Nigeria, Aug. 21 -- The time has come for governments at every level in Nigeria to confront a destructive force that has long operated in plain sight under the guise of informal scrap collection. Those who call themselves iron condemn operators, roaming the streets of Abuja, Lagos, and other major cities, are no longer mere scavengers scraping a living from discarded metal. Their activities have escalated into systematic attacks on the very foundations of public infrastructure, and the damage they inflict demands that they be treated with the seriousness reserved for terrorists.

These individuals and the networks that support them target the structural integrity of bridges, roads, and drainage systems with calculated precision. They extr...