1. Rethinking Military Responses to Terrorism and Insurgency in Nigeria
- Author:
- Maurice Ogbonnaya
- Publication Date:
- 11-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Social Science Research Council
- Abstract:
- Since 2003, terrorist insurgency in Nigeria has occasioned complex security and humanitarian crises, especially in the northeast region of the country. Boko Haram, a radical Islamist group from the region, has killed over 30,000 people and caused the displacement of more than 3 million others within the Lake Chad Basin region. Military responses by the Nigerian state and in collaboration with multilateral security agencies have achieved limited success. This paper not only questions the adequacy of military responses to terrorism, as a standalone approach, but it also advances the argument in the extant literature on the obsolescence of excessive militarization of counterterrorism operations as a security management strategy. It suggests the adoption of a more comprehensive and broad-based strategic approach. This is predicated on the limitations of purely military operations in counterterrorism, noting that military responses alone are structurally not designed to deal with the fundamental root causes of terrorism. In this regard, the paper advocates for a combination of military and other non-military counterterrorism approaches that seek to address the fundamental factors that give rise to terrorism.
- Topic:
- Terrorism, Insurgency, Counter-terrorism, Economic Inequality, and Exclusion
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Nigeria