Sandstorm in the Sahel and the Crisis of the Nigerian State

By Alexander Ekemenah, Chief Analyst, NextMoney

Summary

Nigeria faces a critical challenge as a result of the unending crisis in the Sahel region. The Sahelian crisis has actually impacted on Nigeria’s (national) internal security, political and social crisis over the years without adequate national situational awareness and strategic response. Nigeria, under Goodluck Jonathan administration, joined other countries notably France to miitarily intervened in Mali in early 2013. But this intervention did not achieve the purpose of political stability which as the primary reason publicly stated for the intervention. In fact the situation in Mali since 2012/2013 has gone from bad to worse, lurching from one unstable civilian regime to military juntas.

But more worrisome is the fact that under the current Buhari administration, Nigeria does not seem to have any articulated foreign policy statement of objectives towards the crisis in the Sahel and towards Mali in partcular that is at the epicentre of the Sahelian crisis. What has subsisted under Buhari administration is knee-jerk reactions to events that episodically flare up in Mali – and not a broad view of the crisis that would require a stategic policy response to keep the Malian crisis from becoming a Nigerian problem but while at the same time helping Mali to overcome her main problems of political instability and security crisis.

Thus, Nigeria need not be caught in the howling standstorm of Islamic fundamentalism and jihadism that has been blowing and threatening to bury the Sahelian region of Africa in the past two decades. Nigeria can and should chart an independent path freed from the manifestation of such a fate. Nigeria can only free itself from this unwholesome destiny of the Sahel when it is able to assert its sovereign identity, project its national security interests into the region, demonstrate its hegemonic ability to control events in the region, stop playing games with nationals of other countries flooding into Nigeria under the guise of either religion or ethnic affinities, police and control its borders effectively against influx of arms and migrants, etc. 

Nigeria should and must adhere strictly to the universal principles of rule of law, good governance, public accountability and transparency – and not tinker or pander to the idea of establishing any form of hybrid disctatorship and/or authoritarianism as the latter would not end well but complicate the existing crisis of the Nigerian State.

As it is today, Nigeria has not been able to demonstrate its ability to do any of the above. Fundamentally speaking, Nigeria has no known articulated foreign policy statement of objectives towards the brewing Sahelian crisis and how it intend to mitigate the effects of the crisis on Nigeria’s vital national security interests. Rather, it is demonstrating its abject weaknesses in this regard. This is fundamentally because Nigeria has been weakened internally by the specificities of its internal security challenges over the last two decades that have come to threaten the very corporate existence of Nigeria itself. Nigeria must, therefore, not tie her own destiny to that of the Sahel. On the contrary, it must be able to help reshape this destiny of the Sahel in a positive way.

The Context

When my article on the recent coup in Mali was published, a friend and senior colleague of mine who after reading and commending it, was, however, of the view that I was still locked in the Western preceptual and conceptual stereotypes of, for instance, rule of law, good governance, etc, which, in his own view have not helped Africa too much in its struggle to overcome the problematique of underdevelopment in the continent.

He suggested that it would perhaps be a good idea if research can be carried out in respect of African traditional governance models to explore and interrogate them to see how they could help overcome African crisis of underdevelopment.

From what could be perceived from his expressed views, he was worried about African slow pace of development. He is absolutely right. Everybody is perhaps naturally worried about this slow pace of development despite the abundance of natural and human resources for the designated purpose of development.

While one was reticent in accepting his reservations about the limitations of rule of law, good governance, etc, I nevertheless accepted the intellectual challenge of exploration into African alternative paradigms in governance since I must confess that I have not, perhaps, pay adequate attention to this area in the course of my writing career. Honestly speaking, I am an ardent supporter of rule of law, good governance, etc. I have been a strong advocate of same believing that they are actually the only ways by which Africa could overcome her socioeconomic development problematique. I have never thought otherwise.

But is it possible that one may have been wrong afterall in being fixated with the soc-called Western governance models and precepts? Are there are substance to African governance philosophical precepts and paradigms in terms of superiority and practicality in today’s more complex environment?

Of course, that would probably not be the first time such reservations have been made in the face of the slow progress being recorded over the decades since political independence on African continent. There are many variants.

For instance, for sometime now, the cries have been heard on the streets and behind closed doors that “democracy is not working for us”; “democracy is too expensive”; or “why must we even adopt the governance models of the colonial or imperialist masters?”; “the Presidency is too powerful”; “let us have the hybrid system whereby we have a President and Prime Minister like France, India”, etc. There is a whole lot of confusion virtually everywhere.

There have also been cries for “a benevolent dictatorship”, “a strongman” and all sort of variety of leaders.  In the build-up to 2015 general elections, these cries especially that of a “strongman” were heard loud and clear. For instance, it was argued then that the then President Goodluck Jonathan was too soft, weak or simply incapable of tackling the hydra-headed monster of corruption that has been rampaging and ravaging the polity. It was further argued concomitantly that we (Nigeria) need a strongman to defeat corruption, and that Muhammadu Buhari (with his military background) perfectly fitted this strongman model, ideal or prototype to such an extent that even his “body language alone” is sufficient to discourage and halt corrupt practices at the top echelon of government where it has been most rampant and carried out with utmost impunity.

But as events would show six years later, all these advocacies are simply chimeras. They have no social science value nor are they based on any form of reality. They are either unfounded or completely misplaced probably out of mischief or lack of understanding of the forces and processes at work. While a strongman was alleged to have emerged in the person of Muhammadu Buhari, he later became apparent that he was not strong enough at all to fight corruption or insecurity that have now ballooned to the sky in the last six years. He is even probably seen in some quarters to be weaker than most people think to halt the growing spread of scourge of corruption and insecurity (insurgency, terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, criminality and separatist movements) in the land. Certain quarters have even argued that corruption has become more insidious and rampant under Buhari administration than under Jonathan administration.

At any rate, the idea was bounced off some friends, seeking “academic” assistance in form of suggestions, book and article references to enable one kickstart this new research work. Some of them who were gracious enough to admit and acknowledge that such a problematique actually exist, were full of encouragement for my quest, after giving me suggestions here and there.

Thus this is an intellectual safari, a voyage and exploration into the mental realm where angels would probably fear to thread. But it is not a Devil’s advocacy! Our contemporary governance precepts and concepts especially in this 21st century can hardly be discussed without reference to our colonial contact with the Western world and the consequent mental subjugation through our educational system. This becomes even more complicated when the fragmentation of African countries among the Western colonial powers: Anglophone, Francophone, Portuguese, Spanish, Belgian, Germanic and Dutch colonial powers are considered and factored into the equations. While the United States never colonized any African territory as such, it has, however, successfully foisted upon the African continent the very much-talked-about precepts and concepts of rule of law, good governance, etc, through multilateralism, globalization, etc.

The Return of the Generals

In the previous two articles: “Idriss Deby Itno: Death of a Warrior President”¹ and “Mali Again!”², there were three issues that featured prominently which shall be re-examined here.

The first is the failure of multilateral institutions (UN, EU, AU, ECOWAS including individual superpowers like the United States and France) in preventing the military take-over in both countries. The whys and hows will be examined later.

The second is also the failure of the internal institutions of democracy, the collapse of rule of law (perhaps as a result of the first identifiable failure), the Constitution, the Parliament (in case of Chad) and other institutional pillars of State power by collapsing so cheaply under the jackboot of military Junkers in both countries. This merely suggest or reveal the fragility of the democratic enterprise despite the pretence to the contrary over the years.

The third, which is more worrisome, is the strategic implications of the events in Chad and Mali for the rest of the African countries especially in a country like Nigeria where it is being currently argued to be a failed entity already or (more generously) to be in process of failing.

The situation in Nigeria deserves or demands closer examination simply because, rather unfortunately, Nigeria has the misfortune of having geopolitical affinity with both Chad and Mali including Niger Republic especially in the context of the geopolitical crisis rocking the Sahel region in the last two decades or even more. Nigeria has not been able to insulate itself from the geopolitical turmoil roiling the Sahel region since Boko Haram insurgency tumbled into the nation’s plate of crisis since 2009.

One thing has become indisputable: if Nigeria has been like any of the Sahel countries like Chad, Niger, Mali and/or Libya particularly with their lower population densities, the intensity, ferocity and brutality of Boko Haram insurgency and terror campaigns over the years would have overwhelmed and consumed it. What has, therefore, been the saving grace is not even its vast expanse of geographical space but its higher population density already estimated to be around 210 million. It is also neither the ability of the military to combat the insurgency. It is rather the ability of the nation to absorb the shocks of the attacks. However, there is a tipping point when and where the nation may no longer be able to absorb the shocks of the attacks anymore.

There is no doubt that the Sahelian crisis is quite complex. The crisis is of monstrous nature, like a Frankenstein monster (Medussa or Janus) because many factors and forces have fed into each other to produce this monster. But the cart and the horse must be properly placed.

Perhaps, the greatest threat to the region may not even be the military Junkers that have recently come on board in Chad and Mali. On the contrary, it is the political instability, the depth or intensity of this instability, that produced the military Junkers. It is this political instability occasioned by failure of economic development and internal security crisis in all nearly all countries of the Sahel that should be the greatest concern. It is both the issues of economic development and internal security that must attract the greatest attention in terms of finding lasting solution to the epochal crisis rocking the region.

Nigeria should be more concerned about her internal security crisis and issues of economic development. Both has fed into each other to the extent of not knowing precisely where to start in looking for long-lasting solution that will produce the much-needed political stability for the nation to move forward. It is definitely not enough to hold regular election and change leadership as at when due. It is perhaps more important to arrive at the level of political stability that allows leadership to plan and execute development agenda without fear of intervention of crisis. This is partly what is also required to help stem the tidal wave of sandstorm from the Sahel region that has been threatening to overwhelm and suffocate the region – in terms of having a robust foreign policy objectives that encapsulate the geostrategic importance of the Sahel as a buffer zone for political stability.

Rule of law, good governance, public accountability and transparency are strategic in achieving such political stability and not to see them as not been sufficient or effective enough. There is no other way. It is precisely lack of rule of law, good governance, public accountability and transparency that has stalled African development. The impunities of African leadership must stop.

In the above-mentioned articles, there was no comparative analysis because each of the articles were written separately and at different times. However, in the current discourse here, an attempt comparative analysis would be carried out within the overall framework of the Sahelian region. It is a funnel approach starting with examination of the decades-long condition in the Sahel region. An understanding of the internal dynamics in both countries may not be fuller and richer without reference to the regional or geostrategic contextual crisis in which these two countries are embroiled. And this is none other than the Sahel.  

Storm in the Desert

“A region in peril” is how the Sahel has been described³ Armed conflicts, dramatic climate change and little opportunity to receive an education or find a job, are an everyday reality for many in Africa’s Sahel region. With the region’s rapidly expanding population compounding these challenges, the hope of a future is vanishing for millions of young people.⁴

The level of conflict between different groups in the region is on the rise. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), the chances are high that this trend will intensify in the years to come.⁵

Since the regime shift in Libya and the subsequent uprising in Northern Mali in 2012, the security situation has gone from bad to worse in much of the region.  In Mali, armed groups emerged in areas neglected by national authorities for decades. Lack of state presence, poverty and unemployment made it easy for these groups to find new recruits in areas that had long been left to fend for themselves. Today armed groups have multiplied, violence has spread from the north to more central parts of the country and the conflict has already spread to neighbouring countries such as Burkina Faso and Niger.⁶

Many have now lived in displacement for more than a decade, without prospects of return because of the insecurity. Because of the lack of funds, several humanitarian actors present in the country are raising the alarm and warning about insufficient capacity to respond to the growing humanitarian crisis. Throughout 2018 and into the beginning of 2019, the conflict is expanding in scale and scope.⁷

In neighbouring Burkina Faso, thousands have been displaced in the northern provinces on the border with Mali. The level of violence is unprecedented, and the civilian population is caught in the middle of, and at times targeted by attacks, both by non-state armed groups and security forces.⁸

In North East Nigeria, the armed conflict between non-state armed groups and security forces continues to affect neighbouring countries and has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Niger, Cameroon and Chad have all been drawn into the conflict. Although Boko Haram is no longer a unified movement, one of its factions, the Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP) has been growing and contributing to increased violence in the region since autumn 2018.⁹

In Cameroon, violence caused by Boko Haram has driven out around 228,000 Cameroonians in the areas bordering Nigeria. Cameroon is simultaneously dealing with a separate conflict in a different region of the country and though that part of the country is not within the Sahel region, the effects of the conflict are devastating. Over the past two years, unrest has increased in the English-speaking South-West and North-West Regions of the largely French-speaking country. During the autumn of 2018, 437,000 Cameroonians were displaced in these areas and 30,000 refugees crossed the border into Nigeria.¹⁰

The countries of the Sahel are among the world’s poorest. Niger is at the very bottom of the UN Human Development Index, and Chad, Burkina Faso and Mali rank just above.¹¹

As of March 2019, 4.2 million people have been displaced from their homes in the countries of the Sahel region. This is one million more than at the same time last year. Violence has escalated in the past year – especially in parts of Mali, the areas around Lake Chad, Burkina Faso and parts of Niger.¹²

As devastating as these armed conflicts are, they are in many cases a symptom of deeper, unresolved issues that plague the region namely poverty, food shortages, lack of job opportunities and climate change.¹³ In order to escape this unfortunate reality, many migrants from countries in the Sahel have decided to make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to reach Europe’s shores. In 2018, 116,647 migrants and refugees arrived Europe crossing the Mediterranean, according to UNHCR. Over 2,000 lost their lives in the attempt.¹⁴

For this analysis the Sahel is been defined as the region lying between 12°N and 20°N longitude, covering the semi-arid and arid climate zones. It covers all or parts of 12 countries from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea: Senegal, the Gambia, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti.¹⁵

The Sahel region of Africa is a 3,860-kilometre arc-like land mass lying to the immediate south of the Sahara Desert and stretching east-west across the breadth of the African continent.¹⁶ A largely semi-arid belt of barren, sandy and rock-strewn land, the Sahel marks the physical and cultural transition between the continent’s more fertile tropical regions to the south and its desert in the north.¹⁷. Commonly, the Sahel stretches from Senegal on the Atlantic coast, through parts of Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Sudan to Eritrea on the Red Sea coast.¹⁸ Culturally and historically, the Sahel is a shoreline between the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. This means it is the site of interaction between Arabic, Islamic and nomadic cultures from the north, and indigenous and traditional cultures from the south.¹⁹

Concerns abound over the region’s vast spaces, often beyond the reach of the state, in an era of violent criminal and political movements operating across borders. The Sahel also suffers from ethno-religious tensions, political instability, poverty and natural disasters.²⁰ In recent years, the Sahel has been in the global spotlight due to famines, religious terrorism, anti-state rebellions, and arms, drugs and human trafficking. These developments are the product of both local and global dynamics. They remain substantial challenges for the region in 2017.²¹

In Mali, Islamist extremism will remain a threat, despite national and international efforts to halt it. Islamist fighters may be dispersed, but not halted. The al Qaeda-affiliated al-Mourabitoun group, operating from Mali, have recently launched attacks in Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.²² In Mauritania, a traditional route for drug and human trafficking between South America and Europe, the existence of sub-state militant activities in the greater Sahel region, and local governance challenges, make political violence a threat in 2017.²³ In Nigeria, despite claims that Boko Haram has technically been defeated, it is very likely that the group’s remaining members are on the run. A relaunch of “the jihad” from elsewhere in the Lake Chad Basin area is therefore highly probable.²⁴

There have been positive developments as well. These include an emerging consolidation of support for democratic transitions of power through popular protests, and elite-led regional diplomatic and military interventions against unconstitutional changes of government or attempted unlawful retention of power.²⁵The African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have recently opposed unlawful takeover of power in Mali and Burkina Faso. In the Gambia, ECOWAS has prevented Yahya Jammeh’s attempt to unlawfully retain power in January 2017. Peaceful protests in Mauritania also promise some democratic gains.²⁶ Regional governance and integration projects have continued, with ECOWAS and other bodies such as the Lake Chad Basin Commission and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) offering the promise of collective action to tackle major regional challenges, although so far with mixed success.²⁷

Robert Muggah, Director Igarape Institute, and Jose Cabrera, West Africa researcher, noted one of the conflict points: “For centuries, herdsmen across Africa’s Sahel headed south during the long, hot dry season. Farmers typically welcomed them because their cattle and goats fertilized depleted cropland. While herders and farmers routinely competed over scarce resources, outright violence was restrained through customary arrangements and swift mediation from local leaders. But this symbiosis is crumbling. Instead, thousands of civilians from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Nigeria are killed every year in bloody inter-communal violence. Many more are caught up in deadly overlapping conflicts that are spinning out of control.”²⁸

Climate change is partly to blame. The United Nations estmates that roughly 80% of the Sahel’s farmland is degraded. Temperatures there are rising 1.5 times faster than the global average. As a result, droughts and floods  are growing longer and more frequent, undermining food production. About 50 million people  in the Sahel depend on livestock rearing for survival. But the land available to pastoralists is shrinking. This is aggravated by surging population growth that is pushing farmers northward to cultivate more crops. And while adverse climate conditions are sparking violence, proliferating jihadi insurgencies are also creating no-go areas, turning a bad situation even worse.²⁹

Climate risks, food insecurity and metastasizing violence are all set to intensify in the west African Sahel. The region is a canary in the coalmine; a presage of what is to come in other vulnerable parts of the world. Climate scientists believe that temperatures there could be 3-5degreeC by 2050, and this in a region with monthly averages of 35C. Rainfall is already erratic, and wet seasons are shrinking. There are lean times ahead. Still reeling from the food crisis of 2012, more than 33 million people in the Sahelare classified as food insecure. Declining grain and food production is forcing pastoralists into a desperate search for fertile pasture. When herders arrive too early or stay too long – violence is likely to follow.³⁰

The region’s violent conflicts are contagious. One reason for this is that national borders are porous and largely unguarded. Instead, they are criss-crossed with enterprising merchants and cattle herders, together with sinister extremist and criminal networks trafficking in toxic ideologies, drugs and weapons. Insurgencies in one country can and often do spill across borders, as was the case when conflict spread from northern to central Mali and into north and eastern Burkina Faso and southwestern Niger. Manipulated by government and business elites, marginalized pastoralists serve as the footsoldiers of the Sahel’s interlocking conflicts. They are ready recruits precisely because of diminished livelihood options and social exclusion.³¹

A motley assortment of groups and political militia have established footholds in remote parts of Africa’s western Sahel. They are thriving owing to a combination of weak state authority, an abundance of firearms and the steady erosion of local dispute resolution mechanisms. They are also tapping a rich vein of recruits from nomadic communities such as the Tuareg, Dossaak and Fulani. Multiple foreign-supported counter-terrorism operations have made some gains, but are clearly failing to contain the spread of violent activities. If anything, extremist groups are fragmenting and deepening their hold of border areas. The military strategy of backing armed proxies (like the Self-Defense Group of Imrad Tuareg and Allies (GATIA) or Movement for the Salvation of Azawad) in the Mali-Niger border area is also stoking up inter-communal conflict.³²

The combination of poor governance, languishing economies, depreciating local currencies, inflation, spiking migration and transhumance and violence are a volatile mix.³³Sahelian countries experienced unprecedented levels of organized violence in 2018. This is particularly the case for Mali and Burkina Faso, both of which registered the highest conflict-related death tolls in years. Taking all the G5 Sahel group of countries together, they experienced over four times the number of fatalities in 2018 when compared to 2012, with 62% of all reported violent deaths concentrated in Mali. At least 5 million people were displaced across borders or internally in 2018 and an astonishing 24 million people required food assistance across the region.³⁴

Mali was a regional hotspot, experiencing a steep surge in violence against civilians in 2018. This was largely the result of intensifying inter-communal conflicts between herders and farmers, but also a result of shifting tactics of jihadist groups operating in the center and north of the country. According to the Armed Conflict and Event Location Dataset (ACLED), there were at least 882 civilian fatalities last year, more than eight times the figure in 2012 during the country’s civil war. Most of these deaths were concentrated in the central region of Mopti (56%) and the northern territory of Gao (31%). In addition, over 80,000 people were internally displaced at the end of 2018, more than double the number at the end of 2016. The number of people in need of food assistance reached 5.2 million in 2018, up from 2.1 million in 2013.³⁵

Burkina Faso also witnessed a sharp increase in jihadist attacks in 2018, more than four times the number reported in 2017. ACLED researchers counted some 158 jihadist attacks last year, most of which were concentrated in the country’s Sahel (78) and Est (53) regions. Jihadi elements like the Group to Support Muslims and Islam (linked to al-Qaeda) have stepped up their targeting of government forces and civilians, and are increasingly stirring up communal tensions across the region. A state of emergency was declared across these two regions on 31 December 2018.³⁶

Niger registered a tripling of protests and riots and rising border violence in 2018. A new tax law and the spiraling cost of living sparked waves of unrest. According to ACLED, some 30 mass protests occurred in 2018, compared to just 11 in 2017. Roughly 60% of these events were concentrated in Niger’s capital, Niamey. Inter-communal violence is also on the rise, including in western Niger on the border of Burkina Faso and Mali. More than 52,000 people were displaced in 2018 alone (added to the estimated 144,000 who are displaced). Making matters worse, the number of people who are food insecure is expected to rise by over 55% this year, from 787,000 in 2018 to 1,221,000 in 2019.³⁷

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s middle belt is on fire. Farmer-herder violence is now far deadlier than the havoc wreaked by Boko Haram. ACLED has documented violent escalation in Benue, Plateau, Taraba and Nasawara – with fluctuations aligned with dry and raining season – as well as with electoral cycles. Violent disputes involving herder militia are due to an interplay of factors, including control over grazing areas, disputes over land, manipulation by elites and extremism. In a worrying sign, Fulani herdsman are increasingly confronting government forces (e.g. including, most recently, during military-led Operation Cat Race and Operation Whirl Stroke).³⁸

Stability will only be achieved if foreign and national governments can move beyond counter-terrorism and divert a greater share of resources toward reconciliation, dialogue and tangibly improving vulnerable people’s livelihoods. While military pressure is undoubtedly required, it must also be accompanied with greater investment in restoring national and local negotiation and reconciliation processes.³⁹

While incredibly tricky, efforts must also be made to disrupt the political manipulation of inter-communal disputes. This starts with avoiding discriminatory legislation, including the outlawing of open grazing or requiring livestock to be moved by rail and road (as was the case in Benue, Nigeria, in 2017). Even more important, elites must be prevented from deploying community militia to expand their profit and power, as is the case, for example, with the Fulani militia in Tillaberi, in western Niger. Dialogue forums like the Food Crisis Prevention Network supported by the OECD could help anticipate these challenges and find face-saving solutions.⁴⁰

Humanitarian and development investment in border regions and in public goods is essential. There are vast and unmet needs across the Sahel. Indeed, all but one of the G5 Sahel countries rank among the 10 lowest performing countries of the Human Development Index. Agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and others have found that small-scale projects focused on income-generating public goods – peace wells, solar electricity generators, community markets or dairy production – can have a calming effect so long as they do not stoke rivalry or competition. Sustained improvement in service delivery to marginal areas, and efforts to redress political and economic inequality are also essential.⁴¹

Another critical priority is expanding job opportunities and safety nets for young people involved in the agricultural and livestock sectors. One of the reasons why armed groups are growing is precisely because they are the only game in town. A priority for the development community and national governments across the Sahel is to provide targeted food and income support together with livestock and crop insurance to smooth losses. Targeted support for pastoral communities is also essential. The World Bank has already launched a series of initiatives to support them – the Regional Sahel Support Project, the Regional Investment Program for Livestock and Pastoral Development in Coastal Countries, and the initiative for Pastoralism and Stability in the Sahel and Horn of Africa. These need to be significantly ramped up.⁴²

Finally, the region’s governments, businesses and civil societies would benefit from expanded investment in platforms that forecast political violence, food crises and climate stress. Those that already exist – including the World Bank’s Action Mechanism, the UN’s Early Action System, the ACLED violence monitoring datasets, and Uppsala’s Violence Easrly Warning System (VIEWS) – could use an additional injection of resources. It is equally important that public and private leaders and civil societies recognize and anticipate ways that agriculture and livestock production are likely going to change in relation to climate, and encourage investments in adaptation and new crops in advance to avoid major declines in crop yields. The future looks challenging, which makes it all the more important to prepare for it.⁴³

Emmanuel Salliot (2010) captured the panoramic view of the decades-long security crisis overlapping political, socioeconomic and environmental crisis from 1967 to 2007 in the Sahel including Nigeria.⁴⁴

