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Niger Delta Militants Compound Nigeria’s Security Crises

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Posted: August 14th, 2016

Nigeria faces three distinct security crises, with one common thread: failure of governance. Terrorist group Boko Haram continues to wreak havoc in the north, a conflict over land between farmers and nomadic herdsmen rages in the middle of the country, and a renewed insurgency in the south – in the Niger Delta region – threatens to deplete oil production and government revenue.

“These conflicts are a reflection both of the weakness of the state and its ability to project rule of law beyond Nigeria’s major cities, and the unsustainable nature of the age-old solutions that it attempts, namely cooptation of violent actors, short-term use of patronage and payoffs, and empowering local strongmen to ‘keep a lid’ on communal conflicts on behalf of the government,” Matthew Page, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, tells The Cipher Brief.

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