A Fitful Path: Nigeria’s Faltering Counterterrorism Operation against the Boko Haram in the Northeast

Abstract

Nigeria’s security environment continues to be tense, tenuous and fluid. From all indications and yardsticks of policy planning and implementation, the country’s security architecture seems to be unraveling. As the nation’s security establishments confront multiple security crises especially in Northern Nigeria, their policy and operational reactions continue to be reactive. While the Boko Haram insurgency rages, a decade after the commencement of military operations against the group, military successes in the Northeast are at best modest. Following a decade of commitment of military resources including billions of dollars deployed to the procurement of armament and military hardware, expansion of forces’ strength and creation of special operation formations, one can ask why have the military operations continued to falter and security architecture unravel? The study was anchored on the qualitative research approach and sourced data from published and openly available official documents, scientific publications and newspapers articles, reports, opinion pieces and commentaries. Making use of this open-sourced information, this study explains faltering military operations and Nigeria’s worsening security environment to the failure of security planning, poor civil-military relations including lack of depth in intelligence agencies penetration of local communities across Northern Nigeria, rivalry among the three arms of the Nigerian Armed Forces, persistency of the poor culture of intelligence information sharing and lack of synergy and poor coordination among Nigeria’s security establishments. This study recommends that more attention need to be paid to intelligence gathering, synergy and coordination among the security establishments in the bids to enhance the prospects of Nigeria’s counter-terrorism operation and other military engagements across the country.