On environmental factor, Sebastien Hissler (2010) was of the view that “To map a country-specific relationship between security and a set of socio-economic and climate variables, a first strategy would actually be to aggregate these variables, assuming a weight of one for each variable. But nothing can insure that weighting conditions are not different, for example it can be argued that GDP per capita is a more important factor than population growth. As a supplementary view, econometric models can estimate, from past time-series data, weights relating the set of socio-economic-climate variables to security events, thereby giving a more precise aggregation for an index.⁴⁵

The Sahel has experienced an unprecedented and severe long lasting drought from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, with partial recovery through 2003, although the rainfall deficit has not ended. In addition, West Afica has been identified as a “hot spot” where the land-atmosphere coupling could play an important role, through the recycling of precipitation and the modulation of dry and moist static energy. There is a growing concern on the future climate of West Africa, as the anthropogenic global warming continues, since the population of the region depends largely on agriculture and climate change may alter the availability of water resources.⁴⁶

Talking specifically about climate change as a trigger for security crisis, Marie Tremolieres (2010) said “the security implications of climate change were defined as all factors affecting global stability, of the Sahel region and its states. The concept of stability is understood to mean more than just the absence of violent conflicts and includes a wide range of risks and vulnerabilities directly or indirectly related to security.”⁴⁷

The many different dynamics involved in climate change and security and the nature of their relationship – causal, reciprocal, related, etc. – complicate projections and scenarios. In addition, the threat to security from climate change depends strongly on the specificities of each country and other contextual factors. The particular relationships among those variables create as many potential crisis catalysts as there are different climate and socioeconomic environments.⁴⁸

The environment also had a role in precipitating the border conflict between Burkina Faso and Mali (1985 – 1986 Christmas War). The cumulative effect of the drought cycles of the 1970s and early 1980 and the major drought of 1984 intensified pressure in the grazing areas near the border. However, the resource claims seem fitting into a more traditional schema of military conflicts, and thus military security, than environmental security concerns. Indeed, a territorial claim was the core focus of negotiations. The same is true of the border dispute between Cameroon and Nigeria. The tension arose due to the receding of Lake Chad caused by environmental factors and a poorly defined border, a matter eventually resolved by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This incident did not degenerate into a conflict.⁴⁹

Riven by territorial and political disagreements, the issue of a south with superior oil and agricultural resources became a major factor in the South Sudan conflict (second war, 1983 to 2005). Gradual aridification was coupled with the 1984 drought and El Niño between 1997 and 1998. These climate shocks seemed to aggravate both the duration and hardening of the conflict. A dual relationship emerged: first, climate, economic and political variables combined to cause the war, with the latter two playing a dominant role; and second, a worsening of economic and political variables driven by adverse climate. This conflict rooted in a power struggle to appropriate resources within a geographical entity not recognized by all parties was exacerbated by climate variables, yet remained a military or civil conflict that our analysis will not retain as resulting from climate variables.⁵⁰

Tensions between farmers and pastoralists in Burkina Faso’s Comoé province (1986 and 1995) were driven by a combination of factors including demographic pressure on fertile lands (settlement and sedentarisation of pastoralists as a result of the drought), co-existing economic modes and changes in livelihoods, soil degradation caused by human activity, land policies and weak regulatory mechanisms. Environmental variables seem to be interwoven with other variables without any real way to establish a dominant role for one or the other. The same is true of triggering events, of which two – the dry season and livestock thefts – are commonly cited. However, aside from persistent food and economic insecurity, it is hard to draw any conclusions about the nature of the relationship between the two ‘trigger’ events or to estimate the degree of causation.⁵¹

Alongside demands for autonomy, banditry and political differences, climate seems to have been a factor in heightening tensions between the Tuaregs and the Malian and Niger governments. The 1984 drought sparked a few clashes and led to the opening in 1989 of refugee camps, later accused of providing shelter for certain opposition forces. However, it is not possible to define a horizontal relationship between the different factors triggering the rebellions. Climate and environmental variables appear as secondary in the rebellion, despite the omnipresence of the former in the region’s geographical context.⁵² 

Ethiopia has repeatedly been plagued by drought since the 18th century. The worst years in the 20th century were 1968 – 1969, 1972, 1976, 1984 – 1985 – 86, 1990, 1993, 1996 and 2002. Five food crises have been recorded: the famine in Tigray (1958), Way Lasta (1966) and Wollo (1973), followed by the 1984 – 1985 and 2001 – 2003 famines that have affected the whole country.⁵³

These events highlight the role of political and economic contexts in influencing and aggravating the impact of droughts and their potential in deteriorating into broader insecurity events.⁵⁴

Sahelian societies are still predominantly rural and agricultural. The Ethiopian economy, for example, is based on agriculture, which accounts for 90% of exports and 80% of employment. It is both the country’s leading economic activity and its main source of food. Year-to-year rainfall variability impacts economic growth and the marketing of agricultural products and can cause a sudden and important loss in livelihoods of populations that depend on rain-fed crops or flood-recession crops. The Sahel’s arid and semi-arid regions are also home to large agro-pastoral communities. Herds are sensitive to periods of drought, which increase bovine epidemics, depress milk and meat production and alter herd migration patterns by shrinking pastureland and watering holes, which may strain good neighbour relations with nearby communities. Food crop production, predominantly rain-fed cereal production in Sahel countries, depends considerably on rainfall, together with other climate or environmental factors. Heavy reliance on agriculture and its natural dependence on climate, underscores the vulnerability of the region studied.⁵⁵

Climate change and its impact have dominated international policy agendas and public attention in recent times. The focus on the security implications of climate change has helped to bring climate change to the realm of international policymaking by placing it as a key threat to state and global stability. Recent events in the Sahel, drawing attention to its role in the development of international terrorism and illegal trafficking and its particular vulnerability, place this region of Africa at the centre of global security concerns. The project ‘Security implications of climate change in the Sahel region’ aimed to increase understanding of the linkages and impacts of climate change and security and on how climate change could contribute to insecurity in the future.⁵⁶

The climate of the Sahel has always been characterised by its extreme seasonal and decadal variability of rainfall. Rainfall variability in this region is likely to be driven by complex interactions between several processes and no process in isolation appears able to explain all the observed variability. Despite the large effort put into establishing the cause of the severe and long lasting drought period at the end of the 20th century, a full consensus on its origin has not been reached in the scientific community. These uncertainties as well as the large variability make climate projections for the Sahel particularly challenging and lead to significant disagreement between climate model projections. This is particularly true for precipitation where models disagree even on the direction of change (greening vs. drying). Given these uncertainties and awaiting more robust models, policies should focus on management of and lessen the impact of climate variability. The possible options range from improving seasonal forecasting, to investing in increasing observational capacity.⁵⁷

Our analysis of security events in the Sahel highlights the absence of a generaliseable and direct impact of climate change on security. It also found no deterministic relation between environment and security dynamics. Environmental variables are of secondary importance at best compared to political, historical and economic variables. We used a broad definition for security including ‘human security’ issues such as food crises and low-scale localised tensions, as well as more traditional concepts of security such as violent conflict and state security.  This approach appears more instructive and constructive for the following reasons: first, it covers a more relevant range of potential security implications of climate change and second, it highlights the need to focus the policy debate on developmental, environmental and economic aspects. In this context, livelihoods and food security appear to be the most prominent transmission mechanisms between climate variables and security. The transmission from climate variables to security via livelihoods and food security are based on two particular characteristics. First, the impact of climate and climate variability (in particular rainfall) on livelihoods and food security is direct and second, both are sensitive to sudden events. The great vulnerability of the Sahelian population to climate change is linked to its high dependence on agricultural activities and absence of alternative income earning activities. In the Sahel agricultural production is predominantly rainfed and therefore particularly sensitive to climate variability. Addressing these impacts require integrating the long-term features of climate change in national and regional development strategies. As concerns agricultural production opportunities to develop portfolios of climate resilient measures at different costs and time scales are ample. Based on the analyses following policy considerations have been derived:

Manage uncertainty: develop strategies that allow for better management of and lessen the impact of climate variability, options range from reducing certain forms of uncertainties (improved seasonal and long-term forecasting) to smoothing impacts (improved water management, more efficient management of food insecurity).⁵⁸

Promote open and constructive dialogue: dealing with climate change requires multilateral regulatory mechanisms. Taking into account national concerns and policy choices – including those in the Sahel – is key to developing effective multilateralism. Bilateral and multilateral dialogue between Sahelian and OECD countries as well as at promoting dialogue at the level of regional African institutions should figure among priorities. International partners should support efforts towards the formulation of regional agendas and climate change policy responses, a cornerstone for enhanced coordination and effectiveness of activities. Propose a dialogue process on integrating environmental variables into the monitoring and analysis of early warning mechanisms.⁵⁹

Integrate climate change in development strategies: climate change impacts are a development concern and investment in development is the best instrument for promoting peace and security. Development strategies dealing sustainably with vulnerability to climate change should be based on an analysis of interactions between all vectors of change: climate change, population dynamics, migration, trade and economic development.⁶⁰

The evolution of the regional crisis reached a critical point where the superpowers were forced to intervene. The US is the leading country in this intervention process. And it started with security package known as Pan Sahel Initiative. According to a US Department of State (Office of Counterterrorism) press release dated November 7, 2002, the Pan Sahel Initiative “is a program designed to protect borders, track movement of people, combat terrorism, and enhance regional cooperation and stability.”⁶¹

In October, AF DAS Robert Perry and S/CT Deputy Coordinator Stephanie Kinney, along with other State representatives, visited Chad, Niger, Mauritania and Mali, briefing host nations on the Pan Sahel Initiative (PSI). PSI is a program designed to protect borders, track movement of people, combat terrorism, and enhance regional cooperation and stability.⁶²

PSI is a State-led effort to assist Mali, Niger, Chad, and Mauritania in detecting and responding to suspicious movement of people and goods across and within their borders through training, equipment and cooperation. Its goals support two U.S. national security interests in Africa: waging the war on terrorism and enhancing regional peace and security.⁶³

Technical assessments taking place in each country starting this month will help focus training and other capacity building resources over the coming months. PSI will assist participating countries to counter known terrorist operations and border incursions, as well as trafficking of people, illicit materials, and other goods.⁶⁴ Accompanying the training and material support will be a program to bring military and civilian officials from the four countries together to encourage greater cooperation and information exchange within and among the governments of the region on counterterrorism and border security issues.⁶⁵

The Pan Sahel Initiative “was in 2005 superseded by the larger-scope Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative, which in turn was incorporated into the United States Africa Command in 2008.”⁶⁶

PSI drew criticism for its lack of attention of underlying regional economic problems and local political struggles, the conduct of partner governments against those suspected of being “terrorists”, and for indirectly radicalizing certain groups living in or near the Sahara. According to State Department officials, the Pan-Sahel region of Africa has become important in the global security arena. Vast expanses of unpopulated areas, instability, porous borders and corruption make Africa an inviting playground for terrorists.”⁶⁷

Voice of America’s Alex Belida  reported on November 14, 2003, that the “multimillion dollar security training and equipment program” was “at last under way” in Mali, “a year after it was announced.” The program was to continue in the other three countries “over the next several months.” Belida said that “Army Colonel John Schnibben, operations director at, U.S. European Command responsible for most of sub-Saharan Africa, says the effort could have a big pay-off for the United States and its Sahel partners.” Belida reported that in October 2002, “AF DAS Robert Perry and S/CT Deputy Coordinator Stephanie Kinney, along with other State representatives, visited Chad, Niger, Mauritania and Mali, briefing host nations on the Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI) … a program designed to protect borders, track movement of people, combat terrorism, and enhance regional cooperation and stability.”⁶⁸

In the May 11, 2004 [edition of] New York Times, Craig Smith said that the “U.S. [is] Training African Forces to Uproot Terrorists.” Smith says that the Pan-Sahel Initiative “was begun with $7 million and focused on Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad. It is being expanded to include Senegal and possibly other countries. The U.S. European Command has asked for $125 million for the region over five years.”The Pan-Sahel Initiative is the newest front in the “American campaign against terrorism … in a region that military officials fear could become the next base for Al Qaeda — the largely ungoverned swath of territory stretching from the Horn of Africa to the Western Sahara’s Atlantic coast,” he writes. “Generals here … say the vast, arid region is a new Afghanistan, with well-financed bands of Islamic militants recruiting, training and arming themselves. Terrorist attacks like the one on March 11 [2004] in Madrid that killed 191 people seem to have a North African link, investigators say, and may presage others in Europe.” “Having learned from missteps in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he says, “the American officers are pursuing this battle with a new approach. Instead of planning on a heavy American military presence, they are dispatching Special Operations forces to countries like Mali and Mauritania in West Africa to train soldiers and outfit them with pickup trucks, radios and global-positioning equipment.”⁶⁹

Drew Brown, in his May 12, 2004, Knight Ridder’s article adds that “Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, the commander of U.S. European Command, which covers most of Africa … said that shortly after he took command of NATO in January 2002, a six-month analysis of U.S. force structure within European Command concluded that the United States likely would face a number of security challenges in Africa over the next 10 to 15 years and that a more robust engagement was needed. “Late last year, soldiers from the 10th Special Forces Group began training military forces in Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Niger under the Pan-Sahel Initiative, a $7 million State Department program designed to help the security forces of those impoverished nations defend against terrorists. That effort follows the establishment of Task Force Horn of Africa, where more than 1,200 Marines and special-operations soldiers are heading up anti-terror training and operations in eastern Africa from a base in Djibouti. No U.S. forces have been committed to combat in Africa, Jones said. Involvement has consisted primarily of training and advisory teams.”⁷⁰

In a hearing entitled “Examining U.S. Counterterrorism Priorities and Strategy Across Africa’s Sahel Region.” before the US Senate in 2009, Senator Russell D. Feingold, the Chairman of the SubCommittee said: “Let me first clarify what constitutes the Sahel region. This region covers those territories on the southern border and directly to the south of the Sahara Desert. For our discussion today, it includes parts or all of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal. The Sahel is a region on the front lines of climate change, facing the challenges of soil erosion, deforestation, and desertification. It also is a vast land-area home to nomadic communities, many of them minority ethnic groups, which have long been in conflict with some of the centralized state authorities in those regions.⁷¹

Over the years, this region’s long porous borders and ungoverned spaces have been exploited by criminal groups, particularly for the trafficking of drugs, weapons, illicit goods, and people. And over the last decade, there’s been increasing concern about the potential for violent extremist groups to do so, as well.⁷² Counterterrorism officials have particularly focused on an al-Qaeda affiliate, a group known as “al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb.” AQIM, as it’s known, emerged in Algeria and has primarily operated in North Africa, but it has extended its region to parts of the Sahel, and could expand farther. Some U.S. intelligence officials have expressed concern at AQIM’s increasing capabilities and more sophisticated attacks.⁷³

The administration is right to focus attention on the Pakistan/Afghanistan region, but we cannot lose sight of other places where al-Qaeda is seeking to gain ground. As we have seen in Somalia and Yemen, weak states, chronic instability, ungoverned spaces, and unresolved local tensions can create almost ideal safe havens in which terrorists can recruit and operate. Several parts of the Sahel region include that same mix of ingredients, and the danger they pose, not just to regional security, but to our own national security, is real.⁷⁴ At the same time, crafting an effective counterterrorism strategy toward the Sahel requires an appreciation of the unique local conditions that al-Qaeda seeks to exploit and the factors that could motivate individuals to join their struggle.⁷⁵

We need to understand ongoing changes in conflicts–political, economic, and social – that are shaping this region. Without an appreciation of these local dynamics, injecting new U.S. resources into the region could actually end up complicating or even exacerbating the threat, rather than mitigating it. We need to seriously consider how short-term activities relate to our long-term goals of promoting good governance and the rule of law.⁷⁶

In 2005, the Bush administration launched the Tran-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership to enhance the capabilities of governments across the Sahel, as well as in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, for counterterrorism and to help confront the spread of extremist ideology. Nearly $500 million has been allocated for this program since fiscal year 2005, yet nearly 5 years later it remains unclear to what extent these efforts have been successful.⁷⁷

Ambassador Johnnie Carson, Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, Department of State was of the view that “Terrorism in the Sahel has become an issue of increasing concern. Over the past 5 years, AQIM and its predecessor organization, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, GSPC, have stepped up their activities across the Sahel. In the past 6 months alone, AQIM has been implicated in the killing of an American nongovernmental organization – NGO – worker in Nouakchott, Mauritania; the execution of a British hostage in Mali; the assassination of a senior Malian military officer; and an attempted suicide bombing against the French Embassy in Nouakchott.⁷⁸ The countries in the region have recognized the problem and have intensified their efforts against AQIM. Algeria recently hosted regional chiefs of defense to promote improved cooperation, and we understand that Mali will organize a heads-of-state meeting in Bamako to address the situation soon.⁷⁹

However, all the countries in the Sahel face daunting challenges. They are among the poorest countries in the world and lack the resources to develop effective antiterrorism programs on their own. They are also vast countries, stretching over thousands of miles, where government services and authority are weak or nonexistent. They are preoccupied with critical humanitarian and development issues, and, in some cases, terrorism is not their most pressing challenge.⁸⁰ The United States is committed to helping these countries address the counterterrorism problems that these states face in the Sahel. However, we believe that this is best done in a supporting role rather than a leading role. We want to avoid undertaking actions that could make the situation worse. We must consult with the governments of the region to assess their needs. We must encourage regional collaboration and cooperation across borders. We must consult with our European partners and urge them to be helpful. We have emphasized to those partners that, while the United States will do its part, the burden must be shared by us all. We have also stressed that we must make sure that the assistance we in the United States provide does not aggravate longstanding historical and cultural problems that exist in some of the states in the region.⁸¹

Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, and others in the region can manage and contain this issue if they work together and receive appropriate encouragement and support from countries like the United States. We should not seek to take this issue over. It is not ours and doing so might have negative consequences for U.S. interests over the long term.⁸² We must also recognize that the governments in the region have explicitly stated that the Sahel’s security is the responsibility of the countries in the region. They have not asked the United States to take on a leadership role in the counterterrorism efforts. In fact, they have clearly signaled that a more visible or militarily proactive posture by the United States might, in some instances, be counterproductive.⁸³

The focal point of our effort has been the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership. Created in 2005, TSCTP allocates between $120 and $150 million per year for programs in 10 countries. TSCTP originally included Algeria, Chad, Mali, Morocco, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia. Burkina Faso was added in 2009.⁸⁴ The TSCTP program reflects our recognition that sporadic engagements without adequate followup or sustainment would fail to achieve the meaningful, long-lasting results that we seek in the region. The emphasis, therefore, has been placed on addressing key capacity shortfalls that could be addressed over a period of years in these countries. The program draws resources and expertise from multiple agencies in the U.S. Government, including the State Department, the Department of Defense, and USAID.⁸⁵

TSCTP does not provide a one-size-fits-all assistance package. As the current threat levels prevail in the region, we look at the states on a case-by-case basis and adjust the program to meet the needs of the countries.⁸⁶ We will continue to work with the countries in the region to identify capacity, weaknesses, and to ensure that TSCTP programs are adequately funded.⁸⁷

Honourable Daniel Benjami, Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Department of State also stated at the hearing that “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb continues to menace parts of the Maghreb and the Sahel. In the north, it is frustrated by Algeria’s effective counterterrorism operations, but in parts of the Sahel, it continues to operate with considerable impunity.”⁸⁸ We are working bilaterally, regionally, and multilaterally to develop the capacity of countries in the region to control their sovereign territory, disrupt terrorist conspiracies, and counter those who advocate violence. A well-thought-out, long-term approach provides the best opportunity to ensure our security and that of our friends and allies against the terrorist threats from this region.⁸⁹

AQIM has failed to meet its key objectives and, under pressure from Algerian security forces, is on the defensive in Algeria. AQIM is financially strapped; indeed, it appears that the Algerians have AQIM in the northeastern part of the country increasingly contained and marginalized. The group has largely worn out its welcome in the Kabylie region, where residents have become increasingly resentful of its presence.⁹⁰ One of the central questions about AQIM has long been whether it would be able to establish itself in Europe and carry out attacks there. Some of our closest counterterrorism partners in Europe have identified this possibility of infiltration as one of their foremost concerns. That said, we currently view the near-term possibility of such an expansion of operations as less likely than it was just a few years ago.⁹¹

In the Sahel, however, the picture is different. AQIM maintains two separate groups of fighters in northern Mali and has recently increased attacks and kidnappings, including against Western targets.⁹² The group relies, to a considerable extent, on hostage-taking for ransom while carrying out murders and low-level attacks to garner media attention. In the last 2 years, AQIM in the Sahel has stepped up the pace. It has kidnapped two Austrian tourists along the Tunisian/Algerian border in early 2008; two Canadian diplomats in Niger in December 2008; four European tourists near the Mali/Niger border in January of this year.⁹³ One of the Europeans, a British hostage, was subsequently murdered by AQIM, as you all know.⁹⁴ AQIM has also increased other kinds of attacks in the Sahel. This year the group killed a Malian official in northern Mali; an American NGO worker in nearby Mauritania; and attempted a suicide bombing outside the French Embassy in Mauritania.⁹⁵

Despite the uptick in violence, hostage-taking, and the murder of individual Western citizens, we believe that these operations reveal some AQIM weaknesses. AQIM has failed to conduct attacks or operations in Morocco, Tunisia, or Libya. The Muslim population in the Sahel and the Maghreb, as a whole, still reject AQIM’s extremism. There are exceptions, however, and the increase in AQIM recruitment in Mauritania is troubling.⁹⁶ That said, if we play our cards right, we can further contain and marginalize AQIM’s threat to U.S. interests, and we can make investments that will be productive and reasonable.⁹⁷ We’re striving to build countries’ capacity through long-term programs such as the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership. We’re also working closely with other key international partners to ensure that our collective efforts in the region are well targeted, well coordinated, and effective.⁹⁸

Our quiet, but solid support for their counterterrorism–that is, those in the region–has emboldened our partners to stand up to extremism. We have been, if you will, leading from the side. These partners have shown the will to take on terrorists in the past, and we expect that that will continue.⁹⁹ Our support to military and law enforcement capacity-building has led to stronger controlled borders and remote spaces, and that continues to improve. Our programs for countering violent extremism–such as radio programming, messaging from moderate leaders, and prison reform–have bolstered the region’s traditionally moderate inclinations.¹⁰⁰ We believe that our relatively modest efforts in the region are paying off and are worthy of continuation. A steady, long-term commitment to building effective security in the region will benefit the United States by enabling others to take the lead in stopping terrorists in their own countries before those threats reach our borders.¹⁰¹ These countries have made it clear that they do not want the United States to take a more direct or visible operational role, but welcome assistance from the United States and other third countries.¹⁰²

We are particularly pleased that our regional partners are working together to weaken AQIM, motivated in part by the group’s recent atrocities. In August, Algeria hosted a conference for high-level defense ministry representatives from Mali, Niger, Mauritania, and Algeria to coordinate AQIM efforts, and we expect Mali to follow that up with a regional heads-of-state summit before the end of the year.¹⁰³ We’re also working with our European partners, with whom we met in Paris last month, on this issue, specifically to coordinate assistance to our partners in the Sahel and the Maghreb. Additionally, we have met with Canadian officials to discuss cooperation in the wake of the hostage-taking of one of their diplomats.¹⁰⁴ I should add that capacity-building is not the only contribution the Western partners can make to defeating terrorism in the region. It is also imperative that we do what we can to remove incentives for kidnapping. This administration plans to make a broader acceptance of the no-concessions approach an important initiative.¹⁰⁵

In closing, let me reiterate. We welcome the readiness of our partners in the region to take the lead in confronting AQIM, and we are pleased about the cooperation among our Western allies as we take effective steps to help build security in the Sahel. This cooperation, I strongly believe, will help fulfill the vision of working in partnership with other nations in troubled areas that has been a hallmark of President Obama’s foreign policy. I believe, also, that as we continue to provide support using the TSCTP as our primary tool, we will achieve our goal of reducing the danger AQIM possess to the region and to American interests.¹⁰⁶

In the view of Mr. Earl Gast, Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for Africa, U.S. Agency for International Development    “Terrorism is a challenge that has plagued U.S. Government work around the world. In Africa, our efforts to improve governance and create opportunity are increasingly threatened by the emerging forces of violent extremism.¹⁰⁷ To counter the forces that would derail our progress toward development in this fragile region, USAID is working in concert with the Departments of Defense and State in the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership to define how development assistance can most effectively be used to contribute to long-term peace and stability.¹⁰⁸ Because of the dearth of information about the drivers of extremism in Africa that existed in 2005 when the program started, USAID commissioned two studies: one to aggregate and supplement what was known, and one to apply those findings to programs that would address those drivers.¹⁰⁹

