Image credits: Microsoft Copilot In a region increasingly consumed by insecurity, poverty, and disillusionment, the crisis in Northwestern Nigeria has exposed more than institutional weaknesses. It has revealed a failure of thought. While guns and policies have been deployed to manage banditry, communal violence, and economic decay, the deeper issue lies in how we think as individuals, as leaders, and as a society. The world development report (Worldbank, 2015) suggests three principles of human decision making which conforms to a very useful social science framework providing three cognitive lenses: automatic thinking, social thinking, and thinking in new mental boxes . These modes of thinking, if understood and applied, can transform how we approach the complex challenges facing the region. These are explained below with suggestions of how they can be applied to tackle these challenges. 1. Automatic Thinking Automatic thinking, also known as System 1 thinking (Kahneman,...