By Ambassador Yusuf Maitama Tuggar
When we look back at its history, we see that the dynamism and movement of people, goods, services and ideas within the Sahel and with the outside world led to the creation of a number of states and even empires; Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Kanem-Borno and Sokoto, to mention but a few. There are lessons to learn from the rise and fall of these SahelianStates, in identifying the role Nigeria should play in charting a pathway to Peace, Security and Stability in the Sahel.
To begin with, Nigeria must lead the way in relying on empiricism when analysing the Sahel. We must do away with certain exogenous and erroneous perceptions about the Sahel. The Sahel is not an empty ungoverned quarter, a terra nullius. Contrary to that, it has one of the fastest growing populations in the world; Niger currently has a population of 24.2 million and is going to have 65 million by 2050. A large part of the Sahelian populace is Nomadic, which constitutes even more challenges in identifying and following pathways to peace, security and stability in the region.
There is often an over-simplification that goes thus: the Sahel is sparsely populated by nomadic groups (Tuaregs, Bororo, Zaghawa, etc.) and many of them tend towards terrorism and criminal activities. A certain degree of laziness in information collection processes and the wholesale adoption of western taxonomy and labelling has often led to wrong decision-making. A common syllogism is: There are jihadist and organised crime groups operating in the Sahel- many jihadists and members of organised criminal groups are Nomads- therefore all Nomads in the Sahel are Jihadists or part of organised crime groups. I am over-simplifying, but you catch my drift.
Nigeria must therefore, as the hegemon in the region lead the way in providing more accurate and factual analyses and interpretation of events in the Sahel. It is incumbent on the NIA to pave the way through its information collection process. This would begin with more accurate taxonomy and labelling of groups. Not every act of crime- kidnapping for ransom, attack on a community, smuggling of weapons must necessarily be ascribed to a stand-alone jihadi or tribal group. Quite often, such acts are driven by economic interests and not ideological or tribal association. We have unwittingly been conditioned to feed into foreign “War on Terrorism” framing and narratives, and Mary Kaldor’s open ended ‘New Wars’ Thesis. We must develop our own insights to what is happening in our neighbourhood instead of relying on those of outsiders, in order to find the right pathways to peace, security and stability in the Sahel. Nigeria must lead the way in establishing the guardrails.
And we have seen the disastrous outcomes of allowing others to frame the narratives in the Sahel; the open-ended War on Terror in the aftermath of 9-11 attacks and the adoption of the Democratic Peace Thesis as the central plank of the Bush Doctrine (of unilateralism, pre-emptive war and regime change) led to the toppling of Ghaddafi and disorder in Libya. The external framing of the situation in Libya was wrong and we are still bearing the effects today. Deriving from similar erroneous framing, came the European Union’s 2015-2020 Sahel Regional Action Plan, in which it decided to kill what it perceived to be the twin threats of terrorism and irregular migration with one stone by securitising the region, thereby restricting movement in a region where seasonal migration is a life and death matter. And the contiguous Sahara Desert has always made trade all-the-more important, as a matter of survival, which was why trade tended to be divorced from politics. The fallout of the failed EU Strategy contributed to the banditry and insurgency we are experiencing today. France as the experienced former colonial metropole took the lead in implementing this strategy, with Operation Barkhane and G5 Sahel. Significantly, Nigeria, with all its experience in leading ECOMOG to success, in settling previous conflicts in the region, was left out of these initiatives. The end result is- MNJTF is thus far succeeding and G5 Sahel cannot even be counted as a noble failure. We know our neighbourhood. Others should follow our lead in framing, labelling and proffering solutions.
The second thing we must do is to reposition ECOWAS into reverting to its founding ideals or raison d’etre. The Treaty of Lagos signed on 28th May 1975 begins with the overriding need to “foster and encourage the economic and social development of their states in order to improve the living standards of their peoples…”. Note the emphasis on peoples and not systems of government. Whilst reaffirming the existence of nation-states as prime referents and units of analysis in international relations, it is equally important for us to be cognizant of the particularities of our regional environment. One such is the concept of borders. In the Westphalian state system devolved out of Europe, borders are meant to be static, delimited and delineated. Whereas in the Sahel and perhaps most of Africa, historian JC Anene says that prior to colonisation, there were no boundaries as lines separating states. What we had were Frontier Zones and there were essentially three types:
- Frontier of Contact- between distinct cultural and political groups, often trading with each other
- Frontier of Separation- as a buffer zone between hostile neighbours, which neither side claims, such as deserts or uninhabitable forests like Dajin Rugu, between Katsina and Zamfara
- Overlapping Frontier- where different tribes intermingle and nomads move back and forth
In the Westphalian boundary system introduced by colonialism, river systems were more important than ethnology and, as such, were used to delimit borders. Not so in pre-colonial Sahel. This further complicated matters in complex cultural areas, turning some into geopolitical shatter belts.