The studies highlighted the complex nature of extremism and showed that an overarching root cause, such as poverty, is often just one of many factors that contribute to radicalization; rather, a number of factors often work together. For instance, corruption undermines state capacity and facilitates the emergence of ungoverned or poorly governed spaces, which, in turn, may provide opportunities for extremist groups and local conflicts to flourish.¹¹⁰ These findings are critical to our decision-making and inform what interventions will be the most effective toward preventing drivers of extremism from spiraling out of control.¹¹¹ Youth empowerment, education, media, and good governance are the four areas where we see the greatest opportunity for local partnerships and progress. Unlike traditional development programs, our counter-extremism efforts often target narrow populations, and we specifically reach out to young men, the group most likely to be recruited by extremist groups.¹¹²

While it can be different to measure success in countering extremism, we have seen some progress in our efforts. As a result of our outreach in Chad, the Association of Nomads and Herders has created a youth branch of its organization. Youth participation in organizations like this one helps to build stronger ties with the community and provides youth with a voice in society. This type of empowerment can greatly reduce the feelings of marginalization that feeds into recruitment into extremist groups.¹¹³ In the uranium mining areas of northern Niger, communities have formed listening clubs to discuss USAID-funded radio programs on good governance. One club even reports that they are pooling funds together to purchase a phone card so that they can call the radio station with feedback.¹¹⁴ But, despite the promise of these community-based efforts, national governance has seen a setback in Niger. The recent referendum and sham elections have done more to empower the current antidemocratic regime than to provide a voice for the people, and we are concerned about the path that regime is taking.¹¹⁵

For our programs to be successful, we must invest in strong local partnerships, and our methods of engagement must be nimble and creative. Because trends in extremism are fluid, we must constantly reassess our priorities, our progress, and our policies to ensure that our work is based on the realities of today.¹¹⁶ Towards this end, we are pleased with our strong and productive partnership in the interagency. Sustained engagement within U.S. Government, with other donor governments, and with our partners in the Trans-Sahara region will be the key to combating extremism today and securing peace and stability for years to come.¹¹⁷

Following several security measures initiated by the United States (Pan-Sahel Initiative launched in 2002 to address security and terrorist issues in the Sahel and help countries (Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad) to ensure their own stability which later expanded and become the Trans-Saharan Counter Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) in 2004 and then to Trans-Saharan Counter Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) in 2005), France also enter into the fight in 2008 with the launch of its “Plan Sahel” in Mali, Niger and Mauritania, to fight terrorism and bring its assistance to the table for local development programs. With the allocation of 58 million Euros, the program extended to others countries in Sahel, which gave birth to the G5 Sahel (Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Chad). The program was accompanied with Special Forces (Operation Sabre; Barkhane), which were assisted by permanent military bases in Dakar (Senegal), Libreville (Gabon) and lately in Gao (Mali). Our point of interest here is, despite all these programs, which were set in the first place in order to assist the locals find the solution to their security issues by themselves, we are still living in a situation whereby the local troops are still serving as an assistance to the foreign military bases in the fight against the terrorism and rebuilding the security system in Sahel: that is case Barkhane special forces and the G5 Sahel local troops. G5 Sahel could be more than just an assistant in building and maintaining the security in Sahel if only there has been an adequate policy that is governing the whole different security measures initiated by international community, particularly by France.¹¹⁸

It is not too exaggerating to qualify Sahel as one of the region with the weakest security in the continent after observing in the last decades the rate and the list of unadmittable events it has been subjected to: conflicts, terrorism, trafficking (human, drugs, illegal weapons) fueled by the lack of adequate security system and assisted by the weak border controls across the states in the region. Analysis of the social and spatial dynamics of conflicts reveals that the uniqueness of the current period is that it combines three types of organized violence in a globalized setting: armed struggles for political power, criminal activities for personal gain and human rights violation to create homogenous ethnic and religious areas.¹¹⁹

In the last decades, Sahel had experienced this combination of violence with different conflicts in the Great Lakes Region, in the northern Mali and Darfur. Our point of focus here is not to enter into the details of every conflict that occurred in Sahel, but to relate how these different conflicts have negatively impacted the security of the region. Setting aside the different coups d’état that; Mali, Niger, Chad and Libya have hosted in the region, the sovereignty and the security of the states have been challenged by inter-states rivalries and military juntas, as well as, by high numbers of non-state actors with self-government, pro-independence or religious claims. These conflicts affected the internal political balance of Sahel states differently. Except in Niger, where we observe the decrease in tensions when the central government decided to integrate the former rebels into the national army and decentralized local authorities.¹²⁰

The Mali case was totally the opposite. We observe the withdrawal of state institutions, the proliferation of transSaharan trafficking and the arrival of the extremist groups as of the middle of the 2000s when President Amadou Toumani Touré (2002-12) initiated the policy to govern the north through allied Touareg tribes. It is also important to highlight that the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in 2011 in the Libyan Civil War play a valuable role in the downfall of the security in Sahel as many Touareg mercenaries in the Libyan army returning to Mali, eagerly took part in the new uprising and created a route for increased trafficking of small arms from Libyan stockpiles. Another crucial variable we should also consider in assessing the security issue in Sahel is the rise of the terrorism in the region. Without forgetting that the history of terrorism start in Africa back in 1990s when the al-Qaeda established a base in Sudan, where a military-Islamist regime had taken power in 1989, its widespread and rise of affiliations to the group was favored by instability created by different conflicts across the continent and porous borders within the states. The internal fighting assisted by corruption and weak border control facilitate the ability of Mujahidin to move, plan, and organize. These conditions provide a golden opportunity for al-Qaeda fighters to move easily between various African countries without any surveillance and to obtain huge amount of weapons and military equipment easily, and in most cases, more cheaply than other regions. Sahel with its history of different conflicts and abandoned desert with almost no attention from the implicated central governments, has become a host for terrorist organizations, thence, become a challenge to peace and security in the region. Of course, a place where security is down, there is no doubt that trafficking will certainly reach its pick, and that is the situation we experienced and we are currently living in Sahel region. The numbers are high in the terms of illegal weapons, drugs and human trafficking.¹²¹

It is clear the West Africa’s geographical location between Latin America and Europe made it an ideal transit zone for exploitation by powerful drug cartels and terrorist organizations much as the Caribbean and Central America had long suffered for being placed between South America’s cocaine producers and North America’s cocaine users. West Africa’s primary operational allure to traffickers is not actually geography, however, but rather its low standards of security and governance, low levels of law enforcement capacity, and high rates of corruption. Latin American traffickers recently relocated a share of their wholesale distribution from the Western Hemisphere to West Africa, with the sub region moving from being merely a short-term transit point to becoming a storage and staging area for wholesale repacking, re-routing and sometimes re-sale of drugs.¹²²

There is also increasingly strong evidence linking terrorist organizations state sponsors of terrorism to the West Africa drug trade, including Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Hezbollah (allied with elements in the Lebanese diaspora), Venezuela, and Iran. The link to AQIM takes on particular significance in the light of this terrorist organization’s recent takeover of a vast sector of ungoverned space in Northern Mali, along with Touareg allies. The human trafficking has received a grate attention lately after the discovery of the modern slavery of black Africans who are trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe in Libya. The operating center for this activity (human trafficking) is based in West Africa region especially in Agadez according to many reports and findings. Today, Agadez has become a major trading post for arms, drugs and, above all, humans. After the fall of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, long-locked smuggling routes between Niger and Libya suddenly reopened, and the small desert town of roughly 120,000 inhabitants became the de facto smuggling capital of the sub-Saharan region.¹²³

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 170,000 migrants have passed through the town the year 2016. More than 6,000 newcomers arrive every week, staying several days before moving on. And as the flow of migrants picked up, many turned to smuggling. Improving national security is, of course, crucial, said a European diplomat in Niamey. Tightening border security and fighting human smuggling in Niger would also reduce the number of boats arriving on the shores of “Fortress Europe” – a continent increasingly divided by the issue of migration.¹²⁴

Incontrovertibly, the Sahel has been the epicentre of layered and interconnected security challenges that need to be understood in their complexity. The Sahel epitomizes a confluence of local, national and international security challenges and their individual and collective dynamics that continue to shape the security trajectories of the region. Some of the known security challenges in the Sahel include organized crime, drug smuggling, and terrorism, and underlying structural conditions such as climate change and economic vulnerabilities, and governance failure in responding to the needs of citizens.¹²⁵

In recent years, the Sahel has become a major migration route to Europe (crossing the Mediterranean Sea through Libya and Morocco) for migrants from other Sahelian states, especially from Sub-Saharan African countries such as Nigeria, Gambia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, etc. Since the fall of the Gaddafi government in 2011, Libya’s lack of effective central authority has made it attractive for a number of organized criminal networks involved in human trafficking which has also been accompanied with an increase in the number of missing persons. In 2016, according to the Missing Migrants project, the number of deaths and missing persons from the multitude seeking to cross into Europe through North Africa, especially Libya, topped 5,098. This represents about 35% increase over 2015 levels, and 40% over 2014 fatalities.¹²⁶

Second and related to the above, the dynamics of security threats in the Sahel has also been largely shaped by the geography of the region. The region has a large expanse of sparsely populated areas that render border control extremely difficult. Mali for instance, has a land mass of 1,240,192 square kilometres and is bordered by seven countries, including with Algeria (1,359 km), Burkina Faso (1,325 km), Cote d’Ivoire (599 km), Guinea (1,062 km), Mauritania (2,236 km), Niger (838 km) and Senegal (489 km). The huge landmass and borders makes it is difficult for the Malian state to monitor and control events in its border regions, especially in the North (Mauritania, Algeria and Niger). While the dessert makes population control challenging, its mountain chains, caves and valleys that crossed to Niger and Algeria render the fight against any armed group surmounting.¹²⁷

Third, an inseparable part in the discussion of the evolution of security threats in the Sahel is, the contested governance realm of Sahelian countries. The governance practice of these countries remain problematic, specifically the failure to provide social services for citizens, poor economy, failure to maintain law and order, etc. Others include the lack of effective diversity management, including the failure to develop a perception of equal treatment among the various groups of within the state. Each of the states of the Sahel has been affected by a host of governance problematics in terms of accommodating discontented ethno-linguistic groups. Mali in particular has been at the epicentre of these challenges. Throughout its post-independence history, the country has been confronted with the Tuareg ethno-nationalist demand for greater autonomy and greater economic and political engagement leading to at least four episodes of armed rebellion, for example, in 1963-1964, 1990-1996, 2006-2009, and 2012-2013.¹²⁸

These episodes of rebellion have been driven by the perceived and actual marginalization of Northern Mali and the Tuareg community, the recurring drought that endangered the livelihood of many of the community in the Sahel, the repressive responses of the government, and regional dynamics related to the Tuareg connection with Libya. While a number of measures to integrate armed movements in the national security apparatus, grant greater autonomy for northern Mali, and improve the economy of Northern Mali have been initiated in each round of peace agreements, the implementation of these agreements has always been below the expectation of the Tuareg community leading to other rounds of rebellion. Hence, many of the deeper drivers of these rebellions remain more or less intact while new factors emerge as manifested in the 2012 Tuareg rebellion alongside the rise of violent extremist movements.¹²⁹

The crisis in Libya and the influx of a large number of Tuareg better armed with weapons and the operation of more disciplined and better organized Islamist movements has been added factor. The successive peace agreements have not also been helped by the internal division within the Tuareg community, especially along status and clan, and this has precluded any cohesive stance vis-a vis the Malian state. The drought of the 1970s and 1980s weakened the social fabric of Tuareg communities and forced young Tuaregs to emigrate to other countries mainly Libya. This younger generation called Ishumar, a French word translated to the unemployed, has a different vision of Tuareg communities compared with those held by older generations and traditional leaders. Similarly, the Tuareg society`s division into clan and status ushered in the factionalization of armed movements in the course of brokering a peace agreement.¹³⁰

The Sahel is obvious example of regions suffering from multiple forms of recurring violence, weak governance and instability. The threats to state stability in the region have diverse sources and take different expressions. These include secessionist armed struggles and terrorism in Mali and Niger and unstable narco-states in Guinea-Bissau and Guinea financed by the influx of money from the trafficking of South American cocaine. In addition to that chronic poverty and underdevelopment, state inability, neglect, clientelism and corruption have created unstable regimes with low internal and external legitimacy. The conflicts that exist in many Sahel states have often been exacerbated by the government, due perhaps to a lack of resources or competence to deal with a crisis or conflict, but possibly also to active government complicity with organized crime, armed Islamists or other armed groups such as militias.  The threat to state and human security, state stability and development created by separatism, armed Islamism and organized crime, all issues with transnational connections. These are not the only threats to security in the Sahel, as the region is simultaneously experiencing food shortages, chronic underdevelopment, lack of functioning infrastructure and environmental threats, to name but a few of its problems. Moreover, the Sahel region is significantly closer to both the US and Europe geographically and through transportation links and increased linkages between criminal and terrorism elements in Latin America and West Africa. As such they constitute a potentially much more troubling and dangerous springboard for international terrorist activity a fact that clearly hasn‘t escaped al- Qaeda‘s attention.¹³¹

History particularly that of the recent decolonization of the states of the region, contains the seeds of certain elements that are conducive to these states‘ destabilization. The Sahel region is home to more failing states than any other region,  The failed state is defined as ― Failed states are tense, deeply conflicted, dangerous, and contested bitterly by warring factions., . There is no failed state without disharmonies between communities. Yet, the simple fact that many weak nation-states include haves and have-nots, and that some of the newer states contain a heterogeneous array of ethnic, religious, and linguistic interests, is more a contributor to than a root cause of nation-state failure. Somalia, Chad, Niger are in the advance stages of this process and Libya recently. But even in more or less functioning states such as Mali, Mauritania, and Cameroon are hardly capable of effectively maintaining a monopoly on violence and controlling the entire territory of the country.¹³²

In another hand, the region of the Sahel, as elsewhere on the African continent, the territorial boundaries were drawn with the interests of the colonizing countries in mind, not according to the national cohesion of the peoples concerned. Since the early 1960s, these boundaries have been the basis for international recognition of sovereign states in the region. To avoid undermining the young state formations, which could lead to a cascade effect, the African Union and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) before it established the inviolability of the borders inherited from colonization as a founding doctrine. Reinforced by the validation of respect for the territorial integrity of states in Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter, the new doctrine has partially fulfilled the task it was assigned namely, avoiding or at least slowing thoughts of secession that might have resulted from an unpredictable recasting of the map of the continent. It was not, however, able to settle the question of the cohesion of diverse communities in a manner that would, in each state, make these communities into a nation.¹³³

The result is that, in several countries of the Sahel, the state continues to be perceived by certain parts of the national community as the state of the dominant ethnic group only—whether that group is in the majority or not. This perception has been nourished by political practices, such as patronage and nepotism that have succeeded in reinforcing the feeling of exclusion among certain parties. The perception leads in turn to demands that can range from the simple sharing of political power to the recognition of self-rule, and even to secession and the creation of an independent state. The absence of true national integration constitutes favorable grounds for identity-based demands that, depending on the circumstances and the evolution of the balance of power between the state and the groups contesting the state, can be minimal or extreme.¹³⁴ 

The global incidence of terrorism has increased alarmingly since September 11, 2001. The concerted efforts embarked upon by the international community to ensure its elimination have been noted but have hitherto proved inadequate. This increase is not unconnected with the balance of terror and the wave of global insecurity that shaped the beginning of the 21st century; it is the product of unresolved issues of the Cold War and the continuation of the ideological war between the west and the Islamic fundamentalism. Africa, and indeed Nigeria, have in the past decade been bedevilled by an increased incidence of insurgencies, recording a high level of destruction of both property and lives. The most recent rebellion in the Lake Chad Basin Area is the Boko Haram uprising which emanated from Nigeria in July 2009. Other examples of the terror siege on Nigeria and Africa in general were the Maitatsine uprising of the 1980s in Nigeria, the Al-Shabaab in Somalia and al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, which is a menace to peace and security in the region. Since the advent of Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region, the security situation has been in a state of confusion.¹³⁵ 

Since 2009, Boko Haram has attacked the Northeast of Nigeria, capturing territories and spreading to some parts of the Lake Chad Basin (LCB) region of Niger, Chad and Cameroon. Nigeria started an onslaught on Boko Haram at the onset of its activities in the Northeast; however, before the formation of the joint task force by the Lake Chad Basin regional authorities, the activities of the sect had spread to neighbouring countries. Apparently the terrorists targeted these countries for attacks in retribution for their participation in the regional joint task force and for daring to support Nigeria’s efforts in quelling the insurgency. The cost of combating the attacks and defeating the terrorist group has been confounding and has already taken its toll on the LCB. Fighting the scourge of terrorist war in the LCB has been monumental for an impoverished region that for years had been struggling with deforestation and other human activities due to climate change.¹³⁶

Ensuring internal security for the promotion of core values and socio-political and economic development must therefore be the primary objectives of the government. In furtherance of this objective, therefore, national security that avoids desecration of the nation’s core values and prevents violent conflicts is a desideratum for economic growth and development of any country and must be embraced. In other words, security is vital to maintaining peace for the socioeconomic and political development of a nation, and the attempt to prevent violent conflict either originating from within or outside the state must be vigorously pursued.¹³⁷

It is noteworthy that the PSI was officially announced on November 7, 2002, barely a year after the 9/11 attack on the United States by Al Qaeda in 2001. There is need for critical interrogation of the sequence of events that surround the announcement of the PSI.

Al Qaeda through its surrogate, Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) has not started operating in full throttle by this time. AQIM has its base mainly in Algeria from where it was operating. Its influence in the major Sahelian countries such as Mali, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania or Senegal was very minimal at this point in time. Algeria was not covered, strictly speaking, by the PSI in its area of responsibility, theatre of operation or influence. Neither was Libya included where trouble was to later come from after its destruction in 2011. By November 2002, Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader, had since left Sudan for Afghanistan from where it plotted the 9/11 attack on the United States. US has not invaded Iraq by that time (November 2002). This took place in March 2003. The invasion and destruction of the Libyan State (Libyan Arab Islamic Jamahiriya) was yet to come which took place ten years later, i.e. 2011. While it was Bush Administration that went to Iraq, it was well known that it was Obama Administration that orchestrated the attack and destruction of the Libyan State to effect a regime change (overthrow Muammar Gaddaffi that has become a hook in the throat of Western powers) and to have unfettered access to its oil fields – precisely the same thing that happened to Iraq in 2003 under Bush Administration. It is also noteworthy that PSI was later transformed into Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) in 2005. Arab Spring took place five years later in 2010.

It is the general knowledge that the pursuit of Al Qaeda terrorists and its affiliates through Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) formed the basis for the the creation of Pan Sahel Initiative. But this is very much doubtful because at this point in time, AQIM was not yet strong enough to pose mortal threat to the “American vital national security interests” and it is equally not strong enough to pose mortal threat to the countries of the Sahel. Indeed, there was no declaration to this effect. For instance, Boko Haram insurgency did not start in Nigeria until July 2009. Several other rebellious or insurgency groups in the Sahel either in Mali, Chad or Burkina Faso, have not surfaced by then. There is, however, no doubt that the standstorm has started slowly building up by then. But it has not gathered enough strength to start threatening the corporate existence of the countries of the Sahel. Arab Spring did not happen until 2010-2011. The critical questions then arise: what are the specific reasons beyond what the public was fed with that formed the basis for the creation of Pan Sahel Initiative in 2002? What really was PSI meant to achieve considering the small budget initially allocated to it? Was there really any serious crisis in the Sahel at this point in time to require the security intervention of PSI typology? One may also ask whether there was any link between TSCTP and the Arab Spring: was TSCTP used to ignite the Arab Spring from behind the scene?

It is obvious that the setting up of the PSI as far back as 2002 must have been based on different set of reasons that the public is not yet aware of. There must be other reasons than what are publicly known today. Rushing ahead with PSI when the Sahelian countries did not particularly requested for it is like crying more than the bereaved on the part of the United States.

For instance, it is well known that Niger has large deposit of uranium in its northern region. The exploration and extraction of this strategic solid mineral resource was never stated as one of the reasons why the US set up the PSI. But there can be no doubt that the interests of the Western powers particularly the United States and France equally, in strong terms, lie with these vast strategic solid minerals that some of these countries have to offer to the exclusion of other rival superpowers like Russia and China.

However, it has become clear that the howling sandstorm of Islamic funamentalism and jihadism in the Sahel has become the fulcrum of Western security assistance with the promise to help the countries combat the growing fundamentalism and jihadism among other security concerns. This has only ended up doing the opposite when logic has been stretched to the limit: escalate the crisis when the various security assistance packages got into the hands of the countries.

It is unfortunate that security concerns have taken the centre stage in both countries as well as in Nigeria to the detriment of other considerations such as economic, social and human development concerns or priorities. In the case of Chad and Mali, they are some of the poorest countries in the world. Nigeria, in its own case, wears the toga of poverty capital of the world – and for many years now, has not been able to pull off this toga. In other words, Nigeria is also one of the poorest countries in the world despite her immense riches and “potentials” the latter that has become pejorative.

The inner logics are clear. Once a country falls into the deadly embrace of insecurity for myriad of reasons, it becomes often difficult to wriggle out of it. Concerns over insecurity takes and commands central attention – often to the detriment of all other considerations.This is because of the factors and forces conspiring to sustain the insecurity. Insecurity itself is a big business, sometimes more lucrative than legitimate economic activities. Superpowers, including bodies like United Nations, European Union, African Union, contrary to public perception and belief about their peace-making and peace-keeping roles, also feed into the internal security crisis and thus embroiling themselves in these crises. They are essentially not to be blamed but the individual countries that must take absolute responsibility for the security of their countries, for rule of law and good governance to prevent their countries from combusting, exploding and/or plunging into state of anarchy, conflicts, insurgencies and/or separatism.

The Fear of Geopolitical Domino Effect

Though there are major differences between the two countries (i.e. Chad and Mali), they also share similar concerns especially in the areas of rebellion/insurgencies and other security concerns. Both countries are similarly poor in terms of economic development, with poor governance metrics to boot. They have similar political problems of instability, ethnic cleavages that have led to conflicts and the taking up of arms against the State in both countries for the purpose of self-determination and establishment of independent sovereign states.

A critical re-examination or re-interrogation of the events in Chad and Mali will, therefore, inexorably yield further insights into the epochal problematique  confronting the two countries. Basically, the major insight is that there is acute structural dysfunctionality of the State corporeal existence in both countries accentuated by external and internal political and socio-economic dynamics. This also include the internal security crisis that both countries have fallen into over the decades – a security crisis that is most visible as well as serve as the raison de’tre for external intervention.

This required insight can probably be gained not just by analyzing further the dynamics of individual countries but also within the broad context of the Sahel region to which the two countries in this case study belong. As stated earlier, the Sahel region is one of the poorest region in the world, attracting all manner of problems most importantly political instability and insecurity.

According to the International Crisis Group in its Africa Report as far back as early 2005, [t]he Sahel, a vast region bordering the Sahara Desert and including the countries of Mali, Niger, Chad and Mauritania, is increasingly referred to by the U.S. military as “the new front in the war on terrorism”. There are enough indications, from a security perspective, to justify caution and greater Western involvement. However, the Sahel is not a hotbed of terrorist activity. A misconceived and heavy handed approach could tip the scale the wrong way; serious, balanced, and long-term engagement with the four countries should keep the region peaceful. An effective counter-terrorism policy there needs to address the threat in the broadest terms, with more development than military aid and greater U.S.-European collaboration.¹³⁸ 

There are disparate strands of information out of which a number of observers, including the U.S. military, have read the potential threat of violent Islamist activity in the four Sahelian countries covered by the Americans’ PanSahel Initiative (PSI). There is some danger in this, but in this region, few things are exactly what they seem at first glance. Mauritania, which calls itself an Islamic republic, harshly suppresses Islamist activities of any kind, while Mali, a star pupil of 1990s neo-liberal democratisation, runs the greatest risk of any West African country other than Nigeria of violent Islamist activity. Those who believe poverty breeds religious fanaticism will be disappointed in Niger, the world’s second poorest country, whose government has maintained its tradition of tolerant Sufi Islam by holding to an unambiguous line on separation of religion and the state.¹³⁹  

The prospects for growth in Islamist activity in the region — up to and including terrorism – are delicately balanced. Muslim populations in West Africa, as elsewhere, express increasing opposition to Western, especially U.S., policy in the Middle East, and there has been a parallel increase in fundamentalist proselytisation. However, these developments should not be overestimated. Fundamentalist Islam has been present in the Sahel for over 60 years without being linked to anti-Western violence. The Algerian Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which lost 43 militants in a battle with Chad’s army in 2004 after being chased across borders by PSItrained troops, has been seriously weakened in Algeria and Mali by the combined efforts of Algerian and Sahelian armed forces.¹⁴⁰

The U.S. military is a new factor in this delicate balance. Its operations in the four countries are orchestrated by the European Command (EUCOM) headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. In the absence of Congressional willingness to fund a serious engagement by other parts of the government, the Pentagon has become a major player by emphasising the prospect of terrorism, though military planners themselves recognise the inherent dangers in a purely military counter-terrorism program.¹⁴¹  

With the U.S. heavily committed in other parts of the world, however, Washington is unlikely to devote substantial non-military resources to the Sahel soon, even though Africa is slowly gaining recognition — not least due to West Africa’s oil – as an area of strategic interest to the West. The resultant equation is laden with risks, including turning the small number of arrested clerics and militants into martyrs, thus giving ammunition to local anti-American or anti-Western figures who claim the PSI (and the proposed, expanded Trans-Saharan Counter Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) still under consideration in the U.S. government) is part of a larger plan to render Muslim populations servile; and cutting off smuggling networks that have become the economic lifeblood of Saharan peoples whose livestock was devastated by the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s, without offering economic alternatives. To avoid creating the kinds of problems the PSI is meant to solve, it needs to be folded into a more balanced approach to the region, one also in which Europeans and Americans work more closely together.¹⁴²

The International Crisis Group recommended

To the U.S. Government:

1. Establish a healthier balance between military and civilian programs in the Sahel, including by:

(a) opening USAID offices in the capitals of Mauritania, Niger and Chad;

(b) tailoring significant development programs to nomadic populations in northern Mali, with emphasis on roads and livestock infrastructure (wells and regional slaughterhouses); and

(c) promoting tourist infrastructure in such historic places of interest as Timbuktu, and Agadez, helping to diminish smuggling by offering Tuareg populations viable economic alternatives.

