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| Lt. General Waidi Shaibu & Lt. General Amara Idara Bangura |
In a pointed reaffirmation of Nigeria’s longstanding role as West Africa’s security anchor, the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Waidi Shaibu, has called for intensified military cooperation among Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) members—particularly English-speaking countries—to confront terrorism, violent extremism, and transnational threats. The appeal came during a high-level meeting in Abuja on Wednesday with Sierra Leone’s Chief of Defence Staff, Lieutenant General Amara Idara Bangura, against the backdrop of a fractured regional architecture following the formal exit of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger.
The engagement, held at Army Headquarters, underscored both continuity and urgency. Shaibu stressed the need for enhanced intelligence sharing, joint training, and operational coordination. He expressed concern over the withdrawal of the three Sahelian states and the rise of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), urging sustained diplomatic engagement to preserve regional cohesion while countering the spread of jihadist violence. Nigeria’s military experience and geographic position, he argued, impose a special responsibility to support peace and security across West Africa.
Bangura, who had just completed his tenure as chairman of the ECOWAS Committee of Chiefs of Defence Staff, reciprocated the sentiment. He recalled Nigeria’s decisive intervention during Sierra Leone’s civil war under the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), expressing appreciation for the sacrifices of Nigerian troops. Having himself trained in Nigeria, Bangura described the bilateral relationship as a strategic partnership rooted in shared history, mutual trust, and a common commitment to regional stability. He pledged continued cooperation among Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, including efforts to honour veterans of past peace support operations.
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A Region Divided: The Sahel Exit and Its Consequences
The meeting occurs nearly two years after Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger formally left ECOWAS on 29 January 2025, following a year-long notice period triggered by disagreements over sanctions and demands for a return to civilian rule after successive military coups. The three countries had earlier formed the AES as a mutual defence pact in 2023 and later elevated it to a confederation. Their departure removed more than half of ECOWAS’s land area, roughly 17 percent of its population, and a critical Sahelian frontier that once served as a buffer against jihadist expansion.
Jihadist groups—primarily al-Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and Islamic State Sahel Province—continue to dominate large swathes of the central Sahel. Attacks have intensified in recent months, including significant operations in Mali and Niger that have killed dozens of security personnel and threatened supply lines and mining areas. The AES governments have shifted toward Russian military support (via Africa Corps, the successor to Wagner) and pursued a sovereignty-focused security model, yet violence has not abated and, in some assessments, has expanded. Spillover risks to coastal states, including Nigeria’s northern borders, remain real.
ECOWAS, now reduced to 12 members, is adapting. On the sidelines of the recent CCDS leadership handover from Bangura to Senegal’s Vice Admiral Oumar Wade, defence chiefs presented a roadmap for a regional counter-terrorism brigade aimed at bolstering the ECOWAS Standby Force. Parallel diplomatic tracks continue: AES experts recently met in Ouagadougou to harmonise positions ahead of talks with ECOWAS in Dakar on practical issues such as free movement of people and goods. These negotiations reflect a pragmatic recognition that complete isolation is neither feasible nor desirable given porous borders and shared threats.
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Nigeria’s Enduring Footprint: From ECOMOG to Contemporary Challenges
Shaibu’s emphasis on history is not mere nostalgia. In the 1990s, Nigeria provided the overwhelming majority of troops, funding, and leadership for ECOMOG operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Estimates indicate Nigeria contributed around 80 percent of the forces and bore the bulk of the financial and human costs—hundreds of soldiers killed and billions of dollars expended—to restore order and later facilitate democratic transitions.
These interventions established Nigeria as the region’s indispensable security actor and created lasting institutional and personal ties, including with officers like Bangura.
Today’s context is more constrained. Nigeria faces its own multi-front security challenges: residual Boko Haram/ISWAP activity in the Northeast, banditry and kidnapping in the Northwest, farmer-herder conflicts, and separatist tensions. Shaibu himself rose through these campaigns, serving as Theatre Commander of Operation Hadin Kai before his appointment as Chief of Army Staff in late 2025.
Domestic pressures limit the bandwidth for large-scale external deployments of the kind seen in the ECOMOG era. This reality makes selective, high-impact cooperation—intelligence fusion, joint exercises among the more stable Anglophone states (Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, The Gambia), and capacity-building—both practical and necessary.
The focus on English-speaking countries is strategically coherent. These states share language, legal traditions, and, in several cases, direct experience of Nigerian-led peacekeeping.
Strengthening this core can create a more interoperable nucleus within the broader ECOWAS security architecture while leaving the door open for pragmatic engagement with AES on counter-terrorism.
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Strategic Implications and the Path Ahead
The Abuja meeting is part of a broader pattern of Nigerian military diplomacy. Recent engagements with the ECOWAS Standby Force leadership have similarly stressed doctrine harmonisation, joint training, and logistics support. At the same time, Nigeria’s defence leadership has publicly supported finding common ground with the AES rather than permanent confrontation, recognising that jihadist groups exploit any gaps between regional blocs.
Several challenges persist. Political trust between ECOWAS and the AES remains low. Resource constraints affect both the Standby Force and national armies. External actors—Russia in the Sahel, traditional Western partners elsewhere—add complexity. Yet the alternative—fragmented responses to a transnational threat—carries higher costs. A functional regional counter-terrorism capability, even if initially limited to willing ECOWAS members and selective AES cooperation, would mark progress.
Shaibu’s message also carries a domestic resonance. By highlighting the sacrifices of past and present personnel and the need to recognise veterans, the Army chief links regional ambition to institutional morale and legitimacy—critical as the Nigerian Army expands its divisional structure and pursues multi-domain approaches to internal threats.
West Africa’s security order is being rewritten. The AES exit has diminished ECOWAS’s geographic and demographic weight, but it has not erased the underlying interdependence created by borders, trade, migration, and shared vulnerabilities.
Nigeria’s call for tighter military coordination among remaining members, grounded in historical precedent and contemporary necessity, represents a realistic adaptation rather than nostalgia.
Whether this translates into concrete joint capabilities, sustained intelligence mechanisms, and eventual practical collaboration with the Sahel states will determine if the region can regain the initiative against the jihadist challenge that has already claimed thousands of lives and displaced millions.
The meeting between Shaibu and Bangura was more than a courtesy call. It was a quiet assertion that, even in a divided West Africa, collective security remains possible—if the remaining partners choose to invest in it.
Samuel O. Sulaimon is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Naijapiz. He covers News, Sports, Finance, Faiths, Education, Politics and Technology.
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