Safiya Wada Abu,

Abubakar Umar Lamido,

&

Abubakar Yusuf Umar

Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna,

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Department of History and War Studies

Email: sawada@nda.edu.ng, safiyawadaabu@gmail.com

Abstract

Nigeria as the most populated African country has been playing significant role in various capacity in order to ensure security, economic development, and political stability across the West African region and the continent at large. The issue of security is one critical aspect that has recently proved to be challenging the West African region, specifically the Boko Haram insurgency which is instrumental in leading to the creation of the Multinational Joint Task Force in the Lake Chad basin in order to tackle the threat emanating from constant attack by the group across the Lake Chad Basin. The paper focuses in addressing the various contribution of Nigeria in the creation of the Multi-National Joint Task Force in the Lake Chad Basin from 2012 -2016. Some of the key aspect addressed in this paper includes; the Nigerian contribution in the aspect of Funding, Leadership, and the contribution of personnel for the smooth operation of the MNJTF. The paper established that to a greater extent, the objectives of the commission have been achieved as to addressing the issue of insurgency by limiting the attacks and reducing the activities of the insurgents in the Lake Chad Basin largely due to the role of Nigeria and her security forces. Furthermore, the paper identified the various issues, challenges and successes encountered by the Joint Task Force in discharging their mandate. The paper concludes that, the ability of the MNJTF to achieve to a very large extent the role expected of it in the mitigation of insurgency, all states in the force have to put aside their differences and focus on the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity as well as continuity of their states.

Keywords: Collective Security, Joint Task Force, Insurgency, Lake Chad Basin Commission, Multinational Joint Task Force.

Introduction

Despite sharing history with other African countries, Nigeria stand out as it has been able to initiate and contribute to the development of the continent politically, economically and socially to ensure stability and peaceful coexistence between and within states. Politically and economically, it has led efforts that resulted to the creation and transition of the Organization of African Unity(OAU) to African Union (AU), and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), as well as its military organ (ECOMOG)in order to engage the organization’s military manpower in various seize-fire, peacekeeping and peace-enforcement mission along with other security issues that were engulfing the African continent in the periods after the decolonization process. Another area, where Nigeria stands out is in its role in the Lake Chad region and the establishment of the Lake Chad Basin Commission in 1964.The roles Nigeria played, facilitated cooperation between the states sharing the resources of the Lake Chad and subsequently, the establishment of the Multinational Joint Task Force. This paper therefore, assesses the role of Nigeria in the establishment of the Multinational Joint Task Forces up to the period the MNJTF was reconstituted to engage the Boko Haram insurgents operating within the lake Chad Basin.

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