Militancy, Domestic cum International Terrorism: Interrogating the Effectiveness of Nigeria's National Security and Strategic Planning

Abstract

Nigeria's security system struggled with militancy in the Niger delta region till the implementation of the amnesty programme in 2009. Following that, it has equally been struggling with the domestic cum international terrorist activities of the boko haram terrorist group since 2009. The inability of the national security system to effective check emerging security threats raises questions regarding its capacity. The paper assesses Nigeria's approach to national security as being ineffective in curbing various security challenges in the last decade. The paper relied on secondary data comprising relevant published books, scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles, newspaper articles, and materials downloaded from the internet. It adopts political economy, frustration-aggression and game theories as major theoretical constructs. These theories are used as platform to build a treatise for a pro-active preventive approach to Nigeria's national security and strategic planning. We argue in the paper that Nigeria's approach to national security and strategic planning systems are outdated, and need to be completely transformed. The paper concludes that new approach to Nigeria's national security must be a combination of military and non-military strategies that have deterrent measures to curtail future threats to security and anchored on delivery of good governance by political leaders cross all levels of government. Those who contravene national security either directly or through proxy must be made to face the full wrath of the law regardless of their social status.