2. Continue to provide training and equipment to improve customs and immigration surveillance at all airports in the region, both national and international.

3. Seek cooperative diplomatic and developmental assistance relationships with the Europeans in order to take advantage of their experience in the Sahelian region.

4. Coordinate its own military capacity-building training with NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue and France’s RECAMP program, in order to multiply effectiveness and diminish perceptions of an American-only venture. 

To Donors:

5. Treat development and counter-terrorism as interlinked issues in the Sahelian region, rewarding governments for showing courage on religious policy (as in Niger) and making up the difference if already extremely limited social services are further reduced by cuts in Islamic NGO funding.

To NATO:

6. Consider making military capacity-building more multilateral by extending the Mediterranean Dialogue beyond Mauritania to Mali, Niger, and Chad.

To the EU:

7. Share regional expertise more actively with the U.S. and coordinate both military capacitybuilding and development assistance programs with it. 

To the Government of Mali:

8. Begin negotiations with Tuareg communities where military posts were closed in order to reinstate government presence, possibly using a majority of Tuareg troops to do so. 

9. Focus development aid in the north on two sectors, — livestock and tourism — both of which need significant investments in infrastructure, beginning with roads, to become viable.¹⁴³

For instance, Chad has always been considered the linchpin of the counter-terrorist struggle war against Islamic jihadism in the Sahel region, West African region, and Central Africa, a reminiscent of global war on terrorism. Why?

According to Alexandre Marc, a Non-resident Senior Fellow – Foreign Policy, Center for Security, Strategy and Technology at Brookings Institution, “Chad has been the strongest supporter of Barkhane, the French military operation to fight jihadist groups in the Sahel. It has repeatedly sent expeditionary forces into the region and has just positioned more than 1,000 troops in the tri-border region of Liptako-Gourma, where a bloody jihadist insurgency is wreaking havoc on the population and national armies. Chad is also widely recognized as an essential pillar of the G5 Sahel — a military alliance between Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, and heavily supported by France and the U.S. — to fight the region’s powerful jihadist insurrection. The Chadian army is very familiar with the terrain, as its troops were critically involved in the 2013 French-led military operation to defend Mali from a takeover by well-organized Islamic armed groups. Chad is also one of the top troop contributors to the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, the peacekeeping operation set up in 2013 in Mali in response to the insurrection.¹⁴⁴

Chad’s military presence in the region is not limited to the Sahel. In 2015, along with troops from neighboring Niger, it played a major role in dislodging Boko Haram from Northern Nigeria. It liberated some large Nigerian cities that had been under the terrorist organization’s control for months, and struck a near-fatal blow to the organization. In doing so, it shamed the Nigerian army — one of the largest in Africa — that had been paralyzed by Boko Haram for years. Chad continues to fight Boko Haram in and around Lake Chad. Recently, it lost around 100 men in clashes with Boko Haram and one of its splinter groups, the Islamic State in the West Africa Province (ISWAP). In response, it mounted a massive offensive and destroyed the camps of these organizations, supposedly killing more than 1,000 militants. At that time, Déby complained bitterly that his army was the only one taking on militants in this region, and threatened to pause all support for the war against terrorist groups outside of his country. These threats were a recurrent strategy to remind the world of Chad’s centrality and to gain support and recognition from Western nations.¹⁴⁵

Chad also played a role in the conflict in CAR. A few years ago, it got involved with armed groups in CAR’s northeast, assembled under a loose association called Seleka that occupied part of the country. Chad played a role in ending the conflict. Following the 2013 CAR civil war, Chad participated in the U.N. peacekeeping operation, contributing 850 troops, but left after being accused of human rights abuses and of being partial to the Muslim population. The situation was further complicated by members of the Chadian army having commercial interests in CAR linked to cattle raising and trading. In CAR, the Chadian army’s role varies: Sometimes it plays a stabilizing role, and at others it clearly contributes to violence and exactions.¹⁴⁶

Déby always kept an eye on Darfur, and more broadly on Sudan — mostly for internal security reasons, but Chad also had a strong impact on its neighbor at times. His Zaghawa ethnic group (and of some of his most trusted generals) represents less than 5% of the Chadian population, but is one of the most populous groups in Darfur. Some Chadian Zaghawa people based in Darfur had long been Déby’s most vigorous armed opposition group. To manage his opponents, he made efforts to please Khartoum, while always showing that he could influence the civil war that was ravaging the west of the country through his ethnic and family connections. He did this with the Justice and Equality Movement (MJE), one of the main armed groups opposing President Omar al-Bashir. In 2005, tensions between the two countries became heated, with armed clashes at the border. Twice, armed groups coming from Sudan to overthrow Déby nearly reached the capital, N’Djamena. In response, Déby sent his troops to track the rebels and reached the suburbs of Khartoum, clearly showing that he could bring Chad’s military might to bear.¹⁴⁷

By the same logic, Déby tried to manage his relations with Libyan groups, and it is understood that he had a good relationship with General Khalifa Haftar. Today, the most active military opposition to Déby’s regime comes from southern Libya (the Fezan), where some Chadian rebels helped General Haftar and where the Goran tribe — which constitutes the majority of the rebels — are active in illicit trading activities. The group that entered Chad and ended up killing Deby last week came from southern Libya; they built up an impressive arsenal, probably through their involvement in the Libyan civil war.¹⁴⁸

One is then forced to ask: Of what benefit is it for a country to have a strong military while its citizens are living in abject poverty, dying of hunger and diseases? [On the economic plane] Chad is one of Africa’s poorest countries, a landlocked state with the nearest access to the sea the Cameroonian port of Douala, 1 700 km from the capital, N’Djamena1. It has been torn by civil war for nearly 20 years and fighting still continues between ethnic groups and between cattle herders and crop farmers. The conflict in neighbouring Sudan also threatens Chad’s security.¹⁴⁹

Good governance is vital in these circumstances, especially as the authorities must take account of the country’s many languages and the high rate of illiteracy (more than half the population). The economy is dominated by agriculture but the scale of livestock raising, the main export until the discovery of oil, is very hard to quantify because of the constant movement of herds and the porous frontiers. The informal sector is very large.¹⁵⁰

The economy took a decisive pace forward in 2004 when the first oil revenues made their appearance in the national budget after the mid-2003 start of production at the Doba oilfield. The government hopes for much from this new wealth, which has already begun to revolutionise the economy. The challenge is to use it to fight poverty effectively. A law on handling oil revenue was passed in 1999 in a bid to avoid the “Dutch syndrome” of countries which are heavily dependent on oil (falling non-oil exports, disruption of non-oil sectors, switch to a one-product economy and inflation).¹⁵¹

Nevertheless Chad did not fully benefit from this new revenue in 2004 and public finances were severely stretched by non-disbursement of scheduled budget aid. Oil production has not yet reached its peak, but already the government has challenged the Doba consortium’s sale price and is taking legal action over alleged lack of transparency over the quality discount and transport costs.¹⁵²

The primary sector accounts for 47 per cent of GDP, with oil representing 15 per cent in 2003 and rising. The oil extraction around Doba, which is 1 070 km from the nearest shipping point, required the building of an expensive pipeline to the port of Kribi and will also entail the drilling of 300 production wells and 25 others to inject water into the Doba Basin’s three fields (Komé, Bolobo and Miandoum), at a total cost of $3.7 billion, mostly provided by a consortium of foreign oil companies and the World Bank. Proven reserves are almost 1 billion barrels, which will bring the government about $2 billion over the 25-year production period ($80 million a year).¹⁵³

Oil is a godsend for the economy, but presents problems. A $2-$4 per barrel quality discount had been planned but the Doba crude turned out to be more acid than expected and its high viscosity means it has to be heated to get it through the pipeline. This has pushed the quality discount up to more than $10. When prices are high, better quality will be required, which puts oil such as that from Doha at a disadvantage because it needs extra processing.¹⁵⁴

Another problem lies in the report that the consortium is selling its production to subsidiaries which could explain its lower value. Since the French firm Elf left the consortium (officially because of a policy change at headquarters), the US firms Exxon and ChevronTexaco and the Malaysian firm Petronas have been extracting oil under a 1988 agreement with the government. Oil revenue has been reaching the public coffers in stages. Production began in 2003 with 12.3 million barrels and reached 26.6 million in the first half of 2004. It should be 62.97 million for the whole of 2004 and belatedly reach full production in 2005, at 225 000 barrels a day (about 82 million a year).¹⁵⁵

The crisis in the cotton sector, which provided a third of export revenues before the arrival of oil, began several years ago when world prices fell and management problems developed in Coton Chad, which has a sector monopoly. The growing area had already shrunk by a third between 1970 and 1988, from 300 000 to 200000hectares. After a poor harvest in 2003 due to the smaller area sown, the 2004/05 one should be better. Good weather and much higher prices to the farmer at the start of the season should push output of cottonseed from 126800 to 180000tonnes (195000 according to the agricultural statistics office), a jump of more than 40 per cent after a 19 per cent drop in 2003/04.¹⁵⁶

While widely characterized as opening the door to instability, Déby’s death in battle vividly punctuates the outcome of instability wrought under his regime. Instability in Chad has simmered for decades, disrupted by periodic explosions of violence. Corruption, political exclusion, growing disparity, and repression of dissent have long been trademarks of Déby’s rule in Chad, which not coincidentally ranks 187^th out of 189 countries on UNDP’s Human Development Index.¹⁵⁷ Unless these grievances are addressed, Chad’s instability can be expected to persist. This has regional repercussions given Chad’s strategic location connecting central and western Africa with Sudan and the Maghreb. Expanding Chadian insecurity has implications for the conflicts in the Lake Chad Basin, Libya, Sudan’s Darfur, the Central African Republic and the western Sahel.¹⁵⁸

Déby’s death has put the internal vulnerabilities of his authoritarian government glaringly on display. Lacking legitimacy and unwilling to adhere to the constitution’s succession plan, regime loyalists organized a military coup d’état dissolving the executive branch, the National Assembly, and the constitution. In effect, the military junta, led by Déby’s son, General Mahamat Idriss Déby, is vying to perpetuate Déby’s 30-year authoritarian rule.¹⁵⁹

The fundamental factors driving Chad’s instability remain unchanged. Given that military governments hold an abysmal governance track record, there should be no expectation that the military’s seizure of power will lead to improvements in Chad’s political, social, economic, or security fissures.¹⁶⁰ Faced with an armed rebellion comprised of at least four rebel groups, a lack of legitimacy, widespread discontent, and an increasingly mobilized civilian opposition, the junta will be forced to use ever greater repression to retain power. International support for the junta, absent a legitimate civilian political transition (not a faux process managed by the military junta), risks reinforcing the Déby legacy of relying on force to resolve political differences—and the instability this model generates.¹⁶¹

Déby also relied on institutional maneuvers to manipulate the political system to his advantage. In 2018, he organized a national conference, which excluded many prominent opposition figures, to rewrite the constitution. In doing so, he made a show of restoring presidential term limits—after having abolished them in a 2005 referendum. Unsurprisingly,  the limits were non-retroactive, extended the length of his term, and raised the required age of presidential candidates. These changes limited challenges from rising political actors and insured he would be legally allowed to contest elections until 2033.¹⁶²

Under Déby’s rule, Chad has consistently ranked as one of the five poorest countries in the world. The measure and persistence of the country’s underdevelopment is sobering, particularly considering that the oil sector provides about 60 percent of export revenues and up to one third of overall GDP since coming online in 2003. Roughly 6 percent of the population has access to electricity. Only 8 percent has access to basic sanitation. Just one in five adults are literate, and one in three births take place in the attendance of a health professional. Life expectancy is one of the lowest in the world at 53 years.¹⁶³

These dire conditions contribute to more than 6 million Chadians—40 percent of the entire population—needing humanitarian assistance. This includes 330,000 IDPs, mostly around the Lake Chad region, where displacement figures doubled in 2020. Across the country, 1.8 million people are expected to suffer from food insecurity in 2021, an increase by more than 50 percent from last year.¹⁶⁴

Characterizations of Chad as a lynchpin for stability in the wider region overlook the continued conflict waged by the armed opposition. FACT is only one of at least four well-armed Chadian rebel groups that have used southern Libya as a rear base during the 2010s. The leaders of these groups trace their origins to previous rebellions against the Déby regime in the 2000s. The armed forces, additionally, face serious security threats on Chadian soil from militant Islamist groups operating in the Lake Chad Basin. The military suffered its greatest loss of life in a single attack when Boko Haram militants stormed a base in Bohoma in 2020.¹⁶⁵

In short, Idriss Déby failed to produce stability in Chad. Political violence, assassinations, disappearances, economic crises, extreme poverty, coup attempts, militant Islamist insurgency, and armed rebellion litter the decades of Déby’s rule. Few examples stand out more starkly against the myth of the strongman as a stabilizing force than Chad.¹⁶⁶

Daniel Eizenga further argues that in outright support or calling for power-sharing between the civilian and the military instead of normative civilian democratic rule, the African Union has willy-nilly supported the very factors and forces that generate political crisis in these conflict-ridden countries like Chad and Mali   “The African Union has called for increased power-sharing between civilian and military leaders. However, its decision not to apply sanctions effectively allows the military to oversee the transition. The U.S. government has followed the African Union’s lead, giving its support to these recommendations. From the start, France, Chad’s former colonial power, has supported the junta in the name of stability, though not a hereditary succession plan or the violent repression of protests.¹⁶⁷

Reportedly, these decisions were taken to mitigate broader concerns about regional security. The Chadian military plays an important role in counterterrorism efforts in the Lake Chad Basin and western Sahel. Facing rebellion from insurgents based in southern Libya, Chad’s own security is far from guaranteed. Chadian stability also reverberates across its borders, influencing conflicts in the Central African Republic and Sudan’s Darfur.¹⁶⁸

Yet, neighboring countries facing security threats have successfully managed political change without the military stepping in to abolish the constitution. Niger, for instance, just achieved its first political turnover between civilian leaders, despite a coup attempt and ongoing Islamist insurgencies. And Nigeria — notwithstanding ongoing internal security challenges and debates over whether it should be called a “failed state” — has increasingly institutionalized its democratic system, holding regular elections since 1999.¹⁶⁹

It’s a different story in Mali and Sudan, though both of these transitional governments include substantial numbers of military and civilian leaders. Mali entered its transition following a military coup that some Malians celebrated after protests and civil unrest against the previous regime. Mali’s military leaders then entrenched themselves in transitional institutions to maintain their influence.¹⁷⁰

Perhaps learning from the Burkinabè case, Sudan’s military preemptively moved to secure its dominance in politics. After months of popular demonstrations, the armed forces arrested former president Omar Hassan al-Bashir in April 2019. Confronted by sustained protests for political change, the military negotiated with civilian leaders, producing a fragile civilian-military government that is set to gradually transfer power completely to civilians by 2024. Still, questions persist over the Sudanese military’s commitment to the transition, even if civilian governance is in the military’s long-term interests, as some analysts point out.¹⁷¹

The situation in Chad diverges from the Mali and Sudan cases entirely — it’s not a response to popular demands. In fact, the ongoing protests in Chad are directed against the coup, with protesters calling for a return to constitutional order. Security forces have violently suppressed efforts to organize and mobilize these demonstrations.¹⁷² It also isn’t a potential transition away from an autocratic system. Rather, Chad’s authoritarian elite appear to be ensuring regime continuity and avoiding the constitutional process for the clear and peaceful transfer of power. The military’s need to take power is a consequence of the internal stability inherent to the authoritarian regime built around Deby.¹⁷³

According to Henry Wilkins (2021) “[e]arlier this year, Chad committed 1,200 troops to the epicentre of the violence: the border zone between Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. The deployment demonstrated Chad’s willingness and ability to commit troops beyond its own borders, something the other G5 Sahel countries have struggled to do.”¹⁷⁴ [T]he Burkinabe newspaper Sidwaya reported that Chadian troops with “pick-ups, tanks and personnel carriers” had been spotted leaving the Burkinabe section of the tri-border region, apparently to return to Chad. Similar reports in the days before Deby’s death had also said Chadian military units deployed abroad were being brought back to help defend Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, from FACT. “France and the United States depended on Deby’s leadership and his military might to advance their regional security objectives,” said Judd Devermont, the director of the Africa programme for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US think-tank.¹⁷⁵ “The domestic and security tumult in Chad may draw some troops away from the missions in Mali and the Liptako-Gourma tri-border region, depriving France of its most effective partner,” he added. It will have less impact on the Lake Chad Basin where Chadian troops already have pulled troops from far-flung forward operating bases in Nigeria to reconcentrate its defences on the border.”¹⁷⁶

“It’s important for [our] security efforts to take into account the passing of the Chadian president, not just for Chad itself, but also for the other countries of the G5 Sahel and countries like the Central African Republic (CAR) and Nigeria,” said Ousseni Tamboura, communications minister of Burkina Faso. “It’s urgent we consider the security and the political future of Chad to help it overcome this difficult test,” he added.¹⁷⁷ Alex Thurston, assistant professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati, with a focus on the Sahel conflict, said the meaning of Deby’s death “depends on what happens now in Chad”. “If the next ruler replicates Deby’s model, maybe the status quo can continue in Chad and with Chadian deployments,” he said. “The status quo is, in many ways, very bad for Chadians. Deby’s power was already brittle, and if his successor loses control, fragmentation in Chad will have ramifications for Niger, CAR, Darfur and beyond,” Thurston added.¹⁷⁸

For his part, Ned Price, spokesman for the United States Department of State, told reporters that the US “would be concerned with anything that stands in the way” of a transition to civilian rule. But whatever happens within Chad in the months ahead is sure to be felt far beyond its borders. Lassane Sawadogo, executive secretary for the ruling People’s Movement for Progress (MPP) party in Burkina Faso, said Chad’s allies need to take this into account, given its significance in the fight in the Sahel, and act quickly. “The countries of the subregion must get together very quickly to assess the situation in light of the new circumstances,” he said. “It is urgent to find solutions to fill the void and manage threats and risks.”¹⁷⁹

The Malian crisis on the other hand is historical with a confluence of many factors and forces. The Tuareg rebellion in the northern part of the country has been a constant factor till date, a rebellion that has remained unresolved. David Zounmenou drew attention to this important resilient historical factor. “It is important to indicate that the resurgence of the Tuareg rebellion in the north of the country – generally seen as a fall-out from the Libyan conflict – has compromised the end of ATT’s [Amadou Toumani Touré] rule and raised tensions among military officers and political actors who criticized his apparent lukewarm stance on the insurgency. Though a former army officer, ATT has profiled himself as a civilian ruler with a peaceful approach to conflict resolution. On many occasions, he has declared his preference for political dialogue rather than war and violence. In a recent interview with Radio France Internationale, ATT argued that if he has to choose between ‘war and Mali’, he would choose Mali – his way of inviting the Tuareg to the negotiation table. The problem is that many in political circles and those who are parts of the military establishment do not share his soft approach. But while the political actors were able to publically voice their concerns over the lack of a more vigorous military deployment in the north, criticising the government for its inability to anticipate and prevent the Tuareg rebellion, military officers have to simply contend with the official position of their hierarchy.¹⁸⁰

In reality, a peaceful solution to the Touareg insurgency had become contentious, as the terms of negotiation were not clearly defined. The scenario of a power vacuum as the result of Mali’s possible inability to hold the presidential elections was looming large. In addition, the Touareg rebels, the Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), seems opposed to any political dialogue that excludes the independence of Azawad – a state they intend to create in northern Mali on the basis that citizens in the area have nothing in common with Malians living in the south.¹⁸¹

Yet the morale within the army was seriously affected by consecutive defeats recorded over the past few weeks. Soldiers complained of the lack of adequate means and resources to fight the Tuareg insurgents. They saw in the soft attitude of the government a recipe for disaster and national humiliation. But rather than attributing this to mere circumstantial decisions by the government, the option of choosing political dialogue over military confrontation is rooted in the financial and economic difficulties facing Mali, with repercussions on its security forces. These difficulties explain to a certain extent, the reduction in the national defence budget and investments in socio-economic programme to improve the general living conditions of the citizens including health, education and infrastructure development.¹⁸²

The Tuareg insurgency, as well as the numerous other security threats in the Sahel, needs a collective response from regional and extra-regional actors. In fact, this coup might lead Mali into a spiral of instability as the junta does not have control over the whole country and unanimity does not exist among all army officers and various units of the security forces.¹⁸³

According to the US’s Congressional Research Service, Mali has been mired in crisis since 2012, when state institutions nearly collapsed in the face of a northern separatist rebellion led by members of the minority ethnic Tuareg community, a military coup, an Islamist insurgent advance, and a regional drought.¹⁸⁴

The military’s ouster of Mali’s elected president in August 2020 heightened political uncertainty amid severe security, governance, and humanitarian challenges. Under pressure from economic sanctions imposed by West African leaders, the junta agreed to hand power to a nominally civilian-led transitional government, with retired military officer and former defense minister Bah N’Daw serving as President and former foreign minister Moctar Ouane as Prime Minister. Junta leader Col. Assimi Goïta was named Vice President, a new position, and military officers are serving in four key cabinet posts. The transitional administration is expected to organize elections within 18 months.¹⁸⁵

Many in Bamako welcomed the military’s actions as the culmination of weeks of protests against President Ibrahim Boubacar Kéïta, who resigned and dissolved parliament after being detained by soldiers. Mali’s new authorities may struggle to meet popular expectations, however. Much of the country’s territory is under the control of Islamist insurgents and other armed groups. A 2015 peace accord with northern separatists has not been fully implemented. Ethnic militias, some of which appear to enjoy state backing, have massacred civilians in rural northeast and central Mali, and military forces have been implicated in extrajudicial killings. While comparatively secure, Bamako has seen several big terrorist attacks, including a hotel siege in 2015 in which 19 civilians (including an American) were killed. Rebel, terrorist, communal defense, and criminal networks often overlap.¹⁸⁶

These complex threats and security dynamics have impeded development and humanitarian relief efforts in a poor and landlocked country with limited arable land. More than 287,000 Malians were internally displaced as of mid-2020, almost double the previous year, and at least 142,000 were refugees in neighboring countries as of early 2020, per U.N. figures. The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has brought new health and economic difficulties.¹⁸⁷

For the superpowers, (e.g. United States, France and even the United Nations), according to Emily Fornof and Emily Cole (2020) “Instability in Mali has already led to destabilization in the Sahel, a region in West Africa with a host of interconnected challenges increasingly exploited by terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Qaida. What comes next in Mali over the coming months could have significant implications for the country’s democracy and on the stability of the entire region.”¹⁸⁸

Referring to the August 2020 coup, the authors said “In recent years, the United States, France and the U.N. have deployed thousands of military advisers and troops to the region. But large investments in the military without matching efforts to strengthen governance meant that the ground remained fertile for the August 18 [2020]coup.¹⁸⁹ Thus “Overthrowing the democratically elected government opened up a power vacuum that violent extremist groups exploited, and the Malian armed forces—with support from the U.N., the European Union, and the United States—have struggled to bring under control ever since.”¹⁹⁰

The history of protests and/or civil disobedience was recalled. “In 1991, Malians successfully used nonviolent action to end 23 years of one-party rule. The situation in 1991 had similarities to today: the country was in the midst of a Tuareg rebellion in the north, as the economy was contracting due to a wave of IMF austerity programs that hit the middle and lower classes especially hard. What started as a small group of female merchants protesting a specific piece of legislation swelled within three months to include more than 100,000 people throughout the country.¹⁹¹

Small causes, big effects. The protest soon snowballed into major crisis of political legitimacy. The military conveniently stepped in. “By the end of March 1991, the opposition had organized a nationwide strike, and soldiers refused to fire into crowds and instead joined the demonstrators. As the military defected, then-Lieutenant Colonel Amadou Toumani Touré led a paratrooper unit to arrest the president. Touré then suspended the constitution and called for multi-party elections within two months. The formation of a new government opened a new avenue for peace talks, and the conflict in the north largely died down by 1992 as a result of negotiatons between the transitional government and Tuareg separatists.”¹⁹²

Efforts within the region to mediate the current crisis have failed. ECOWAS, the West African regional economic community, tried twice to intervene between protesters and the government, but this crisis has exposed the challenge of fostering democratic norms beyond elections. ECOWAS’ leadership is struggling to match the scope and scale of the security challenges in the Sahel. In response to the coup, ECOWAS leaders suspended Mali and announced they want to restore IBK [President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita] to office. In its peace and security function, ECOWAS has been largely absent in Mali, leaving France, the EU, and the U.S. to fill the vacuum. The G5 Sahel—an ad-hoc regional coalition, comprised of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Chad, to combat violent extremism—has had difficulty raising money and establishing the necessary structures and capacity to fulfill its mission to address violent extremism in the region.¹⁹³

France, the EU, and the U.S. have provided security assistance to Mali over the past eight years but have not yet developed a diplomatic engagement strategy to navigate this political crisis. While European and American security assistance has focused on helping Malian security forces manage the extremist threat—France currently has 4,500 troops in the Sahel—they have not met the critical and necessary security governance needs, contributing to the current crisis and undermining their legitimacy as mediators.¹⁹⁴

Since 2012, both the government and international partners, especially France and the EU, have invested in the security services to improve their effectiveness against the extremist insurgency. But these investments have been insufficient in strengthening Malian democratic institutions and the rule of law. Weak democratic institutions and corruption have further eroded Malians’ faith in their government as it struggles to provide basic services.¹⁹⁵

Mali’s current crisis shows the importance of investing in rule of law and governance in times of peace, and during conflict. Resilient democracies require good governance that cannot be manufactured overnight but must be enshrined in both policy and political norms. It is too difficult to try to construct a social contract when a government is in crisis.¹⁹⁶

France is particularly notorious with its military presence in Africa without resolving, in any manner whatsoever, the crisis confronting either the continent as a whole or in those individual countries where it has vested interests – but precisely using the crisis to dig itself into the internal affairs of the unfortunate countries.