Nigeria has two complex Sahelian cross-border areas in the northeast where it meets Niger, Chad and Cameroon and in the Northwest where it meets Niger and Benin and the latter two meet Mali and Burkina Faso. And historically, the Kanem-Borno empire covered parts of the 4 countries and beyond into present day Libya. To the west, parts of Nigeria (Kano, Katsina and Zaria) were incorporated into the 16th Century Songhai empire. By the 19th Century, the Sokoto Caliphate extended from West to East covering substantial parts of what used to be under Borno’s suzerainty. Although the frontiers of these pre-colonial states changed considerably during the course of their existence, they all had the frontiers I described; Frontier of Contact, Frontier of Separation and Overlapping Frontier. And nomadism as a form of political expression was permitted. The
States of Central Sudan have never been ethnically or culturally homogenous because there were few natural barriers in the Sahel. Today’s framing- because it is neither organic nor indigenous- tends to oversimplify our borders and their communities and fails to accommodate our particularities. Worse still, it criminalises some. Case in point is the Buduma dwellers of the Lake Chad region, that have existed since ancient times and have seen many states come and go. They have learnt to adopt to changing geopolitical situations, which is perhaps why they survived the Kanem-Borno and Jukun waves, as well as the brigandage or Rabeh bin Fadlallah, followed by the French, British and German contestations in their space. More recently, they have sometimes been collectively mislabelled as Boko Haram members or sympathisers. The reality may be that they smuggle and supply all comers for survival on the fringes of the modern state and feeling little effect of its promised improvement in standards of living. It falls on the Nigerian state to provide the correct labelling for the Buduma and other frontier dwellers.
Let us now turn inwards to the causal factors of insecurity in the Sahel and the Nigerian State; failure of governance at the local level. The fourth schedule of Nigeria’s Constitution clearly spells out the functions of local government councils: recommendations on economic planning and development of LGAs, collection of radio and TV licenses, building and maintaining cemeteries and housing for the homeless, licenses for bicycles, canoes, wheel barrows and carts, markets, motorparks and slaughter houses, construction of certain types of roads, street lights, drains, parks and gardens (as prescribed by the State House of Assembly) as well as sewage and refuse disposal. Provision of Primary Adult and Vocational Education and Health Services. Very little of this is being carried out by local governments in Nigeria because the funds and functions have been hijacked mostly by state governments and in some instances in the Sahel, by the central government. We cannot have sustainable peace, security and stability in the Sahel until and unless local governments function properly.
The Tinubu administration is taking the right steps in this direction. It has pre-emptively sued state governments and won. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of financial autonomy for local governments, directing that LGA allocations from the federation account should henceforth be paid to them, instead of state governments using them as slush funds. It is not by accident that Commissioners for local government are the most powerful and influential in most states. President Buhari tried to achieve this by way of Executive Order but was instead sued by State Governors and they won. But that is just one half of it.
The other half is to find a way to establish routine elections at the LGA level, so that LGA funds are administered by elected officials- Chairman and Ward Councillors, instead of those handpicked by Governors. The Governor’s party sweeps all the LGA elections except in a few symbolic instances, leaving little room for inter-party competition for developmental projects that ultimately benefit the people. Competition makes everyone sit up for fear of underperforming and losing the next election. The stranglehold that State independent Electoral Commissions have over LGAs is debilitating. Many states don’t even bother with elections. The Governor simply appoints loyalists as LGA Sole Administrators.
A system has been perfected through which a loyal LGA Chairman is promoted to the State House of Assembly, where he would not dare challenge the perspective of the Governor. In reality, State Houses of Assemblies are packed with passive loyalists that fail in their duty of providing checks and balances on the Executive Arm. They also fail in looking out for the interest of their local government areas.
Suffice it to say that the Achilles heel of modern state system in the Sahel is the failure of governance at the local level. To begin with, there was hardly a democratic tradition in former French colonies, where military officers served as local government administrators. Even in the British system, the initial Native Authority Ordinance gave regulatory powers to the Northern traditional systems, but not to build new infrastructure. But that was the past and this is now. We Africans are in charge and in control of our own destinies and Nigeria has a responsibility to serve as the lodestar to
guide others onto the right path.
So, what must Nigeria do? It must frame and shape the narrative down to the grainy bits of taxonomy. It must also push for the developmental advancement of border communities through inter-regional planning for development that would enhance
cooperation among communities in the Sahel. We already have existing cross-border governance instruments that we can apply towards this- Border Communities Development Agency, Nigeria-Niger Joint Commission, ECOWAS Cross Border
Cooperation Support Programme, CEN-SAD and the Lake Chad Basin Commission. This would close the gap of borderlands as a place of contrasting sovereign policies and therefore infrastructural impoverishment. It would further provide a platform for micro-diplomacy, exchange of ideas and sharing intelligence at the level of LGAs and states (apparently British and French colonial officers used to meet at the border for weekly security meetings, at some point). The establishment of usufructuary rights for nomadic communities in Nigeria and across the Sahel (to acquire the right to use land and facilities
but not necessarily to own) is also key. Hear also, the Tinubu Administration is blazing the trail with the creation of a Livestock Ministry to address such concerns.
Having said all that, we must also project strength and not weakness in engaging with our fellow Sahelian neighbours, particularly those that have experienced Unconstitutional Changes of Government. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, tread softly but carry a big stick. Wholesale employment of a policy of appeasement is not what our neighbours expect from us, when they look to us to tackle the region’s big hairy problems. We should, by all means, leave the door open for reconciliation and for the AES regimes to return their countries to the ECOWAS fold. At the same time, we must make it clear that replacing one foreign player with another will not solve the Sahel’s peace, security and stability challenges. The solution must be organic and homegrown. The path forward is strategic autonomy and the 4Ds.
I thank you for listening.
Yusuf M Tuggar
15th January 2024