Analysts welcome Nigeria’s security pact with Niger

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abu­ja, nige­ria — Nige­ria and neigh­bor­ing Niger have signed an agree­ment to boost their secu­ri­ty coop­er­a­tion, despite ten­sions fol­low­ing a coup in Niger more than a year ago.

The Niger­ian army announced the secu­ri­ty coop­er­a­tion pact on Tues­day in a com­mu­nique. The coun­tries’ defense chiefs signed the accord this week in Niamey, Niger’s capital.

It’s the first mil­i­tary deal between the nations since last July’s coup.

The Niger­ian mil­i­tary state­ment said that under the deal, Niger reaf­firmed its will­ing­ness to resume active par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Multi­na­tion­al Joint Task Force, a region­al secu­ri­ty alliance.

Secu­ri­ty ana­lyst Saheed She­hu praised the agreement.

“It’s a very good devel­op­ment for Nige­ria, for Niger and for the ECOWAS and for West Africa as a sub­re­gion,” She­hu said. “They actu­al­ly mud­dled up the sit­u­a­tion after the Niger coup such that for this one year we have been in a stale­mate. So this is the first time we’re see­ing the actu­al use of mil­i­tary diplo­ma­cy, because this fol­lowed a vis­it by the chief of defense staff.”

The July 2023 coup — which oust­ed Niger Pres­i­dent Mohamed Bazoum — strained rela­tions with Nige­ria, after ECOWAS, led by Nige­ri­a’s Pres­i­dent Bola Tin­ubu, imposed tough sanc­tions on Niger and threat­ened a mil­i­tary invasion.

The West Africa sub­re­gion has strug­gled to stem vio­lence from Islamist mil­i­tants, includ­ing Boko Haram and oth­er armed groups, for years.

She­hu said that if prop­er­ly imple­ment­ed, the Nige­ria-Niger deal could lead to more pos­i­tive out­comes for the region and ECOWAS.

“This is an avenue, if we exploit it very crit­i­cal­ly and with a lot of sense, it will be a way of bring­ing back not only Niger but also Burk­i­na Faso and Mali,” he said. “And what I’ll like to advise Pres­i­dent Tin­ubu — who’s the chair­man of ECOWAS — is to send the same kind of mil­i­tary diplo­ma­cy to Mali, prob­a­bly to Burk­i­na Faso.”

In Jan­u­ary, aggriev­ed by ECOW­AS’s sanc­tions, Niger, Mali and Burk­i­na Faso announced an exit from the region­al bloc and lat­er cre­at­ed a con­fed­er­a­tion. The three nations blamed ECOWAS for fail­ing to tack­le inse­cu­ri­ty in the region.

Mean­while, ECOWAS has not ruled out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Niger but it says it wants to pur­sue dia­logue with the juntas.

Region­al polit­i­cal affairs ana­lyst Ahmed Buhari said ECOWAS made mistakes.

“Whether we like it or not, our neigh­bor might not be doing exact­ly what we want, but we can­not go to war with our neigh­bors, espe­cial­ly when we’re inter­con­nect­ed on all lev­els,” Buhari said. “There’s no way we’re going to be fight­ing inse­cu­ri­ties in Nige­ria and hav­ing these ter­ror­ists move into Niger and after a while bounce back. Sim­i­lar­ly, if Niger is fight­ing them and there’s no col­lab­o­ra­tion, they can come to Nige­ria take a breather and then pounce back to Niger.”

In April, when Nige­ria host­ed a region­al coun­tert­er­ror­ism sum­mit in Abu­ja, Niger, Mali and Burk­i­na Faso did not attend.

Nige­rien mil­i­tary del­e­gates are expect­ed in Nige­ria soon to dis­cuss the mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion. Many will be watch­ing to see if the new part­ner­ship will change the region­al sta­tus quo.