According to Anna Sundberg (2019): “Today, France has a military presence in francophone areas of eastern, central, and western Africa. All branches of defence, as well as its special forces, are represented, a commitment of 8,700 troops, half of which are permanently stationed. The pre-existing defence agreements (which were all reworded in 2008 by then president Nicolas Sarkozy) remain as the formal underpinnings of this presence. In all, France has bilateral military agreements, mostly covering military cooperation in training and peacekeeping, with some 40 states in Africa. Its agreement with Djibouti is the last wherein France reaffirms its commitment to the territorial integrity of a former colony.”¹⁹⁷

France has pre-positioned forces in Djibouti and in four other countries in Africa. Its base in Djibouti, with a permanent force of 1,450 troops, is its largest overseas military base and the biggest permanent foreign establishment in Africa. It is also one of France’s two forward operating bases (BOA, Bases Opérationnelles Avancées); the other is in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Both have rotational and permanent personnel, a logistics hub, an armoured vehicle park, and fighting units that not only reinforce ongoing operations in the region but may also be used for operational surges.¹⁹⁸

In Dakar, Senegal, and Libreville, Gabon, France has regional cooperation bases (POC, Pôle Opérationnel de Coopération) that provide special support to their host countries and neighbours. The bases are home to only a few fighting units – to provide protection, but not logistics support – while most of the troops are permanently stationed and deployed for training and exercises.¹⁹⁹

France also has a territorial defence base on the island of Réunion and a naval base on Mayotte, both French overseas territories in the Indian Ocean. Their missions are operational, to represent and protect the French Republic, and focused on maritime security and illegal migration. Together the armed forces in the Southern Indian Ocean zone comprise 1700 personnel.²⁰⁰

Emmanuel Macron, president of France since 2017, inherited two external operations in Africa and on several occasions has expressed the ambition, like Hollande, to continue them.²⁰¹

The first, Mission Corymbe, was originally aimed at preserving French oil exploitation and other economic interests in the Gulf of Guinea, but nowadays is intended to reduce maritime insecurity and contribute to capacity-building in fighting piracy and illicit trafficking, for example by hosting naval exercises for navies in the region. It is often referred to as a permanent maritime operation, since it has been underway since the 1990s. The mission evolves over time, as the need arises, from a single patrol vessel carrying 50 troops to bigger amphibious assault ships with up to several hundred soldiers.²⁰²

The second is Operation Barkhane, a counterterrorist operation in the Sahel region. It was launched by Hollande in 2014, with a contingent of 4,000 French troops positioned in cooperation with the five countries concerned, all former French colonies: Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauretania, Niger, and Chad, a partnership known as the Joint Force of the Group of Five for the Sahel (G5S). The G5S cooperation includes border control and counterterrorist operations, with France assisting in coordination and in overcoming substantial capability gaps.²⁰³

Djamena, Chad, and has troops based elsewhere in the area of operations: in Faya-Largeau and Abéché, in Chad, and at Niamey airport, in Niger. The latter has been called an intelligence air base, strategically important since it hosts drones that gather intelligence across the entire Sahel region.²⁰⁴

Since the mid-1990s, French policy has been to provide security sector assistance to African countries to increase the capacity of their armed forces and assist their taking charge of their own peace and stability. In light of the growing terrorist threat, capacity-building in counterterrorism, as in Operation Barkhane, is inherent to that policy. Even though France is said to perceive the G5S as an ‘exit strategy from the Sahel’, the force remains dependent on French support. While French official sources continuously underline that France will continue to support this struggle, they add that the time will come when Africa itself must assume responsibility; as President Macron put it, ‘the solutions won’t come from outside’.²⁰⁵

The situation in 2021 has remained largely unchanged.

Dr Fiifi Edu-Afful, a Senior Research Fellow of the Peace Support Operation Programme at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) in Accra, Ghana, is of the view that “The military takeover was in response to the transitional government’s actions of reshuffling that left two soldiers who were instrumental in the August 2020 coup out of the government.The cabinet shake-up was occasioned by civil society pressure on the military-dominated transitional government to push through reforms and prepare the grounds for the return to democratic governance. The question of who truly is in charge of the transition has never been in doubt. The military, although appearing to have taken a back seat in the transition, has always been in charge of the process. The current coup d’état, coming just nine months into an 18-month transition period, has raised several questions on the assurance, sincerity and genuineness of the military to commit to a peaceful transitional process and to return the country speedily to democratic rule. Events that have characterized the present coup d’état in Mali have caused dismay among both domestic and international actors and even raised some eyebrows among the jihadi groups operating across the Sahel. Likewise, Mali’s neighbours in the Sahel and the ECOWAS sub-region are particularly worried that the latest revolt will threaten a commitment to hold the February 2022 presidential election, and undermine a regional fight against Islamist militants, some of whom are operating in northern and central parts of Mali.”²⁰⁶

Resolving the conundrum posed by this latest military intervention could prove rather stroppy for international and regional actors, especially, considering that the pillars for a peaceful transfer of power from the transitional government to a properly elected democratic government appears not to be in place nine months prior to the scheduled 2022 polls. Constitutional changes are yet to be agreed either by the transitional assembly or the general public. Although the mood on the streets of Bamako appear indifferent compared to what heralded the 2020 putsch, there is a groundswell hunger for change from civil society groups and this has been demonstrated in their condemnation of the latest overthrow. International response to the latest coup has not been charitable either. The ferocious condemnation and threats of sanctions by the EU and other bilateral and multilateral actors demonstrate the objection to the actions of the military. Already, the African Union and ECOWAS have brought the gauntlet on Mali by suspending it from their activities. These interests of the regional bodies in Mali cannot be overemphasized because of the unique positioning of the country in the fight against violent extremism and terrorism in the Sahel. The instability in Mali has become a regionally multidimensional crisis with noticeable rise in the number of security threats that have plagued the geopolitical and geostrategic surrounding of the country.²⁰⁷ 

It is for these reasons that the recent coup d’état holds serious security and political implications for the Malian state and the entire sub-region. Firstly, this latest coup threatens the commitment to the norms and principles that underpin the 2001 ECOWAS protocols on democracy and good governance which basically frowns on coup d’états. The disregard for the provisions of the protocol and the transitional roadmap abrogates the rule of law, resulting consequently in anarchy. The resultant effect of the latest action is that the democratic gains and the political compromises made over the last nine months will be truncated.²⁰⁸

Arguably, the feeble nature of the response from ECOWAS and its inability to severely punish and deal with the coup makers have created a dangerous precedent that has the propensity to encourage and embolden other would-be coup plotters to take a similar path. This will result in an overabundance of pariah states. Already, there are examples of similar attempts by military actors in Niger who attempted a coup that was eventually foiled. Considering that the security landscape in the West African sub-region is relatively fragile, if such actions of attempting to overthrow constitutionally-elected governments are not prevented, it is likely to open the floodgate for other disgruntled military operatives in the sub-region to follow suit and engage in similar acts in their respective countries.²⁰⁹

Secondly, the military coup, and the crisis in Bamako will have a significant impact on the security situation in the entire region of the Sahel. The greatest beneficiaries of this palace coup are the insurgents and Jihadi groups seeking to derail Mali and the entire sub-region. The latest coup threatens the fight against terrorism, Jihadism and violent extremism in the Sahel, especially considering the fractured and weak political leadership in the region. There is a possibility that terror groups with links to “al-Qaida” and “Islamic State” could take advantage of the current leadership vacuum to expand on their activities and actions in the sub-region. Already, the signs are on the wall with increased attacks in the central part of Mali and the northern part of Burkina Faso.  The latest attack coming just a few days in June 2021 claiming at least 160 lives in the village of Solhan. Mali has been a key ally to the global fight against Jihadism in the Sahel. What this latest coup does is increase the fears that jihadis with strongholds in northern Mali could carry out extended attacks in and around Mali and further destabilize the entire sub-region. Mali cannot afford to lose the war against the jihadist groups. Doing so would have a calamitous effect on the security situation in the entire region.²¹⁰

As the political situation continues to deteriorates, the likelihood of replication across weaker states in the Sahel and the broader West African sub-region cannot be overlooked. The military regime must take a back seat, reinstate and allow the civilian political leadership to take charge and control the transitional trajectory leading to the return to democratic rule. ECOWAS and the AU must also act firmly beyond the usual rhetoric while Bamako burns.²¹¹

There is no doubt that the Sahel crisis is real and not to be regarded as a matter of rumour or speculation. It is not a product of imagination or exaggeration. The Sahel crisis poses different dangers to each country depending on the degree or depth of internal crisis or dynamics. However, few things are common to many of the countries: poverty, internal security crisis and political instability which reinforce each other over time and space in different degrees. It is also very clear that securitization and/or stabilization approach of the Western powers have failed woefully to resolve the Sahelian crisis. Because of the long evolutionary spell of internal security crisis and political instability some of the countries operates outside the rule of law, compounded by poor governance and lack of public accountability. Most of these countries have not been able to overcome this epochal governance crisis as most of them are still busy battling with various degrees of rebellion, insurgencies and other forms of internal security problems. 

The fight against these internal security crises has not produced concrete and laudable results – or put in another, have only produced Pyrrhic victories. Societies have not advanced by an inch. There has been no socioeconomic development that lifts them out of the morass of poverty and diseases.

The securitization/stabilization approach of Western powers continue to fuel the crisis, promote and sustain the fundamental reasons for the various rebellions, insurgencies and separatist movements in the Sahel – by its own specific dynamics and logics. The Sahel region has become a dumping and playing ground for all sorts of security initiatives, for testing the efficacies of these security initiatives such as PSI, TSCTP, Mission Corymbe, Operation Barkhane, etc. The Sahelian countries have all fallen short, on the other hand, on rule of law, good governance and public accountability. There is also the deficit of political stability (on the basis of democratic governance and state responsibility) so much desired and required for socioeconomic development. The Sahelian countries are humbled and hobbled by corrupt practices at the highest echelon of governance. Political stability in this context may be distinguished from regime stability. The former produces societal stability (social cohesion, ethnic and religious harmony) while the latter is only to the satisfaction of the ruling elite or clique in power.

In Chad, for instance, Idriss Deby Itno ruled the country with iron fist for about 31 years without producing corollary economic development for the country. Chad remains one of the poorest countries in the world. The securitization-stabilization programmes in Mali have not produced political stability needed in that country for socioeconomic development. Mali is also one of the poorest countries in the world. Burkina Faso while enjoying a measurable degree of political stability is also one of the poorest countries in the world essentially because the country suffers majorly from the deficit of rule of law, good governance and public accountability. While Niger also enjoys semblance of democratic governance, the country also remains one of the poorest countries in the world essentially because of lack of good governance, public accountability, etc. It is Nigeria that is even overtly seen to be propping up the country from falling into complete destitution or abject poverty for no other reason than the fact that President Muhammadu Buhari has his paternal root in the Niger Republic. 

The main fear of what has happened in Chad and Mali is that it can provide an alibi for the itchy-fingered military to seek to intervene in the political processes of other troubled African countries (those weak, fragile or those alleged to have failed already) by hijacking or shooting their ways to power.

These countries are held together by the sheer kinetic force of the military and to a large extent also on the non-kinetic domain. The military naturally attracts sympathies from the superpowers (e.g. the United States, France, United Kingdom, United Nations, European Union, African Union even ECOWAS, etc) because it is often considered the magnetic glue that hold the society together and the last line of defense against disintegration of the Nation-State.  But the dominant fear now is the huge possibility of the disintegration of the military force itself against the forces of push and pull assailing them in contemporary times in these countries – given the demands on them: fighting almost on all fronts to prevent the entire disintegration of the countries against the forces of disintegration (separatism, insurgencies, fundamentalism, etc) despite the specificities and/or peculiarities (localities) of the challenges confronting each military in these countries.

This is also the fear for Nigeria: that the military is being overstretched in its capacity to uphold the Nation-State as its last defense, as its last Praetorian Guard or Sentinel because of its unavoidable engagement on many fronts to enable the State has absolute control of the affairs of the nation. There is the fear of the military unexpectedly reaching the limit of its capacity – i.e. a breaking point.

FACT in Chad, the Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali, Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, the latter including banditry, kidnapping and herdsmen killing that have escalated in recent years.

Disintegration of the kinetic force of the military leading to separation or division of countries after long-drawn civil wars or conflicts over many years have happened in Ethiopia (leading to creation of Eritrea), in Sudan (leading to the creation of South Sudan) in the last two decades.

In Nigeria, the cacophonies of separatist movements are being heard loud and clear across the length and breadth of the country: Biafra in the South East and Oduduwa in the South West agitating for the right to self-determination and full expression of their wishes to discontinue their membership in an “incompetent” and “corrupt” union called “Nigeria”. The political, social and ideological impacts of these growing agitations and rebellion are being increasingly felt powerfully, creating more stress for the nation. It is increasingly getting to the point where the possibility of eventual separation is now more real than ever.

Ultimately, the Sahelian crisis exposes the intellectual and ideological poverty or bankruptcy of African leaders. This is perhaps the most poignant of all the myriad of problems confronting the continent and not just the Sahelian region. It demonstrates how African leaders lack force of will to find indigent solutions to the African modern problematique without running helter-skelter to embrace foreign countries, their leaders and ideas in tackling African problems.

Unfortunately, foreign ideas and interventions have never worked. Rather, they exacerbate the crisis. All foreign aids, both arms and economic assistance, have all gone down the drain, swept away in the tide of history of corruption, incompetence and/or repression (authoritarianism). Foreign aids have always left sour taste in the mouth, lasting negative impression on the psyche, bitterness in the soul and social acrimony and conflict.

Over the arch of time and space, whenever, for instance, ECOWAS leaders meet, one wonders what they discuss. Their several meetings and collective wisdom have never seemed to produce solutions to the Sahelian crisis confronting the region. They only seem to accept or reject new leaders who came to power through extra-legal means (military coups or otherwise) depending on circumstances. Their major concern or preoccupation seem to be exclusively focused on how to preserve their regimes, loot their economies, serve as megaphones for foreign ideological interests, collect foreign loans and aids without evidence of judicious applications of these loans and aids, etc. It is rather a very pathetic and tragic situation.

Arab Spring Meets Libyan Waterloo

There were two major events that happened that cannot be overlooked in the analysis of the Sahelian crisis. They were the Arab Spring of 2010-2011 and the Libyan War of 2011.

The first was the Arab Spring that came like a Frankenstein thunderstorm uprooting sit-tight regimes in North Africa and spreading like wildfire to Middle East countries – but interestingly to the south-Sahel region.

The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in response to oppressive regimes and a low standard of living, starting with protests in Tunisia. From Tunisia, the protests then spread to five other countries: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain, where either the ruler was deposed (Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, and Ali Abdullah Saleh or major uprisings and social violence occurred including riots, civil wars, or insurgencies. Sustained street demonstrations took place in Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Iranian Khuzestan, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Sudan. Minor protests took place in Djibouti, Mauritania, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world is (“the people want to bring down the regime”.²¹²

The importance of external factors versus internal factors to the protests’ spread and success is contested. Social media is one way governments try to inhibit protests. In many countries, governments shut down certain sites or blocked Internet service entirely, especially in the times preceding a major rally.  Governments also accused content creators of unrelated crimes or shutting down communication on specific sites or groups, such as Facebook. In the news, social media has been heralded as the driving force behind the swift spread of revolution throughout the world, as new protests appear in response to success stories shared from those taking place in other countries.²¹³

The wave of initial revolutions and protests faded by mid-2012, as many Arab Spring demonstrations met with violent responses from authorities, as well as from pro-government militias, counter-demonstrators, and militaries. These attacks were answered with violence from protesters in some cases. Large-scale conflicts resulted: the Syrian Civil War; the rise of ISIL, insurgency in Ira and the following civil war; the Egyptian Crisis, coup and subsequent unrest and insurgency;  the Libyan Civil War; and the Yemeni Crisis and the following civil war. Regimes that lacked major oil wealth and hereditary succession arrangements were more likely to undergo regime change.²¹⁴

A power struggle continued after the immediate response to the Arab Spring. While leadership changed and regimes were held accountable, power vacuums opened across the Arab world. Ultimately, it resulted in a contentious battle between a consolidation of power by religious elites and the growing support for democracy in many Muslim-majority states. The early hopes that these popular movements would end corruption, increase political participation, and bring about greater economic equity quickly collapsed in the wake of the counter-revolutionary moves by foreign state actors in Yemen, the regional and international military interventions in Bahrain and Yemen, and the destructive civil wars in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen.²¹⁵

Some have referred to the succeeding and still ongoing conflicts as the Arab Winter. As of May 2018, only the uprising in Tunisia has resulted in a transition to constitutional democratic governance. Recent uprisings in Sudan and Algeria show that the conditions that started the Arab Spring have not faded and political movements against authoritarianism and exploitation are still occurring. In 2019, multiple uprisings and protest movements in Algeria, Sudan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt have been seen as a continuation of the Arab Spring.²¹⁶

In 2021, multiple conflicts are still continuing that might be seen as a result of the Arab Spring. The Syrian Civil War has caused massive political instability and economic hardship in Syria, with the Syrian pound plunging to new lows. In Libya, a major civil war recently concluded, with Western powers and Russia sending in proxy fighters. In Yemen, a civil war continues to affect the country. In Lebanon, a major banking crisis is threatening the country’s economy as well as that of neighboring Syria.²¹⁷

Arab Spring, wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings that took place in the Middle East and North Africa beginning in 2010 and 2011, challenging some of the region’s entrenched authoritarian regimes. The wave began when protests in Tunisia and Egypt toppled their regimes in quick succession, inspiring similar attempts in other Arab countries. Not every country saw success in the protest movement, however, and demonstrators expressing their political and economic grievances were often met with violent crackdowns by their countries’ security forces.²¹⁸

The effects of the Arab Spring movement were felt elsewhere throughout the Middle East and North Africa as many of the countries in the region experienced at least minor pro-democracy protests. In Algeria, Jordan, Morocco and Oman, rulers offered a variety of concessions, ranging from the dismissal of unpopular officials to constitutional changes, in order to head off the spread of protest movements in their countries.²¹⁹

Although the protest movements in 2011 were unique in their interconnected struggle for democracy across the region, the push to end corruption and improve citizens’ quality of life did not end with the Arab Spring. Protests continued for years to come, and an additional wave of protests took place in the Arab world in the late 2010s and early 2020s. In February 2019, protests in Algeria toppled the government of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika; in April, Sudan’s military ended the 30-year rule of President Omar Bashir after months of protests. Iraq and Lebanon, democracies whose polarized factions rendered the governments incapable of addressing major crises, also faced massive demonstrations of their own in 2019–20. Although these individual protest movements were not inspired by one another, the scale and similarity of their grievances led many observers to refer to this wave of protests as a second Arab Spring.²²⁰

The Arab Spring blew eastward and northward, but not southward towards Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Cameroon that share fate with the Sahelian crisis. In Nigeria, the government boasted that the Arab Spring can never come to Nigeria because Nigeria does not share the same conditions with the countries of the Maghreb where the Arab Spring emanated from.

The second event was the multinational attack on Libya by a coalition of Western powers, toppling the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi who had ruled the country with iron fist for almost three decades.

On 19 March 2011, a multi-state NATO-led coalition began a military intervention in Libya, to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, in response to events during the First Libyan Civil War. With ten votes in favour and five abstentions, the UN Security Council’s intent was to have “an immediate ceasefire in Libya, including an end to the current attacks against civilians, which it said might constitute “crimes against humanity” … [imposing] a ban on all flights in the country’s airspace — a no-fly zone — and tightened sanctions on the Muammar Gaddafi regime and its supporters.”²²¹ 

American and British naval forces fired over 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles, while the French Air Force, British Royal Air Force, and Royal Canadian Air Force undertook sorties across Libya and a naval blockade by Coalition forces. French jets launched air strikes against Libyan Army tanks and vehicles. The intervention did not employ foreign ground troops.²²²

The Libyan government response to the campaign was totally ineffectual, with Gaddafi’s forces not managing to shoot down a single NATO plane despite the country possessing 30 heavy SAM batteries, 17 medium SAM batteries, 55 light SAM batteries (a total of 400–450 launchers, including 130–150 2 2Kub12 Kub launchers and some 9 launchers), and 440–600 short-ranged air-defense guns. The official names for the interventions by the coalition members are Operation Harmattan by France; Operation Ellamy by the United Kingdom; Operation Mobile for the Canadian participation and Operation Odyssey Dawn for the United States. Italy initially opposed the intervention but then offered to take part in the operations on the condition that NATO took the leadership of the mission instead of individual countries (particularly France). As this condition was later met, Italy shared its bases and intelligence with the allies.²²³

From the beginning of the intervention, the initial coalition of Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, Qatar, Spain, UK and US expanded to nineteen states, with newer states mostly enforcing the no-fly zone and naval blockade or providing military logistical assistance. The effort was initially largely led by France and the United Kingdom, with command shared with the United States. NATO took control of the arms embargo on 23 March, named Operation Unified Protector. An attempt to unify the military command of the air campaign (whilst keeping political and strategic control with a small group), first failed over objections by the French, German, and Turkish governments. On 24 March, NATO agreed to take control of the no-fly zone, while command of targeting ground units remains with coalition forces. The handover occurred on 31 March 2011 at 06:00 UTC (08:00 local time). NATO flew 26,500 sorties since it took charge of the Libya mission on 31 March 2011.²²⁴

Fighting in Libya ended in late October following the death of Muammar Gaddafi, and NATO stated it would end operations over Libya on 31 October 2011. Libya’s new government requested that its mission be extended to the end of the year, but on 27 October, the Security Council unanimously voted to end NATO’s mandate for military action on 31 October.²²⁵

Opération Harmattan was the French participation in the 2011 military intervention in Libya. It was named for the Harmattan, which are hot dry winds that blow over the Sahara, mostly between November and March. The United States’  counterpart to this was Operation Odyssey Dawn, the Canadian counterpart was Operation Mobile and the British   counterpart was Operation Ellamy. The no-fly zone was proposed during the Libyan Civil War to prevent government forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi from carrying out air attacks on anti-Gaddafi forces. Several countries prepared to take immediate military action at a conference in Paris on 19 March 2011. French Dassault Rafale multirole fighters began reconnaissance missions on 19 March and were the first among the coalition to attack Libyan forces, destroying four tanks.²²⁶

The Fear of Nigerian State Failure

But the greatest worry is what would happen to the hegemon of West Africa, the hitherto so-called “Giant of Africa” if and when Nigeria succumb to the type of political turmoil in Chad and Mali, i.e. regression into military rule through a conspiracy of factors and forces hitherto not taken strategically seriously enough. Robert Rotberg and John Campbell made allusion to this worrisome possibility in their article: “The Giant of Africa Is Failing“²²⁷

As a result of the perceptible growing conspiracy of these factors and forces collectively an unknown quantity and in quality within a highly volatile environment of vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity on the one hand and palpable failure of the current administration in town, the authors stated that: “Increasingly, prominent Nigerian opinion-makers are calling for an alternative to the current administration—whether through a national convention to rebuild the state from scratch, the breakup of Nigeria into smaller countries, or a domestic military takeover of the kind Nigeria has experienced repeatedly since independence in 1960. Many other Nigerians decry the government’s inability to keep citizens safe but support its calls for external assistance in the form of economic and military aid.”²²⁸

But it is not the first time that Nigeria was being labeled either a weak, fragile or failed state. Indeed, it would not be John Campbell and Robert Rotberg that would first consider Nigeria as a failed state or entity.

