Borders that continue to bother us: the politics of cross-border security cooperation in Africa’s Lake Chad Basin

ABSTRACT

Until 2014, security responses to the Boko Haram insurgency were largely domestic and military. However, the increasing expansion of Boko Haram attacks in the Lake Chad Basin (LCB), compounded by the consequent humanitarian crisis, compelled a joint security action. This came in the form of the rejuvenated Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), comprising forces from the LCB member states (Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, and Chad) and Benin. My goal in this paper is to interrogate the cross-border dynamics and ramifications of the Boko Haram insurgency, and the nature of security responses to it. The analysis extends to the politics of cross-border security cooperation against Boko Haram in the LCB, as well as the impact of the MNJTF on Boko Haram’s evolving tactics. Along the way, the paper identifies key challenges to the effective operationalisation of the MNJTF.

KEYWORDS:

• Boko Haram
• Lake Chas Basin
• MNJTF
• cross-border security
• cooperation

View correction statement:

Correction to: Agbiboa, Borders that continue to bother us: the politics of cross-border security cooperation in Africa’s Lake Chad Basin

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The name ‘Boko Haram’ was popularly ascribed to the group because of its condemnation of Western education (makarantun boko) and Westernized elites (yan boko).

2 In 2014, however, under the auspices of the Office of the National Security Adviser, efforts were made to diversify this military response. This involved the development of a ‘society-focused’ approach that emphasised countering radicalisation and promoting development. A key component of this ‘soft’ approach was a CVE Programme.

3 ‘AU in a Nutshell’. http://www.au.int/en/about/nutshell.

4 ‘Regional Economic Communities (RECs)’. http://www.au.int/en/organs/recs.

5 A vital component of APSA is the PSC which is supported by the AU Commission through its chairperson. Added to this are four other pillars that include the Panel of the Wise, the Continental Early Warning System, the African Standby Force, and the Special Fund. These structures are further strengthened by the peace and security mechanisms of the eight recognized RECs, which make up key building blocks of the AU and are designed to attend to specific needs of each region and to advance regional economic integration

6 These include the Arab Maghreb Union, ECOWAS, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the Economic Community of Central African States, and the Southern African Development Community.

7 The Maitatsine uprisings led to 11 days of violent confrontations with state security forces in Kano in December 1980. A tribunal inquiry set up by the federal government in 1981 found that 4177 people were killed in the violence, excluding members of the police force who also lost their lives (Agbiboa, 2013a). Although the Nigerian Government used its military might to crush the uprisings and its leader, hundreds lost their lives in reprisal attacks over the next five years (Human Rights Watch, 2012).

8 The historical identity of the almajiri has suffered distortion with the emergence of Boko Haram (see Hoechner, 2014).

9 Boko Haram's operational capacity was partly enhanced by the glut of arsenal that flooded into West Africa and the Sahel in the wake of the fall of Libya's Mu’ammar Gaddafi in late 2011, and the attendant dislocation of several fighters.

10 A 2010 assessment by the National Bureau of Statistics reported that national poverty rate was 60.9 per cent, but it was 77.7 per cent for the northwest and 76.3 per cent for the northeast, compared with 59 per cent for the southwest (Ismail, 2015, p. 206).

11 Actual numbers are difficult to verify (ISS, 2016).

12 A settlement between the two countries ended this dispute.

13 For example, many hundreds of Boko Haram members – and a number of their senior leadership – have been killed or captured since President Buhari took office, and the group no longer appears to have access to the kinds of weaponry it has had in the past (Cooke, 2016).