RETHINKING MILITARY RESPONSES TO TERRORISM AND INSURGENCY IN NIGERIA
by Maurice Ogbonnaya
National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Nigeria

November 2022

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.

To read more please go to https://www.ssrc.org/publications/rethinking-military-responses-to-terrorism-and-insurgency-in-nigeria/