he hoped. Five opposition parties, the SDP, ADC, YPP, PDP and NDC, issued a joint response demanding arrests and prosecutions, not comparisons. They pointed out that unverified reports have already been circulating about a weapons instructor with an army battalion in Geidam, Yobe State. He reportedly went missing for two days before being sighted fighting alongside Boko Haram. Bwala did not confirm that specific case. He also did not deny that something like it was possible.

There is a difference between a country acknowledging a vulnerability and a country doing something visible about it. Bwala said measures are already being taken to address insider threats, but declined to say what they are, for security reasons. That is a reasonable thing to say once. It becomes harder to accept when it is the only answer offered, week after week. The security situation in the North East and North West keeps producing headlines that suggest the threat is not shrinking.

What the opposition is really asking for is not a state secret. It is evidence that the admission leads somewhere. An investigation with a name attached. A prosecution that becomes public record. Right now what Nigerians have is a presidential aide's word that the problem is being handled. It was delivered on a podcast, with no committee, no timeline and no way for anyone outside government to check.

This is not new for Nigeria's security institutions. Officers and soldiers have been arrested before over links to the very groups they were meant to fight. That includes a senior police officer picked up alongside foreign nationals, a case Bwala himself referenced as precedent. Each time, the admission comes first, delivered informally, in an interview or a podcast rather than a formal briefing. Each time, the follow-through is the part that goes quiet. Nobody outside government ever finds out whether "measures" meant reassignments, prosecutions, or nothing at all.

That silence has a cost that lands specifically on the communities living closest to the conflict. A resident of Geidam who hears that a weapons instructor from the local battalion may have walked over to Boko Haram is not just hearing gossip. They are being asked to trust the same battalion with their protection tomorrow, without any public accounting of who was checked, who was cleared, and who is still standing post. Reassurance without evidence does not travel very far in a place that has already buried people because a warning came too late.