Stewart Patrick (2006) stated that “It has become a common claim that the gravest dangers to U.S. and world security are no longer military threats from rival great powers, but rather transnational threats emanating from the world’s most poorly governed countries. Poorly performing developing countries are linked to humanitarian catastrophes; mass migration; environmental degradation; regional instability; energy insecurity; global pandemics; international crime; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD); and, of course, transnational terrorism. Leading thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama have said that, “[s]ince the end of the Cold War, weak and failing states have arguably become the single-most important problem for international order.” Official Washington agrees. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declares that nations incapable of exercising “responsible sovereignty” have a “spillover effect” in the form of terrorism, weapons proliferation, and other dangers. This new focus on weak and failing states represents an important shift in U.S. threat perceptions. Before the September 11 attacks, U.S. policymakers viewed states with sovereignty deficits exclusively through a humanitarian lens; they piqued the moral conscience but possessed little strategic significance. Al Qaeda’s ability to act with impunity from Afghanistan changed this calculus, convincing President George W. Bush and his administration that “America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones.”²²⁹

This new preoccupation with weak states is not limited to the United States. In the United Kingdom, the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit has advocated a government-wide approach to stabilizing fragile countries, and Canada and Australia are following suit. The United Nations has been similarly engaged; the unifying theme of last year’s proposals for UN reform was the need for effective sovereign states to deal with today’s global security agenda. Kofi Annan remarked before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in 2004 that, “[w]hether the threat is terror or AIDS, a threat to one is a threat to all.… Our defenses are only as strong as their weakest link.” In September 2005, the UN endorsed the creation of a new Peacebuilding Commission to help war-torn states recover. The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in January 2005 also launched a “Fragile States” initiative in partnership with the World Bank’s Low-Income Countries Under Stress (LICUS) program.²³⁰

Before embracing a new strategic vision and investing in new initiatives, conventional wisdom should be replaced by sober, detailed analysis. The ultimate goal of this fine-grained approach should be to determine which states are associated with which dangers. Weak states do often incubate global threats, but this correlation is far from universal. Crafting a more effective U.S. strategy will depend on a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms linking poor governance and state incapacity in the developing world with cross-border spillovers.²³¹

In 2008, less than a year after President Olusegun Obasanjo handed over power peacefully to President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, two scholars from The Brookings Institution in the United States published a research report that generated controversy then. It should be quickly added that Obasanjo handed over the fallouts of destruction of Zaki Biam in Benue State and Odi community in Bayelsa State including Niger Delta militancy, Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) to Yar’Adua as a testament to crisis and especially fragility of the Nigerian State.

According to Susan E. Rice and Stewart Patrick: “In this report, we examine state weakness among all developing countries, focusing in particular on the weakest two quintiles. The results provide a current assessment of each developing country’s individual and relative performance in each of the four core areas (and 20 subindicators) of state competence.  Ours is thus a descriptive model, providing a snapshot in time of relative state effectiveness. Subsequent, updated versions could enable policymakers to identify trends in a country’s relative performance. The Index is not intended to predict which states will collapse into conflict, or conversely, emerge from weakness.²³²

By carefully assessing and ranking all 141 developing countries on the basis of their relative weakness, we provide policymakers with a new tool to examine and better understand the unique dynamics and drivers of performance in each of these states and, in principle, to tailor and target their policy interventions more effectively. We also provide insight into which countries should command the attention of U.S. and international policymakers, given the nature and extent of their weakness.  In some cases, weak states may not be receiving adequate focus or resources.²³³

Nigeria was ranked No 28 with scores of 4.88 (Overall score), 5.39 (Economic), 3.51 (Political), 5.37 (Security), 5.24 (Social Welfare) 640 (GNI Per Capita).²³⁴ Overall, the Index suggests that there are multiple typologies of weakness. Many of the critically weak states—including the Central African Republic (#7), Guinea (#23), Haiti (#12), and Nigeria (#28)—exhibit across-the-board weakness in all four core spheres of state performance.²³⁵

According to the authors, the key policy implications are as follows:

• Poverty alleviation should be given higher priority in U.S. policy, because poorer countries tend to be weaker ones, and the consequences of state weakness can be significant for U.S. national security.
• U.S. assistance to the world’s weakest states should be increased and targeted to address unique performance gaps in these countries.
• Among failed and critically weak states, U.S. and international efforts should focus on improving security and, in parallel, to the extent possible, on the other drivers of weakness.
• Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the world’s highest concentration of weak and failed states and requires increased U.S. attention and resources.
• The United States should pay due attention to severe performance gaps even in better-performing states.
• U.S. efforts to strengthen weak states cannot succeed in isolation but must be augmented by and coordinated with the actions of other partners, institutions, and, most importantly, the policies of the concerned countries.²³⁶

It is interesting to note that both Chad and Mali were also included in the list of the weak states.

Three years after the publication of the above report, another set of US military intelligentsia threw a bombshell by projecting Nigeria as a failed state by 2030 in their case study of failed states. In other words, by 2011, Nigeria has graduated from critically weak state to the status of a failed state, according to this new research carried out by US five Army officers.²³⁷

Why a “failed state” case study about Nigeria rather than a seemingly more dangerous state such as Pakistan? Pakistan clearly has many visible and obvious unstable, dangerous elements that are conspiring to threaten its viability as a nation-state. It has a long history of coups d’état; it is armed with nuclear weapons whose safety, security, and surety measures are not well known; it is fighting an active insurgency against various Taliban factions (an organization its own intelligence service created and, in some quarters, still supports); it is riddled with violent and ungoverned regions; it is locked in seemingly perpetual conflict with nucleararmed India with which it has fought three major wars in the last 60 years; and some of the most dangerous and violent Islamic fundamentalist groups and individuals in the world reside within its borders. Its failure presents a clear and present danger to the region and the United States. Given the attention Pakistan has received both by the US government and the media, it is certainly worthy of study.²³⁸

Less well known in the United States, but no less important, is Nigeria. Although not possessing nuclear weapons, Nigeria has the potential to dramatically affect the United States and the global economy if it fails. Africans are fond of saying: “As Nigeria goes, so goes Africa.” Nigeria’s geographic and political position in Africa, its single-commodity and soon-to-be-top-20 oil-rich economy, extraordinarily complex demographics, culture of corruption, poor and failing national and human infrastructure, long history of dangerously destabilizing religious and ethnic violence, repeated and potential for future military coups d’état, endemic disease, and its growing importance to the global and US economy present researchers with a myriad of vexing and intractable problems and challenges. Further complicating Nigeria’s current history is the untimely death of reformist Pres. Umaru Yar’Adua and the political and religious violence his illness and death have sparked. Unlike Southwest Asia, Africa is often overlooked by political and military planners until a problem presents itself such as those found in Libya, Egypt, Somalia, Rwanda, Congo, Sudan, Liberia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. While each African nation is important, none likely has the potential to dramatically alter the strategic environment both in Africa and the world. Thus, Nigeria is a tantalizing research challenge.²³⁹

Nation-states fail because they are convulsed by internal violence and can no longer deliver positive political goods to their inhabitants. Their governments lose legitimacy, and the very nature of the particular nation-state itself becomes illegitimate in the eyes and in the hearts of a growing plurality of its citizens.²⁴⁰

The rise and fall of nation-states is not new, but in a modern era when national states constitute the building blocks of legitimate world order the violent disintegration and palpable weakness of selected African, Asian, Oceanic, and Latin American states threaten the very foundation of that system. International organizations and big powers consequently find themselves sucked disconcertingly into a maelstrom of anomic internal conflict and messy humanitarian relief. Desirable international norms such as stability and predictability thus become difficult to achieve when so many of the globe’s newer nation-states waver precariously between weakness and failure, with some truly failing, or even collapsing. In a time of terror, moreover, appreciating the nature of and responding to the dynamics of nation-state failure have become central to critical policy debates. How best to strengthen weak states and prevent state failure are among the urgent questions of the twenty-first century.²⁴¹

Wherever there has been state failure or collapse, human agency has engineered the slide from strength or weakness and willfully presided over profound and destabilizing resource shifts from the state to the ruling few. As those resource transfers accelerated and human rights abuses mounted, countervailing violence signified the extent to which states in question had broken fundamental social contracts and become hollow receptacles of personalist privilege, personalist rule, and national impoverishment. Inhabitants of failed states understand what it means for life to be brutish and short.²⁴²

In earlier, less interconnected eras, state weakness and failure could be isolated and kept distant from the developed world. Failure once held fewer implications for the surrounding regions and for the peace and security of the globe. Now, however, as much as their citizens suffer, the failings of states also pose enormous dangers beyond their own borders. Preventing nation-states from failing, and resuscitating those that have failed and will fail, have thus become the critical, all-consuming, strategic and moral imperatives of our terrorized time. The chapters in this book demonstrate how and why states have failed and will fail, and how weak states have in several cases been spared the descent into despair and destruction.²⁴³

A growing strategic worry is the intersection of crisis between Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Mali through Boko Haram insurgency that has been ravaging Nigeria since 2009 non-stop in tempo and scope.

In 2016, Afrobarometer published a survey research work.²⁴⁴

Afrobarometer’s Round 6 surveys in 2014/2015 asked security-related questions in several countries that have experienced growth in violent extremism in recent years. This paper provides exploratory analysis of new opinion data from three of sub-Saharan Africa’s regional “hotspots” of extremist activity, which are home to some of the continent’s most prolific groups:

1. Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region (Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria)
2. Ansar Dine, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and al Mourabitoun (among others) in the Sahel region (Mali).
3. Al Shabaab in the Horn of Africa (Kenya and Uganda).²⁴⁵

The key findings were:

• About four in 10 Kenyans (45%), Nigerians (39%), and Malians (38%) cited security-related issues as one of the top three problems facing their countries – roughly double the average (19%) across 36 countries surveyed in 2014/2015.
• Security was a higher priority for additional government spending in Nigeria (43%), Kenya (34%), Cameroon (22%), Mali (21%), and Niger (19%) than on average across 36 countries (17%).
• Across 36 countries, only half (51%) of respondents said they trust the police “somewhat” or “a lot,” while 64% said they trust the army. Among the six countries under study, trust levels were highest in Niger (86% police, 92% army) and lowest in Nigeria (21% and 40%).

In the Lake Chad region:

• Nigerians were more likely to believe that there was local and international support for extremist groups like Boko Haram (33% on average across a range of potential sources) than their counterparts in Cameroon (11%) and Niger (12%). 
• Nigerians were far more critical of government counter-extremist efforts (during former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration) than Cameroonians and Nigeriens.
• Bolstering the military response to armed extremism was significantly more popular in Niger (73%) and Cameroon (58%) than in Nigeria (40%).
• A desire for personal enrichment or personal power was seen as a far more common motivation for people to join extremist groups than religious beliefs. 

In Mali:

• As of December 2014, three-quarters (75%) of Malians said that negotiation between the government and armed groups was the best way of addressing the crisis in the North of the country. 
• The proportion of citizens who said that prosecuting suspected extremists was the best option for lasting peace and reconciliation dropped by about half between 2013 (70%) and 2014 (36%).
• Three-fourths (75%) of Malians approved of the government’s efforts to counter violent extremism.

In Kenya and Uganda:

• Public approval of the government’s response to extremism was considerably lower among Kenyans (44%) than among Ugandans (83%). 
• Although two-thirds (66%) of Kenyans said that the country’s intervention in Somalia had been worth the extremist reprisals, only 43% would oppose a military withdrawal.²⁴⁶

Across 36 countries surveyed in 2014/2015, about one in five citizens (19%) cited security-related issues (crime and security, political violence, political instability, ethnic tensions, interstate war, civil war, and terrorism) as one of the three most important problems facing their country. This places security in seventh place, following unemployment, health, education, infrastructure/transport, water supply, and poverty.²⁴⁷ 

Perceptions of problems varied widely by country. Security was a leading concern for half of the countries featured in this publication: Kenya (cited by 45% of respondents, placing it first among all problems), Nigeria (39%), and Mali (38%), all of which experienced significant threats from violent extremist groups prior to the time of their respective surveys.²⁴⁸ 

The proportion of citizens who cited security among the top three national problems was significantly lower in Cameroon (22%), Niger (14%), and Uganda (10%). When asked which of six key sectors should be prioritized if their governments could increase their expenditures, only 17% of citizens across 36 countries cited security as their first or second priority for future investment. This is significantly lower than the responses for education (55%), health care (51%), agriculture (30%), and infrastructure (27%). Citizens’ preferences varied considerably by national context. Prioritization of investment in security was higher than average in Nigeria (43%), Kenya (34%), Cameroon (22%), Mali (21%), and Niger (19%)²⁴⁹

The International Crisis Group in March 2017 published a report on Boko Haram which took note of its expanding operation between Nigeria and Chad since 2015.

Since early 2015, attacks in Chad by the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram have killed hundreds, displaced more than 100,000 and damaged the regional economy of the Lake Chad basin. Violence peaked in 2015 with suicide bombings in the capital and in the Lake region, and has since declined. Chad’s military engagements and its role in the fight against terrorism – around Lake Chad and elsewhere in the region – have brought significant diplomatic gains, most recently the appointment of Foreign Minister Moussa Faki as chairperson of the African Union Commission. But the security risk hasn’t disappeared. To counter the ongoing threat while responding to the immediate and longer-term needs of the population, Chadian authorities need to build on the relatively successful regional security cooperation, start to move away from their highly militarised response to include a more significant civilian component, elaborate a more coherent economic development plan and deal more effectively with former Boko Haram members.²⁵⁰ 

Boko Haram’s presence in Chad has been most strongly felt around Lake Chad, which lies primarily within Chadian territory. The area combines rich agriculture, pastoralism and fishing and is a magnet for migrants from all over the Sahel, leading to tensions over control of resources. Boko Haram has taken advantage of the geography of the lake seeking refuge on its many islands. The cultural and religious influence of Nigeria’s Borno state facilitated the penetration of the Borno-born jihadist group, which has also taken advantage of longstanding communal tensions in the area.²⁵¹ 

Initially, Boko Haram’s presence on the Chadian side of the lake was limited. But violence rapidly escalated in 2015, partly in reaction to the intervention by Chadian forces in neighbouring states. Two suicide bombings in the capital N’Djamena and multiple attacks on villages and army posts followed. Attacks diminished at the start of 2016, having never reached the levels seen in Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger. This was accompanied by a wave of surrenders of Boko Haram members in the second half of the year, but which seemingly included few if any of the hard core. Attacks continued, however, throughout 2016, as the jihadist group showed repeated resilience and adaptability.²⁵² 

The violence Boko Haram unleashed has led to over 100,000 displaced and 7,000 refugees on Chadian territory by the beginning of 2017. In 2015, this heightened longstanding antagonisms between communities and made community-level conflict management more challenging. Some community chiefs have been caught in the violent crossfire. Some have been pressured by the national authorities, while others have been accused of complicity or targeted by Boko Haram and one has even been killed. Stigmatisation of some of the Buduma ethnic group, suspected of colluding with Boko Haram, was acute but has lessened since violence decreased.²⁵³ 

The reaction of the Chadian authorities has been primarily military, both in the Lake region and through interventions in neighbouring countries. A state of emergency was imposed in November 2015 and has been renewed several times since, and administration has been partly militarised. Many suspected Boko Haram members captured on Chadian soil have been imprisoned for long periods without trial. Local defence militias have been created and have played a significant role against the jihadist group. But the heavy security response has come at a cost, especially in restrictions of movement imposed on a traditionally highly mobile population heavily dependent on cross-border trade.²⁵⁴

As the first phase of a new military offensive by armies in the region has just been launched (Operation Rawan Kada), the risks of infiltration and a rise in attacks on the Chadian territory are real. A large-scale attack could act as a trigger and, as in 2015, lead to stigmatisation, particularly of the Buduma population. Until now, national authorities have failed to articulate any longer-term plan for the area, and there is little sense of how the impact of Boko Haram is dealt with at a civilian level. A clear new development strategy is needed, which should be driven by the needs of the population in the Lake Chad area and not tied too closely to the fight against the jihadist group.²⁵⁵

The reduction of the Boko Haram threat largely depends on actions taken in neighbouring countries, primarily Nigeria. However, measures can be taken to contain it in Chad and in particular in the lake area:

• Chadian authorities are ill-prepared to deal with suspected Boko Haram members who have surrendered or been captured. A screening process must be initiated to distinguish between real members and those who were either at the periphery or even not associated to the group at all. The latter should be released and integrated in broad community development projects targeting the youth. Following the recent initiative of the interior ministry in neighbouring Niger, Chadian authorities should elaborate a framework document for the treatment of surrendees and communicate it to its international partners.
• To encourage surrenders, counter violent radical messages, improve communication by the authorities and allow local people to express their concerns, community radio stations should be supported and expanded. Most of these will necessarily operate at local level, but consideration should be given to developing community radio stations with a remit to cover the whole lake area, to reflect the diversity and integration of the populations. Such radio stations, which could be based on existing initiatives in neighbouring countries, should broadcast in a wide and balanced range of local and national languages, and should include messages of peace, calls for surrender directed at Boko Haram members and information on other issues of lake-wide interest such as cattle prices.

To balance the heavily militarized response to the Boko Haram threat in the lake area and to avoid its militarization, and to address the needs of the population suffering from violence and displacement, including through better and more sustainable development strategies: 

• Far more civilian capacity must be gradually brought in. This should include a stronger involvement of local authorities in strategic decision-making and a better administrative presence to rebuild social services and ensure civilian needs are taken into account. To encourage civil servants to work in the region, a system of temporary bonuses could be considered. Measures should also include support for community-level initiatives concerning social cohesion. 
• Chadian authorities should propose clear political options for the future of the lake. They should elaborate a medium- and longer-term plan for the development of the Lake region, together with the development donors and in consultation with the local population. It should be sensitive to the needs of a highly mobile population. 
• The risk of concentrating financial resources on the lake to the detriment of other regions should not be neglected. Chad is a very poor country with many areas in a precarious situation. It is therefore necessary to rebalance the portfolio of projects so as not to neglect the pressing needs of other regions.
• The welcome efforts of donors to set up projects in the region must take account of risks of injecting large amounts of development funding so to avoid reinforcing some conflict drivers. As a first step, development agencies should finance a socio-anthropological study into the livelihoods and mobility of the population, and consider how to involve local communities in development programs. 
• Chadian authorities should review their current policies, which restrict economic activities on the lake, and take measures to support, protect and re-launch the regional economy. A protected trade corridor between Chad and Nigeria would facilitate trade and improve the living conditions of the population.²⁵⁶

Further, according to a US Congressional Research Service paper published in September 2020, “Nigeria faces security challenges on several fronts. In the northeast, conflict between the military and two U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs)—Boko Haram and an Islamic State-affiliated splinter faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP)—has killed tens of thousands over the past decade, displaced millions, and caused a protracted humanitarian crisis. The conflict also has destabilized adjacent areas of Niger, Chad, and Cameroon in the wider Lake Chad Basin region. In Nigeria’s northwest, conflict between pastoralists and farmers recently has escalated amid a broader deterioration in security conditions involving cattle rustling, kidnapping, ethnic massacres, and emergent Islamist extremist activity. Farmer-herder violence also has surged in the central Middle Belt, where disputes over resource access coincide with ethno-religious cleavages between Christian and Muslim communities. In the south, criminality and militancy in the oil-rich Niger Delta have impeded development and contributed to insecurity in the Gulf of Guinea for decades.”²⁵⁷

The authors further stated that “With massive oil reserves, extensive potential in the agriculture and service sectors, and a youthful, rapidly growing population, Nigeria is equipped to emerge as a global economic powerhouse. Yet corruption, infrastructure gaps, insecurity, and a failure to diversify the economy away from petroleum production have constrained economic growth and development.²⁵⁸

On economic plane, Nigeria is not doing well at all. Again, it was none other than The World Bank that said Nigeria is on a dying bed economically if proper medicine is not found for the cure of the ailment afflicting it.

In early September 2019, The World Bank said Nigeria is dying slowly because of its neglect of the agricultural sector and heavy reliance on sales of crude oil which belongs to yesterday including importation of food items that are gulping foreign exchange.²⁵⁹ This was as the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, assured the Buhari administration would ensure an export based economy, especially as it recognizes the importance of the agriculture sector to food security, job creation and poverty reduction. He said the sector remains one of the priority areas for the government that has attracted several intervention programmes under the Agricultural Promotion Policy.²⁶⁰ But Senior Agriculture Economist, World Bank, Dr Adetunji Oredipe, who warned of the looming danger ahead of the country in Abuja while delivering a keynote address at the Agriculture Summit Africa sponsored by Sterling Bank Plc, said economic diversification into agricultural should be in practice not theory as the economy has become increasingly dependent on importation, which he said has proven to be both a “disaster and calamity.”²⁶¹ According to him, if Nigeria had held to its market share in palm oil, cocoa, groundnut and cotton, it would have been earning at least $10 billion annually from the three commodities.²⁶²

Painting the gloomy picture of the country’s agricultural sector, the World Bank Agricultural Economist regretted Nigeria is now one of the largest food importers in the world. He said: “In 2016 alone, Nigeria spent $965million on the importation of wheat, $39.7million to im- port rice and $100.2million on sugar importation. He added that the decision to spend $655million on fish importation seems financially irresponsible given all the marine resources, rivers, lakes, and creeks in Nigeria. He noted: “None of the above transactions (Importation of rice, fish, sugar) is fiscally, economically, or politically sustainable. Nigeria is tragically is living on borrowed times, a typical case of robbing Paul to pay Peter. “For instance, each time we spend money to import rice, Nigerian local rice farmers are negatively affected in terms of morale, sales, and realisable income.²⁶³

He lamented that despite its huge agricultural potential, Nigeria which used to be a major player in agriculture in the world has lost its place in the global food production club. He said, “In the 1960s we had glory. That glory was visible and significant for the global community to recognize and applaud. Nigeria accounted for 42 per cent of the world’s exports of shelled groundnuts. Our total export volume was 502, 000 MT. This declined to 356 MT by 2016. Nigeria lost its leadership position and was overtaken by USA, China, and Argentina. Nigeria was also the largest exporter of palm oil in the world and accounted for 27 per cent of the global export volume for palm oil.²⁶⁴

“Total export volume for palm oil by Nigeria was 167,000 MT in 1961. This declined to 8,000 MT by 2016 as the global export volume rose from 629,000 MT in 1961 to over 42.1 million MT in 2016. Malaysia and Indonesia took over using the oil palm seedlings obtained from Nigeria. In 2018, Malaysia earned $8.7billion, 28.6 per cent of total palm oil exports from export of palm oil alone. Indonesia alone recorded US$16.5 billion, 54.5 per cent of total palm oil exports. Unfortunately, Nigeria is not listed among the first 15 as at this moment.”²⁶⁵ He said the huge taste of Nigerians for imported food items had also contributed to high levels of unemployment for the youths. “Food producing factories in Western world, Far East Asia and other countries employ millions of young people to produce and export food. This is a source of livelihood and it helps the workers to live well and go to school. But on our side of the world, Nigerian youths have no one to hire them to build their capacity. This is a typical case of disguised employment or unemployment. It is unacceptable for our graduates to have no one who needs their university /polytechnic acquired knowledge and skills…”²⁶⁶

As if the above warning was not serious or alarming enough, The World Bank came again to state categorically that Nigeria is on the verge of loosing a whole decade of economic gains and revert back to 2010 level going by the tepid performance of the economy under Buhari administration. What this denote is that Buhari’s two-term of eight years would have been completely lost, without any significant gain, and would even regress by two years beyond how the administration met the economy when it took over government in May 2015.

The international financial institution said in its bi-annual Nigeria Development Update (NDU) report series that the country’s gross domestic product is likely to approach its 2010 level by the end of the year.²⁶⁷The report noted that the economy is expected to grow by 1.8% in 2021, but could stand at just 1.1% if the government fails to sustain recent macroeconomic and structural reforms.²⁶⁸

The Bank, however, also noted that several critical reforms are incomplete, and the government’s failure to sustain macroeconomic and structural reforms will undermine the country’s recovery.²⁶⁹ Despite the government’s exaggerated declarations of success, Nigeria is dealing on multiple fronts with rising poverty, escalating unemployment rate, worrying inflation rates, and widespread insecurity hampering the economy.²⁷⁰ The NDU report noted that the high inflation rates are worsening poverty and depressing economic activity.²⁷¹ Rising prices alone may have pushed an estimated seven million Nigerians into poverty in 2020, the report said.²⁷² The country is home to the highest population of people living in extreme poverty in the world since it first overtook India in 2018.²⁷³ The report proposed three priority objectives: reduce inflation; protect poor households from the impacts of inflation; and facilitate access to sustainable financing for small and medium enterprises in key sectors to accelerate the recovery.²⁷⁴

In 2021, the unemployment rate in Nigeria is estimated to reach 32.5 percent. This figure is projected to increase further in 2022. Chronological data show that the unemployment rate in Nigeria rose constantly in the past years. In the fourth quarter of 2020, over 33 percent of the labor force was unemployed, according to the Nigerian methodology.²⁷⁵ Unemployment Rate in Nigeria increased to 33.30 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020 from 27.10 percent in the second quarter of 2020, according to National Bureau of Statistics.²⁷⁶

Adult literacy rate is the percentage of people ages 15 and above who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life.

• Nigeria literacy rate for 2018 was 62.02%, a 10.94% increase from 2008.
• Nigeria literacy rate for 2008 was 51.08%, a 19.12% decline from 2006.
• Nigeria literacy rate for 2006 was 70.20%, a 15.43% increase from 2003.
• Nigeria literacy rate for 2003 was 54.77%, a 0.67% decline from 1991.²⁷⁷

In 2018, adult literacy rate for Nigeria was 62 %. Though Nigeria adult literacy rate fluctuated substantially in recent years, it tended to increase through 1991 – 2018 period ending at 62 % in 2018.²⁷⁸ The highest literacy rates in Nigeria were registered in the southern regions of the country. In the South West, 89 percent of males and 80.6 percent of females were literate as of 2018. Also, the south zones showed the lowest percentage differences between male and female literacy. Female literacy rate in Nigeria is among the highest in West Africa. The highest female literacy rates were registered in Cape Verde, while Nigeria ranked third.²⁷⁹

In 2019, the infant mortality rate in Nigeria was at about 74.2 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Nigeria: Infant mortality rate from 2009 to 2019 (in deaths per 1,000 live births) Source: https://data.unicef.org/country/nga/

• The current infant mortality rate for Nigeria in 2021 is 57.701 deaths per 1000 live births, a 2.5% decline from 2020.
• The infant mortality rate for Nigeria in 2020 was 59.181 deaths per 1000 live births, a 2.44% decline from 2019.
• The infant mortality rate for Nigeria in 2019 was 60.662 deaths per 1000 live births, a 2.38% decline from 2018.
• The infant mortality rate for Nigeria in 2018 was 62.142 deaths per 1000 live births, a 3.97% decline from 2017.²⁸⁰

Maternal mortality ratio is the number of women who die from pregnancy-related causes while pregnant or within 42 days of pregnancy termination per 100,000 live births. The data are estimated with a regression model using information on the proportion of maternal deaths among non-AIDS deaths in women ages 15-49, fertility, birth attendants, and GDP.

• Nigeria maternal mortality rate for 2017 was 917.00, a 0.86% decline from 2016.
• Nigeria maternal mortality rate for 2016 was 925.00, a 0.64% decline from 2015.
• Nigeria maternal mortality rate for 2015 was 931.00, a 1.27% decline from 2014.
• Nigeria maternal mortality rate for 2014 was 943.00, a 0.84% decline from 2013.²⁸¹

Taking a panoramic view of the growing crisis in Nigeria today against the battery of these scholarly works, there can be no doubt that something has fundamentally gone wrong with the Nigerian State over the arch of time and space which points in direction of failure if it has not really failed at all. Of course, there are sharp disagreements over the controversy. However, what has also become clear is that the Nigerian State, while rejecting the tar brush of a failed state has not provided convincing arguments why Nigeria is not a failed state.

That Nigeria has not collapsed as a result of this purported State failure does not mean that the State has not failed at all especially in respect of the security crisis and the monster of corruption that the country have been facing for almost two decades now, i.e. since the advent of the Fourth Republic in 1999. State failure does not just occur when the State has completely collapsed or disappeared from the scene of history. Even with the existence of the State machine, failure can be taken to characterize its gross inability to stem the factors and forces capable of bringing down the State. That is the stage where Nigeria presently find itself: in the twilight zone where it is neither dead nor alive!

The complete collapse will naturally take time, if it will ever happen, even longer than anticipated before the State will collapse mainly as a result of its own incompetence and/or inability to hold the centripetal forces at bay or stem the growing tidal wave of disintegration. The collapse will definitely not happen overnight but will be a long drawn-out process of paroxysm of death over the arch of time and space. However, the unmistakable time will be nigh when separatist warlords would openly come out (they are already emerging, for instance, with the likes of Boko Haram and ISWAP command structures in the North, the likes of Nnamdi Kanu in the South East and Sunday Igboho in the South West) to defy the State authority and challenge it to street fights (they are already doing so in form of low-intensity conflicts with the State).

But what makes Campbell and Rotberg think at all that “a domestic military takeover of the kind Nigeria has exprerienced repeatedly since independence in 1960” is a possibility at all at this critical junction in the evolution of the Nation-State crisis in Nigeria?

A more interesting scenario was that when the coup happened in Chad on April 20, 2021, Nigeria did not condemn it. Nigeria did not condemn General Mahamat Deby Itno for dissolving the Parliament, throwing away of the Constitution and disrupted the constitutionally-recognized line of succession. It only lamented the death of President Idriss Deby Itno after sustaining gunshots the previous day April 19, 2021. President Deby Itno had ruled Chad for over three decades with iron fist. Nigerian Government, however, received General Mahamat Deby Itno, the new Chadian leader, to Nigeria when the latter visited on May 14, 2021.

Other African leaders did not also sharply condemned what happened in Chad but quickly embraced the new status quo of military rule led by General Mahamat Deby Itno. The international community did not also condemn the coup in Chad ostensibly because France was at the centre of the crisis in Chad, stage-managing everything.

But when the Malian coup happened on May 25, other African countries especially West African countries panicked. They can be seen running helter-skelter, from pillars to poles. Why? Because it can be seen clearly that an ill-wind of a sandstorm is blowing from the Sahel region. They rushed to condemn the coup albeit in soft languages – unlike Chad where they did not even utter a word of condemnation at all. Mali has been an epicentre of Islamic jihadist fundamentalism that has spread its viral effect to other West African countries including Nigeria, others been Chad, Niger, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Cote D’Ivoire, etc.

These are the contemporary woes facing Nigeria including other African countries either in West Africa, Sahel or in Central Africa. There is growing doubt about the ability or capacity of these fragile, weak or failed states to overcome these contemporary woes or challenges. Nigeria particularly has a central strategic position in these growing whirlwinds or headwinds currently blowing in Africa because it is still considered the hegemon in the entire political landscape of Africa. That is why everybody (the international community) is full of trepidation, fearing the consequences of State collapse of Nigeria and its concentric impact of hitherto unknown crisis of unquantifiable magnitude it would create that the world has ever seen. When a 200 million people lost its bearing in a Nation-State, it would be a terrible disaster that can only be imagined. The First and Second World Wars combined would be a child’s play! That is why every Tom, Dick and Harry is rushing to offer Nigeria any form of assistance it requires especially in the security domain to help stem the tidal wave of this dangerous tornado of disintegration coming in the direction of Nigeria. That everybody, including Lilliputian non-entities who should never had the boldness or temerity to open their mouths on Nigeria are rushing to offer these assistance, whatever they are, are an indubitable sign of the approaching breaking point that the increasing pressure or stress the nation is going through at these times and its inability to manage its own affairs.

The growing Sahelian crisis is a clear and present danger looming on the horizon if not nipped in the bud early enough. Indeed, for Nigeria, the greatest danger may not even be the internal security, political and socio-economic crises facing the country but the danger of the wave of Frankenstein sandstorm of Islamic fundamentalism and jihadism coming from the Sahel region up-North. This is going to fuel and increase the internal security crisis in Nigeria. Interestingly but worrisomely, Nigeria seems to be welcoming this danger with open arms and smiling faces because it is taken to be a strategic factor for hegemonic control of the Northern political nomenklatura over the Southern part of the country that is regarded to be composed mainly of infidels and supporters of Western life-styles.

How, Nigeria, under this administration, has opened up the entire northern borders with Cameroon, Chad and Niger for the influx of migrants and arms from the Sahel. It has been officially admitted that the current ruling party in the country that during the 2015 and 2019 general elections that foreign nationals of North African origin (i.e. from the Sahel countries of Mali, Niger and Chad) were imported in thousands into Nigeria especially in the northern part of the country to help rig elections – foreigners who were now accused of the masterminds behind banditry, kidnapping and herdsmen killing because they refused to go back to their countries of origin even after they were paid off for the mercenary assignment they came for originally.

The same bandits, kidnappers and herdsmen killers are still being paid heavy ransom whenever they launch their attacks at will.

The administration has declared as an official policy stance as far back as late 2019 that foreign nationals of African origin can enter Nigeria without the requirement of travel documents such as visa, etc, – until they enter Nigeria. Furthermore, President Muhammadu Buhari has publicly admitted on Arise Television on June 10, 2021, that his administration’s cooperation and support for Niger Republic in terms of multibillion naira infrastructure mega-projects are predicated on the basis of his paternal root and relationship with Niger Republic. 

The Advocates of Dictatorship

It is in the midst of the above situation of political and economic apprehension that the advocacy of dictatorship started creeping in, the latter which some unscrupulous government officials started advocating. The advocacy is pegged on three premises. The first is that it would prevent or prolong the process of disintegration that is now leering at the face of the country. The second is that it would help to preserve the vested interests of the ruling class or the dominant clique. The third is that it would surely prevent outright termination of the current ruling clique by violent military coup as being currently feared despite with the assurances of the military High Command of its loyalty to the State and the current administration in power.

Chad presented a tantalizing recipe for Nigeria. When the internal crisis in Nigeria heated up, aftermath the coup in Chad, something then snapped. The Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Mr. Abubakar Malami (SAN) was widely reported in the media to have allegedly written a secret memo to President Muhammadu Buhari, calling, advocating or canvassing for declaration of martial law in Nigeria by overthrowing the Constitution (and possibly dissolving the National Assembly). It took several days before Mr. Malami came out to deny the allegaton of such a written memo.

However, this is rather a very disingenious way of trying to avoid what John Campbell and Robert Rotberg are both afraid of: domestic military coup that could set back the hands of the clock for Nigeria and Africa.

The purported Malami advocacy was followed by Mr. Femi Adesina, the Senior Special Adviser to the President (Media), who came out shooting from the hips to advance his pet theory that Buhari should rule with iron fist or that only a Buhari can whip the recalcitrant Nigerians into line or order from their unruly behaviours. “What our country needs at this time is iron and steel. An alchemy of GMB and PMB. We are in a democracy, yes, but democracy is no byword for lawlessness.²⁸²

“If anybody misbehaves in any part, repeat, ANY PART, of the country, they need to be whipped into line. The nation needs not go into a tailspin because some people bear giant sized grudges in their hearts.²⁸³ “By the way, is there any part of the country that does not have one grievance or the other? Is the next option then to capsize the boat of the country? Any leader that has sworn to uphold the Constitution would not open his eyes, and see it happen”.²⁸⁴ “Leaders must do whatever they should do to maintain peace and tranquility in their countries. Their intentions will always be misinterpreted and misrepresented. No matter. The good of the larger majority must be considered at all times. North, South, East, West, anarchy should never be condoned, no matter what some people may say”.²⁸⁵

“I like how Moyosore Oyetunji, a passionate Buharist on Facebook summarized latest developments: “When he pleaded with you to eschew violence, you accused him of becoming a motivational speaker, instead of the General that he is. Now he has decided to be it, you are crying. Please, what exactly do you want from him?”²⁸⁶ “President Buhari is not genocidal, and can’t ever be accused of such intentions. But a leader worth his salt cannot look on, and watch law and order break down irretrievably. It is not about a people, or region. It is about the country he took an oath to keep together.²⁸⁷ “Every region has one grouse or the other against the state of our union. But murder and mayhem should never be an option in resolving matters. That is the message of President Buhari, and it should be the message of every good Nigerian.”²⁸⁸

Thus, Mr. Adesina can be seen unarguably supporting the earlier call on Buhari by Mr. Malami to declare martial law.

When all the above are put together, they can only be seen to point to a particular direction or goal (an ominous danger): a gradual emergence of a home-grown hybrid dictatorship. There are two aspects of this danger.

The first is the revelation of what is probably going on; what top government officials might have been thinking, debating and toiling with in the inner sanctum of Aso Rock: to establish a dictatorship to prevent a revolution-from-below (i.e. from the masses) or a military takeover, the latter type that has happened both in Chad and Mali.

According to the logic of this dangerous thinking, 2023 may be too far or too late because the administration is increasingly loosing the support of the people, its moral legitimacy and is also dangerously on the verge of inner collapse since it no longer enjoy the goodwill of the people as it did in either 2015 or early 2019. And since government is also stubbornly opposed to the idea of possible restructuring with its promises and even unintended consequences, the options of peaceful resolution of the unfolding crisis of legitimacy are extremely narrowed down.

The second aspect is that the proposed project perfectly fit into the worldview and mindset (mental topography) of President Muhammadu Buhari whose budding dictatorship in 1984-85 was aborted midway when he was overthrown by General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida and his military cohorts. Thus, if this proposed project materializes, it would be a continuation of the earlier aborted military dictatorship of the mid-80s and concluding an unfinished business in this grisly dictorship enterprise. Nothing is new or unheard of in these propositions.

Overall, it is a self-preservation management project. Buhari in person is mortally afraid of being overthrown by any mean including military coup. That was what was the substance embedded in the press release by Femi Adesina basing himself on that fabricated Department of State Security report. The experience of August 1985 when he was overthrown still haunt him and has not departed from his consciousness. President Buhari was of the view that, for instance, the #EndSars protesters came to “remove me from power” as stated during his Arise Television interview on June 10, 2021.

However, there is one important fact to note. In the two case studies of Chad and Mali, none of the new military juntas there dispensed with the State machine as a vehicle for actualizing their dreams of becoming military Junkers and exercising their new-found hegemonies. They acted outside the established Rule of Law (casting aside the Constitutions of each country, dissolving the Parliaments and other institutions of State) yet retained the the State machine as an instrument for exercising their dictatorial powers. They established new bodies as may be required such as military ruling council as a pivotal vehicle for exercising hegemonic control over the State and the society. In short, the new military juntas are now arbiters of Rule of Law – in their own interests and/or images. They are not necessarily building a new State structure, but using the existing State structures to actualize their dreams or goals.

The juntas form a new Praetorian Guard as the new Guardian of the State. The Soldier is no longer the Protector of the State. Rather, the Soldier is now the State (protected by the Praetorian Guard formed essentially out of the Soldier). There is a nuance in all these. The State has transited and transformed into something new that functions differently from the traditional prototype of the State under democratic rule or conventional understanding of the Rule of Law. The State now functions essentially at the behest of the new junta, of the military Junker or Dictator. The State is built around him, constructed in his image. Africa has always provided legion of examples: Gamel Abdel Nassir, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Muammar Ghadaffi of Libya, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Milton Obote and Idi Amin of Uganda, Gnassimgbe Eyadema of Benin, Idriss Deby Itno of Chad, etc. These are examples of Napoleonic merge with the State! Bonarpatism per excellence!

In the final analysis, Abubakar Malami, Femi Adesina and their co-travellers did not tell the public precisely what the nation stands to benefit from this proposed dictatorship enterprise. They did not tell us whether it would be the magic wand the nation is waiting for to solve the hydra-headed monster of problems the nation is currently facing. How would this dictatorship enterprise solve all the structural deformities faced by the country?

Interestingly too, it is the same military dictatorships in the past that created and complicated the structural crisis facing the country today. It is thus a wonder how a new dictatorship would be able to solve the now-epochal security crisis, poverty and economic development crisis in the country. In short, there is no more miracles to be performed by any dictator. It is along and tall expectation borne out of false hope. Nothing good can proverbially come out of Nazareth anymore.

Such a dictatorship, expectedly to be headed by Buhari, according to Malami, Adesina and co, can only bring more opprobrium from the public. He is probably not even interested in this adventurous enterprise as he is already talking about his legacy, begging Nigerians to be kind to him, expressing his desires to go back to his cattle farm in Daura, etc. Buhari wants to get out alive. He does not want to die in Aso Rock by any mean. Fortune has been kind to him enough. He cannot afford to take further risks by plunging headlong into a dictatorship as being proposed by his obviously misguided advisers.

The proposal has even failed or collapsed before the possibility of sprouting at all. Malami, Adesina and co have merely wasted everybody’s time by opening a dead-end channel for people to speculate upon. 

Rule of Law Versus National Security

But it wasn’t Abubakar Malami or Femi Adesina that kick-started this train of thought of dictatorship. It started with the grand-patron of dictatorship himself: Muhammadu Buhari.

Two major events happened in August 2018 that gave red light to the dangers ahead of the country.

The first was the invasion of the National Assembly by Directorate of State Security (DSS) agents on whose order that remained a mystery till date.

Masked operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) yesterday [August 7, 2018] barricaded the gates to the National Assembly complex, shutting out lawmakers. The drama happened amid concern by some legislators, especially those in the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that their All Progressives Congress (APC) counterparts were plotting to forcefully re-open the premises and impeach the Senate President, Bukola Saraki and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu.²⁸⁹

The apprehension intensified on Monday when it emerged that a meeting of the leadership had been scheduled. But as early as 5:00 a.m., DSS personnel took up positions.When lawmakers attempted to enter, the security men barked they had orders not to allow anybody in.²⁹⁰

Irked by the development, the Presidency promptly announced the sack of DSS Director General, Lawal Musa Daura.²⁹¹ Acting President Yemi Osinbajo said the dismissal took immediate effect. Daura has been directed to hand over to the most senior officer of the agency.The former DG was reportedly arrested and detained thereafter. At 2:15 p.m., Daura’s plain-clothed aides were seen driving out of the presidential villa without him, looking downcast.²⁹² Osinbajo earlier also held a closed-door meeting with Inspector General of Police Ibrahim Idris (IGP).The Acting President had reportedly sought to know on whose orders Daura acted, since President Muhammadu Buhari was already on a 10-day holiday in the United Kingdom. With no convincing response, he was swiftly relieved of his appointment.²⁹³

Osinbajo’s spokesman, Laolu Akande, in a statement, said: “Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has described the un-authorised takeover of the National Assembly complex earlier today as a gross violation of constitutional order, rule of law and all accepted notions of law and order. According to him, the unlawful act, which was done without the knowledge of the presidency is condemnable and completely unacceptable. Professor Osinbajo is consequently assuring Nigerians that all persons within the law enforcement apparatus who participated in this travesty will be identified and subjected to appropriate disciplinary action.”²⁹⁴

The United Labour Congress (ULC) meanwhile condemned the DSS action, saying the agency might have acted on orders by government to truncate the will of the legislature. The union described the siege as shameful and a huge threat to the country’s democracy.“We want Nigerians to hold the men that sponsored the invasion responsible for any dire consequences that may arise out of this misadventure. This continued despoliation of our nation by desperate politicians must stop and it is our collective duty to make them stop,” the ULC said in a statement by its president, Comrade Joe Ajaero. It added: “Nigeria is a democracy and the beauty of democracy is when all of its tenets are strictly observed by all parties, especially the principles of the Rule of Law and Separation of Powers between the three arms of government. We, therefore, strongly condemn the harassment, intimidation and hounding of political opponents across the nation using the instruments of state and other forms of terror.”²⁹⁵

It is the first such incident since Nigeria became a democracy in 1999 and coincides with increased tension between the National Assembly and the executive ahead of an election in February 2019 when President Muhammadu Buhari will seek a second term.²⁹⁶

For some, it revived memories of the decades when the military and security forces held sway over politics in a country that has one of Africa’s largest economies.²⁹⁷ Armed men wearing the black uniform of the Department of State Security (DSS) stood at the gates of the building in the capital Abuja and were later joined by police officers blocking entry for up to an hour, witnesses said.²⁹⁸ Images of the incident were shared widely on social media. The motive for the blockade was not immediately clear.²⁹⁹

The blockade followed the defection of around 50 lawmakers from Buhari’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) party to the main opposition in the last few weeks. These included the country’s third most senior elected official, Senate President Bukola Saraki.³⁰⁰ The defections cost the APC its Senate majority and present a challenge to Buhari’s re-election bid because most of those who left joined the opposition People’s Democratic Party which ruled Nigeria from 1999 until Buhari took office in May 2015.³⁰¹

Saraki’s supporters said the blockade was part of a plan to impeach and replace him. Parliament went on recess last week until Sept. 25 but meetings were to be held on Tuesday.  “We urge Nigerians and the international community to condemn this illegal invasion of the National Assembly complex and the attempt to asphyxiate the legislature as undemocratic, uncivilized and irresponsible,” said Saraki in a tweet.³⁰²

[Significantly] The All Progressives Congress (APC) condemns in strongest terms, today’s unfortunate invasion of the National Assembly by security forces. Our Party wholly dissociates itself from any act of brigandage and affront on the sacred symbols of our budding democracy, declares Mr. Yekini Nabena, Ag. National Publicity Secretary of the Party, in a press statement.³⁰³

Our Party remains a law abiding political organisation and advises every constituent part to abide by the tenets of our constitution and our democracy.³⁰⁴ Whilst our contention with the leadership of the National Assembly as currently constituted is a matter of public record, we still believe that the legislature as an independent arm of government must be allowed free reign for vibrant contestation of ideas and values amongst its members within the context of their constitutional mandate and for the benefit of the Nigerian people.³⁰⁵ We call for a more harmonious working relationship between the various Arms of Government in the general interest of the country.³⁰⁶

The second event was also in the same month of August on the occasion of the plenary session of the 2018 Nigerian Bar Association Conference and Annual General Meeting.

President Muhammadu Buhari, in a keynote address at the event declared that rule of law must be subject to the supremacy of national security interests.

President  Muhammadu Buhari said that his administration would continue to place the nation’s security and national interest above the rule of law.³⁰⁷ Buhari, who made the declaration while flagging off the 2018 Annual General Conference of Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, in Abuja, said his government adopted the stance on the basis of subsisting decisions of the Supreme Court.³⁰⁷ He maintained that individual rights of alleged offenders would not be spared when national security and public interest were threatened.³⁰⁸ President Buhari took the position, despite heightened pressure for the release of former National Security Adviser, NSA, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd), who had been in detention since 2015, regardless of six subsisting court orders that okayed his release on bail, pending determination of corruption charges against him.

While addressing the gathering of legal practitioners in the country that attended the opening session of the NBA, including Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Walter Onnoghen, President Buhari said his administration was determined to disrupt age-old assumptions and unsettle ancient norms in the management of Nigeria’s national patrimony.³⁰⁹ He said:  “Rule of Law must be subject to the supremacy of the nation’s security and national interest.³¹⁰ “Our apex court has had cause to adopt a position on this issue in this regard and it is now a matter of judicial recognition that; where national security and public interest are threatened or there is a likelihood of their being threatened, the individual rights of those allegedly responsible must take second place in favour of the greater good of society.”³¹¹

The statement generated flaks from the public at the time.

The Nigerian Bar Association [subsequently] rejected President Muhammadu Buhari’s comment that national security takes precedence over the rule of law.³¹²

In its communiqué, which it issued at the end of the conference on Friday, the association said it rejected Buhari’s comment, insisting that the rule of law was central to democracy.³¹³ “The conference completely rejects the presidential statement subordinating the rule of law to national security. The NBA restates that the rule of law is central to a democracy and any national security concerns by the government must be managed within the perimeters and parameters of the rule of law.³¹⁴“As a corollary, conference frowns upon the present growing trend whereby government decides on which court orders to obey.³¹⁵ “The court has exclusive duty under a democratic dispensation to interpret the Constitution and other laws, and government and the citizenry must comply with court orders at all times until set aside.”³¹⁶

Elder statesmen across the country [also joined the chorus condemning] the statement by President Muhammadu Buhari on the rule of law as treasonable.³¹⁷

Speaking on behalf of the group, Ayo Adebanjo, Afenifere leader, insisted that the President must withdraw the statement. He stated this at the Second Summit of Nigerian Elders and Leaders on the State of Democracy, the Economy and National Security, held at Sheraton Hotel, Abuja. According to Adebanjo, the statement by Buhari was an attempt to rewrite the constitution by “word of mouth”. His words: “It is time to tell Mr. President that the statement he made that Sunday is treasonable — for you to rewrite the constitution that the rule of law is under the state security. The rule of law you are talking that is subject to national security and security of the state, who decides that? It will not work. We are going to demand from this meeting that he should withdraw that statement. That statement is very inappropriate and also amounts to treason; to change the constitution of the whole country by word of mouth. It is not right.”³¹⁸

Adebanjo said that he would not be surprised if his words are summed up as hate speech under the guise that they were uttered against national security. He also stated that he was not afraid of being jailed. Recalling that Buhari locked him up when he was 58 years old, and handed him over to Abacha, he restated his determination to continue to speak up until the President leaves power. He said: “When the leader of the nation now tells you openly, before lawyers and judges, that he is rewriting the constitution of Nigeria; that the rule of law is subject to the security of the state and nation, the question is who decides the security of the state and nation?³¹⁹

“We need to remind our President that he has not staged a coup to become president. This is not 1983 when he constituted both the parliament and executive by himself and the word was the law. Even at that time, the judiciary was safe. Now he is telling us boldly and that is the danger I feel we have to consider very seriously.³²⁰

“We must send serious warning from this meeting to Mr. President, that those of us who are alive when this country became independent, that the terms and conditions on which we became independent, we are very aware of them. Nobody at this stage will come and estrange us and use religion, ethnicity and nepotism to separate us.³²¹

“The man whom we are opposing, the man who we are criticising, is not taking it easy and is taking steps each day to silence the opposition. If you don’t know, let us call our attention to it. If he takes Ayo Adebanjo today, Junaid you are not safe; Ango, you are not safe the moment you criticise him. Junaid, in particular, you have to be careful, because you are the one exposing his nepotism and that nepotism is against state security.”³²²

Femi Falana (SAN), also added his voice of condemnation saying that national security is subject to the rule of law and that President Muhammadu Buhari should not place government security above the security of individual Nigerians. Falana made the remark during a presentation at the 2018 conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). Falana said Nigeria’s political history has subjugated the rule of law at the detriment of protecting the rights of Nigerians. “Owing to the refusal of the civilian wing of the political class to demilitarize the polity there has been unsettled debate over the primacy of national security over the rule of law,” he said.³²³

“The debate over the clash between the rule of law and national security has been reopened by President Mohammadu Buhari at this conference when he enjoined Nigerian lawyers and judges to realise that national security takes precedence over the rule of law. A few days before then, the President had threatened to jail looters who had sabotaged the security of the nation by diverting huge funds earmarked for the development of the country. It is implied in the presidential declaration that the alleged looters cannot be jailed without a trial conducted in criminal courts under the rule of law. Majority of political office holders in the country are not committed to the observance of the rule of law. In place of the rule of the rule of law the political system has enthroned the rule of might or rule of rulers.”³²⁴

Falana said placing security of the state above the interests of individual citizens “creates a false dichotomy” that should be avoided. “It is therefore important for Nigeria to strive to nurture the synergies between the two, and to incorporate human rights into national security strategies,” he said. “I firmly believe that both security and human rights can fully coexist and are absolutely necessary to prevent breakdown of law and order. I posit that the purpose of national security should be to protect democracy and enhance democratic principles.”³²⁵

Professor Wole Soyinka was not left out in also condemning the President for what he called “Buhari’s Pernicious Doctrine”. In a statement, Mr Soyinka mocked the president by saying Mr Buhari had obviously given a deep thought to his travails under a military dictatorship and concluded that his incarceration at that time was also in the ‘national interest.’ “At his first coming, it was ‘I intend to tamper with Freedom of the Press,’ and Buhari did proceed to suit action to the words, sending two journalists – Irabor and Thompson – to prison as a reward for their professional integrity. Now, a vague, vaporous, but commodious concept dubbed “national interest” is being trotted out as alibi for flouting the decisions of the Nigerian judiciary. President Buhari has obviously given deep thought to his travails under a military dictatorship, and concluded that his incarceration was also in the ‘national interest.’”³²⁶ 

“We have cause to be thankful for the advance warning, since not all rulers actually make a declaration of intent, but simply proceed to degrade the authority of the law as part of the routine business of governance,” said Mr Soyinka. “We have been there before. It should be of mere interest, not despondency, that this latest proclamation of dictatorial recidivism has also been made before an assembly of officers of the law, the Nigerian Bar Association. We expect a robust response from the NBA as part of its conclusions.”³²⁷

Mr. Soyinka noted that there is no shortcut to democracy and that the history of law, even where un-codified, is as old as humanity. “Numerous rulers have tried again and again to annul that institution,” he said. “Sometimes, they appear to succeed, but in the end, they pay heavy forfeit. So does society. “The rule of law, however, outlasts all subverters, however seemingly powerful. If the consequences for society in defence of the rule of law were not so costly, any new attempt would be merely banal and boring, hardly deserving of attention. We know, historically, where it will all end.”³²⁸

Thus this was not the first time this idea of dictatorship was been touted. The spectre of dictatorship has been haunting this administration for long. It seems to be an unfinished business that President Muhammadu Buhari seeks to conclude – but without success so far. He has not been able to fulfill this dream because of the constraints or obstacles presented by the democratic environment in which he currently finds himself. It has been an inconclusive project. The abrupt termination of his military-led junta in August 1985 put paid to this overt ambition to institute that dictatorship which may have probably been worse than that of Abacha-led dictatorship of 1993 to 1998. But the spectre of that unfulfilled dream still haunts him till date.

With the above declaration, however, President Buhari was testing the water. And the ripple effects (in form of responses received) from the public were not favourable at all. Thus he was forced to abandon the dream of a dictatorship, once again. But the coups in Chad and Mali most probably re-awakened the dream again and heightened the stakes. But once again like in 2018, public reaction was not also favourable and it is now obvious that President Buhari has to finally bury the dream. He is now willing to live with reality of democratic norms that outrightly forbid institution of dictatorship. He is now willing to go back to his cattle farm, begging Nigerians to be kind to him in judging his legacy, forgive him for whatever he might have inadvertently or willfully done wrong while in office.

Fast forward to 2021

It is in this context that the public alarm raised by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media, Mr Femi Adesina, as regard an imminence of a possible civilian coup against President Muhammadu Buhari even before the publication of Campbell and Rotberg’s article on May 31, 2021, must be viewed.

Mr. Adesina has raised the alarm that some disgruntled (unnamed) opposition politicians and religious leaders (he did not mention either retired or serving military leaders -but politicians and religious leaders who have never been associated with coup making in the past) were planning to overthrow the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. To what end? Mr. Adesina did not disclose. He did not also disclose the methods by which these so-called political malcontents and religious zealots wish to deploy to carry out the overthrow of the government. It did not take long before the controversy died down because there was no substance to it at all – at least Mr. Adesina did not provide any shred of evidence to back up his claims. And nobody was ever arrested.

According to Femi Adesina: “The Department of State Services (DSS), on Sunday alerted on sinister moves by misguided elements to wreak havoc on the government, sovereignty and corporate existence of the country.³²⁹

“Championed by some disgruntled religious and past political leaders, the intention is to eventually throw the country into a tailspin, which would compel a forceful and undemocratic change of leadership.³³⁰ “Further unimpeachable evidence shows that these disruptive elements are now recruiting the leadership of some ethnic groups and politicians round the country, with the intention of convening some sort of conference, where a vote of no confidence would be passed on the President, thus throwing the land into further turmoil.³³¹ “The caterwauling, in recent times, by these elements, is to prepare the grounds adequately for their ignoble intentions, which are designed to cause further grief for the country.³³² “The agent provocateurs hope to achieve through artifice and sleight of hands, what they failed to do through the ballot box in the 2019 elections.³³³

“Nigerians have opted for democratic rule, and the only accepted way to change a democratically elected government is through elections, which hold at prescribed times in the country. Any other way is patently illegal, and even treasonable. Of course, such would attract the necessary consequences.³³⁴ “These discredited individuals and groups are also in cahoots with external forces to cause maximum damage in their own country. But the Presidency, already vested with mandate and authority by Nigerians till 2023, pledges to keep the country together, even if some unruly feathers would be ruffled in the process.³³⁵

In reacting to the allegation, the Peoples Democratic Party said in a statement through its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, stated that the Buhari presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC) are being haunted by their own shadows as Nigerians know the persons as well as the political party with the history and penchant to scuttle democratically-elected government. “The presidency has forgotten that in 1983, Brigadier Muhammadu Buhari, as he was then known, led a military coup to truncate a democratically-elected government thereby causing our nation a huge drawback on democratic governance.³³⁶

“Also, in 2015, the APC, which was hurriedly formulated, made itself available as a vehicle of brigandage to disrupt our political process by beguiling Nigerians and taking power through violence, propaganda and falsehood. Even in 2019, Nigerians will be quick to remember how the APC imported bandits, vandals and thugs from neighbouring countries, as political mercenaries, to unleash violence, disrupt our voting processes and muscle itself into power.”³³⁷ The PDP urged the presidency and the APC to look inwards for those allegedly plotting to upturn democracy. “Our party believes that the statement by the Buhari presidency is an attempt by the APC to heighten political tension in our country ahead of the 2023 election, having realised that they cannot face the people at the polls,” it added.³³⁸

The Urhobo Progress Union (UPU), Yoruba Ronu Leadership Forum and the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) have challenged the Federal Government to conduct proper investigation and make necessary arrest if it is true that some persons were planning a coup against the administration of President Buhari.³³⁹

Dictatorship enterprise always end badly, tragically to be more specific, in Nigeria. General Yakubu Gowon ruled for nine years from 1967 to 1975 and was overthrown. Major General Muhammadu Buhari that exhibited all dictatorial tendencies from the very beginning was also thrown out of power barely after nineteen months in power. General Ibrahim Babangida spent eight years in power but was eventually disgraced out of power in August 1993. General Sani Abacha who was much more vicious than all other previous military Junkers spent five years but died a miserable death in June 1997. Interestingly President Olusegun Obasanjo who voluntarily handed over power to the civilians in 1979 and who later came back in 1999 as a civilian president also wanted to establish a civilian dictatorship by attempting to extend his constitutionally-recognized two terms to three terms. He failed miserably in the attempt.

Once again, officials around President Muhammadu Buhari have variously toiled with the sickening and mad dictatorship enterprise – forgetting the lessons of history in this regard. But it is apparent that President Buhari has rejected this venture because of public hostile reception to the idea. He has indicated that he wants to leave by 2023 and go back to his cattle farm in Daura.

Messy Business of Dictatorship

Dictatorship has not helped Africa at all. On the contrary it has retarded Africa. Many of the African dictators ruled for more than two decades, making all sort of bogus claims such as divine right to rule forever, superior or monopoly of knowledge, or outright repression, etc, without corollary socioeconomic development. The dictators only succeeded in building empires for themselves and their families such as Idi Amin of Uganda, Mobutu Sese Seko of Democratic Republic of Congo, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Muammar Ghadaffi of Libya, Idriss Deby Itno of Chad, etc.

The case of Idriss Deby Itno of Chad is particularly poignant. After ruling the country for more than three decades, he left Chad as one of the poorest countries in the world but was praised to the high heavens in Western media for allowing Chad to be used as a launch pad against Islamic jihadism in the Sahel region, etc.

All dictators want to rule forever until death snatches them form power unexpectedly. They circumvent or manipulate the Constitution, build personality cult around themselves, use State machinery to enrich themselves at the expense of the State itself and welfare of the citizens; repress and crush all vestiges of opposition parties and figures.

It never occur to them that Western countries in modern times developed without one-party or one-person dictatorship; have never deployed the “doctrine of necessity” to stay beyond the constitutionally stipulated terms of office in peace times – except in war or emergency times (Frederick Delano Roosevelt in the United States and Winston Churchill in Great Britain, just to cite two examples.)

Let us take Cameroon as an example where President Paul Biya (born Paul Barthélemy Biya’a bi Mvondo) has ruled that unfortunate country for the past thirty-nine years. (On a personal note, this writer has only known two Presidents in that country: Ahmadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya). Cameroon is also one of the poorest countries in the world.

Paul Biya has been serving as the President of Cameroon  since 6 November 1982. He is the second-longest-ruling president in Africa, the longest-ruling non-royal leader in the world, and the oldest head-of-state in Africa. After Biya became President, Ahidjo initially remained head of the ruling Cameroon National Union (CNU). Biya was brought into the CNU Central Committee and Political Bureau and was elected as the Vice-President of the CNU. On 11 December 1982, he was placed in charge of managing party affairs in Ahidjo’s absence. During the first months after Biya’s succession, he continued to show loyalty to Ahidjo, and Ahidjo continued to show support for Biya, but in 1983 a deep rift developed between the two. Ahidjo went into exile in France, and from there he publicly accused Biya of abuse of power and paranoia about plots against him. The two could not be reconciled despite efforts by several foreign leaders. After Ahidjo resigned as CNU leader, Biya took the helm of the party at an “extraordinary session” of the CNU party held on 14 September 1983. In the October 2011 presidential election, Biya secured a sixth term in office, polling 77.9% of votes cast. Biya won the 2018 presidential election with 71.3% of the vote. The election was marred by violence and low voter turnout. As of 2021, he is the longest serving non-royal head of state, having been in power since June 30, 1975.³⁴⁰

But more significant is the fact that Cameroon has always have a “cat-and-mouse” relationship with Nigeria, her “big brother” neighbour to the West and North. Cameroon has had geostrategic skirmishes with Nigeria in the last four decades if not more than that. And in the context of the rivalry between Anglo and Franco-phone countries in Africa, France has always been on the side of Cameroon, and Nigeria is not unaware of this fact but pretend not to see it because of the strategic economic relationship between Nigeria and France.

Zimbabwe was near State collapse before the military intervened to push out Robert Mugabe who had ruled that unfortunate country with iron fist for more than four decades.

In November 2017, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was removed as president and party leader of ZANU-PF, and replaced by Emmerson Mnangagwa. On the evening of 14 November 2017, elements of the Zimbabwe Defence Force (ZDF) gathered around Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, and seized control of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation and key areas of the city.  On 19 November, ZANU-PF removed Mugabe as party leader, replacing him with Mnangagwa, and issued a deadline of 20 November for Mugabe to resign the presidency or face impeachment. Mugabe did not resign, so on 21 November a joint session of Parliament met for his impeachment. After the session convened, Mugabe sent a letter to Zimbabwe’s Parliament resigning the presidency. Second Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko became the Acting President. Mnangagwa was sworn in as president on 24 November 2017.³⁴¹ 

In the case of Egypt, it has been a long and sad story of one dictatorship after another from the time of King Farouk to Gamel Abdel Nasser, from Anwar Sadat to Hosni Mubarak and now General Abdel Fatah El-Sisi.

The first president of Egypt was Mohammed Naguib, who along with Gamel Abdel Nasser, led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 that overthrew King Farouk and marked the end of the British colonial rule. On 18 June 1953, just under a year after the coup d’etat, the Council abolished the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and declared Egypt a republic, with Mohamed Naguib as president. At this point, the Muhammad Ali Dynasty was over in all but name, having effectively lost power when the British assumed colonial rule over Egypt in the late 19th century. Hence, Naguib’s presidency marked the beginning of Egypt’s independence as a state after a recent history of consistent occupying forces.³⁴²

Naguib resigned as president in November 1954, following a severe rift with the younger military officers who had participated with him in the revolution. Thereafter, the office of president remained vacant until January 1956, when Gamal Abdel Nasser was elected as president via a plebiscite. Nasser would remain as president of Egypt, and as well as president of the United Arab Republic which lasted from 1958 to 1971, until his sudden death in September 1970 at the age of 52.³⁴³

Nasser was succeeded by his vice president, Anwar Sadat, who was elected by plebiscite in October 1970. Sadat served as president until his assassination in October 1981, and shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Israeli prime minister Menachim Begin in 1978 for beginning peace talks. He was succeeded by his vice president, Hosni Mubarak, who was elected president by plebiscite and would remain so for nearly 30 years.³⁴⁴

In the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, Mubarak, who held office from 14 October 1981 until 11 February 2011, was forced to resign following mass nationwide protests demanding his removal from office. On 10 February 2011 Mubarak transferred presidential powers to his recently appointed vice president, Omar Suleiman. Suleiman’s wielding of presidential powers was a momentary formality, as the position of president of Egypt was then officially vacated, and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, led by Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi  assumed executive control of the state. On 30 June 2012, Mohammed Morsi  was sworn in as President of Egypt, having won the 2012 Egyptian presidential election on 24 June.³⁴⁵

Mohammed Morsi took office on 30 June 2012, after being elected by the presidential election held on 23–24 May and 16–17 June 2012. He was deposed by the Egyptian Armed Forces in a coup d’etat on 3 July 2013, following massive protests calling for his resignation. He was succeeded by Adly Mansour, the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt, as Acting President. Mansour was sworn into office in front of the Supreme Constitutional Court on 4 July 2013. [Morsi was removed because he was seen to be leaning towards Islamic fundamentalism and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic organization advocating for imposition of Sharia law). Current President el-Sisi took office on 8 June 2014, after being elected by the presidential election held on 26–28 May 2014. He was re-elected by the presidential election held on 26–28 March 2018.³⁴⁶

Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has been Egypt’s president since 2014, a year after he led the military’s overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi amid mass protests against his rule. The retired field marshal’s supporters say he has restored stability to the country, but critics argue it has come at a heavy cost to human rights. More than 1,000 protesters have been killed in clashes with security forces and tens of thousands of people have reportedly been detained in crackdowns on opponents of the government. Mr Sisi has also struggled to end an insurgency by jihadist militants based in the Sinai peninsula, who have killed hundreds of security personnel and civilians in unrest which began before he came to power.³⁴⁷

On 3 July 2013, Gen Sisi appeared on television to announce that the president had been removed from office, the constitution suspended, and an interim government installed. He said Morsi had failed to fulfil “the hope for a national consensus”.³⁴⁸ Muslim Brotherhood supporters and others opposed to the military’s actions held protests throughout Egypt, but security forces confronted them with deadly force. Human rights groups said up to 900 protesters were killed in Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya and al-Nahda squares on 14 August 2013. The government said many protesters were armed, and that a number of police were also killed.³⁴⁹ The crackdown on the Brotherhood continued afterwards, with the group’s leaders and thousands of its supporters arrested and the organization once again banned in Egypt. Many were later handed death sentences or lengthy prison terms at mass trials that activists said violated fundamental due process rights.³⁵⁰

However, the standard of living for many in Egypt actually declined during President Sisi’s first term in office. The devaluation of Egypt’s currency in 2016 and the withdrawal of fuel and other subsidies to meet the terms of a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) affected Egyptians’ spending power. Other initiatives included the launch of a number of mega-projects to revive the economy, including a $8.2bn (£6.2bn) expansion of the Suez canal and a new capital expected to cost $45bn (£34bn).³⁵¹ The government said its actions were necessary to attract investment and help restore the economy, which suffered considerably with the drop in tourism that followed the 2011 revolution. But many questioned whether the money for those and other projects could have been better used improving infrastructure and public services at a time when many Egyptians were struggling to make ends meet.³⁵²

One of President Sisi’s biggest challenges has been the security situation in the Sinai Peninsula, which borders Gaza and Israel and is home to Egypt’s most active jihadist militants. Although the army launched a security offensive in Sinai shortly after Morsi was ousted, the situation continued to deteriorate, with one local jihadist group pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group in 2014.³⁵³ The group, known as Sinai Province, has mainly attacked military targets. But it also claimed it was behind the downing of a Russian passenger jet over the Sinai peninsula in October 2015, killing all 224 people on board. In late 2017, the president launched a new military campaign against militants killed more than 300 people in a bomb and gun attack on a mosque in northern Sinai.³⁵⁴

The Egyptian leader – who US President Donald Trump once called “my favourite dictator” – has portrayed himself as the only person capable of keeping order in Egypt. “Be warned, what happened seven or eight years ago will not be repeated in Egypt,” he said in 2018. “You don’t seem to know me well enough. No, by God, the price of Egypt’s stability and security is my life and the life of the army.”³⁵⁵

From the whole gamut of empirical evidences so far, there can be no dispute about the contextual nexus between dictatorship and poverty, underdevelopment or economic backwardness, using several African countries as case studies. Dictatorship is always a messy business in Africa.

It is not the Western-centric concept and practice of rule of law, good governance, public accountability and transparency, contrary to African traditional model of governance, that are the stumbling blocks against African development. On the contrary, it is precisely the lack of rule of law, good governance, public accountability and transparency that have collectively stalled African development in modern times.

Worse still is the growing process of securitization and militarization  of the rule of law and governance structures that have compounded the slow pace of African development. In other words, the continuous securitization and militarization of all social conflicts, using kinetic force, instead of de-securitization or non-kinetic weapons, have worsened the situation. Interestingly, this process itself has its origin in what we can now call traditional Western-centric concepts and ideological views of the State that is in conflict situation such as we have them in abundance in the Sahel region or Africa as a whole. The West is still locked in the traditional concept of the State and national security.

It is a nuanced situation complicated by the growing environment of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity which have come to pervade several African countries especially in the Sahel region.

Conclusion

If we go back over the arch of time and space in the African post-colonial political history, we will discover that it is precisely the lack of rule of law, good governance that actually drew Africa back. It was not because of the stringent requirements of rule of law and/or good governance that Africa did not make progress but precisely because of lack of them. African socioeconomic development suffered a great deal of setback because of sit-tight leaders who reigned for decades from one coast of the continent to the other. Corruption, repression of opposition parties and dissidents were legendary. Many African countries crashed into civil wars (including Nigeria), civil conflicts (again, including Nigeria) as a result of these wantoness that further weaken the abilities of African States to make progress and keep pace with the rest of the world especially the developed and/or middle income earning countries that are considered prosperous and stable today.

If the democratic process has been allowed to go on interruptedly from the very beginning at the independence years, without the interventions of coups, civil wars, civil strifes, etc, there is no doubt that Africa would have made much progress over the decades than what it is today. The electoral system and the democratic governance system would have been consolidated than what it is today; would have been more matured; a lot of economic dividends would have been achieved, etc. Rule of law, governance, respect for human rights would have gained deeper roots and blosomed forth powerfully. But the penchant for African leaders to cling to power at all costs, their larger-than-life messianic (actually hallucination) attitude truncated this much-expected progressive curve and ended up precisely in civil wars, conflicts and anomies. These calamitous failures have nothing to do with the democratic system (as a political system) adopted, rule of law (principles of governance), Montesquean separation of power in the governance space).

The core of the problems is precisely the character of leadership. But care should be taken here to avoid falling into the embrace of atavistic mode of thinking because the argument for and against this notion can be circuitous. For instance, it is often argued that every country or society deserves the leadership it gets at one time or the other. There has never been a convincing body of rationales or epistemology for this type of thinking. And nobody has been able to challenge the falsehood that might probably be embedded in it. 

Meanwhile, the US Government under President Joe Biden need to review or reassess its entire Sahelian policy. As it is today, the various policy thrusts starting from the Pan Sahel Initiative to Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership have been a resounding failure and no longer relevant despite the huge financial resources already committed to the region. There is need to address, for instance, the various agitations for self-determination in the region by the Tuaregs and other similarly aggrieved ethnic groups in other countries.

The French Government should do the same including the United Nations, European Union and African Union. The strict security approach no longer suffice to douse the tensions already generated in the region.