Nigeria’s role in the Sahel crisis from 2011

DAMILARE EBENIZA

Damilare Ebeniza studied Political Science and International Relations in Nigeria, Benin Republic, and France, with a research focus on Nigerian history, economy, and foreign politics. He has experience as a conference interpreter and external relations management across Chad, Niger, Mali, and Guinea Conakry, for governmental, regional and international organisations in West Africa. He is an analyst for West African Democracy Radio in Dakar, Senegal and actively contributes to critical dialogues shaping the region’s socio-political landscape. Proficient in French, English, and four additional non-Nigerian African languages, he embodies a commitment to cross-cultural understanding and effective communication. He can be reached via comment@businessamlive.com 

In my article on 7 May 2024, I wrote, ‘The history of arms dealers in Africa and the prevailing security situation in those countries (namely Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso) point only in one direction’. I was talking about the real possibility of a civil war in the Sahel. When this August, I read that Ukrainian officials are now publicly talking about their support for the Tuareg rebels in their deadly ambush of Malian and Russian forces in Mali’s border region with Algeria, I thought the time was appropriate to revisit the Sahel Security situation on this page with an emphasis on the Nigerian role in it. This is important in my view if we Nigerians want to prevent our region from becoming the next hot battleground of the New Cold War.

In his monumental 1904 essay titled: The Geographical Pivot of History, H J Mackinder, one of the founding fathers of Geopolitics wrote, “Every explosion of social forces, instead of being dissipated in a surrounding circuit of unknown space and barbaric chaos, will be sharply re-echoed from the far side of the globe, and weak elements in the political and economic organism of the world will be shattered in consequence.” For anyone who paid enough attention to the waving of Russian flags in some parts of the northern region of our country during the last protest, it is clear that every earthquake in Assamaka, the border crossing town between Algeria and Niger, makes the earth move in Abuja whether we noticed it or not.

To fully grasp the Nigerian government’s role in the crisis in the Sahel, we have to begin from the early month of 2011. In February and March 2011, Gabon, South Africa, and Nigeria were the countries representing the African continent on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). On 26 February 2011, the fifteen members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously adopted Resolution 1970 which, according to the United Nations’ summary of it, ”condemns the widespread and systematic attacks taking place against civilian population in Libya that amount to crimes against humanity and demands an immediate end to the violence. The resolution also refers the situation in Libya to the International Criminal Court and imposes sanctions that include an arms embargo, travel ban, and asset freezes.”

When Resolution 1970 was adopted in February 2011, the rebels fighting against the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had the upper hand. The thinking behind the resolution was not peace or, to quote that resolution, “the protection of the civilian population.”  The idea behind the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970 was that an arms embargo, assets freezes, and travel ban should be enough to empower the rebels not only to topple the Khadafi regime but to arrest, prosecute and, as we now know, execute the Libyan leader.

The problem with this thinking, however, was that war is unpredictable. Gaddafi was able to mobilise his Army, and, by the first weeks of March, the Libyan Army was in a position to take Benghazi, the Rebel’s stronghold and capital. Then comes the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 of 17 March 2011 and what can now only be described as the Nigerian diplomatic version of a comedy of errors.

If one is looking for a specific date when the security in the Sahel was upended, it has to be 17 March 2011. The resolution in paragraph 6 authorised military intervention in Libya under the guise of enforcing a No-Fly Zone. Although Libya was under an arms embargo, the rebels received substantial weapons from Western powers charged with enforcing the No-Fly Zone with the help of the now-deposed Sudanese leader, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir. The Sudanese leader will not be the only African leader to provide substantial help in turning Libya into an unregulated arms Bazaar for both state and non-state dealers. He received no inconsequential help from Gabon, South Africa, and our dear country, Nigeria.

One can understand why a South African diplomat may lack the appreciation of the full implication of his or her vote on this resolution. Nigeria’s votes for the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, however, is a classic case of an act of diplomatic self-sabotage. The best indication of the level of understanding our eminent diplomats brought to bear on the Libyan issue could only be put into its proper scope when we review the reasons given by Brazil, Germany, China, Russia, and India for abstaining from the vote on resolution 1973 even though a few weeks earlier all voted for the resolution 1970 on the same issue.

What was it that prompted these five nations to abstain that did not register in the minds of our continent’s eminent diplomats? 

Let me quote the explanation given by the Brazilian Ambassador to the United Nations, MARIA LUIZA RIBERIO VIOTTI, for her country’s abstention. “We are not convinced that the use of force as provided for in operative paragraph 4 of the present resolution will lead to the realisation of our common objectives – the immediate end of violence and the protection of civilians”.

 The German Ambassador to the United Nations, PETER WITTIG, said, for Germany, “Decisions regarding the use of military force were always extremely difficult to take. Indeed, in the implementation of the resolution just adopted, Germany saw great risks, and the likelihood of large-scale loss of life should not be underestimated. Those who participated in its implementation could be drawn into a protracted military conflict that could draw in the wider region.

The writing was, even at the moment of the adoption of the resolution, on the wall. The Indian, Chinese, and Russian explanations go along the same line. I will not bore the reader with these quotes; they are available online for anyone interested.

In a diplomatic illustration of Matthiew 13: 14 — they will indeed hear but never understand and will indeed see but not perceive — the Nigerian Ambassador to the United Nations at that time, JOY OGWU, a professor, would register for prosperity how competent she was. Defending our nation’s vote for Resolution 1973, she said, “The current state of affairs leaves an indelible imprint on the conscience and compels us to act”. Then she added, “Today, we have sent an unequivocal message to the Libyan people that dignity and safety of every man, woman, and child are paramount”.

With hindsight, one can only wonder who exactly are the ‘we’ she was referring to here. What is clear though is this. Our highly credentialed diplomats have not learned an important life lesson; that is, sometimes while dealing with an unpleasant situation, one’s best effort should be devoted to not making it worse. And this may require the most important effort of all; namely to do nothing. 

More than a decade after the United Nations Resolution 1973, our position on the coup of 26 July 2023 in the Republic of Niger suggests a dangerously slow learning curve for our diplomatic establishment.

In less than 12 months following Resolution 1973, the South African Government concluded its vote for this resolution was a poor decision. President Jacob Zuma would later deliver a speech to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in January 2012 in which he said, “Your excellencies, it is the view of the African Union that the 1973 resolution of the UN Security Council was largely abused in some specific respects”. I searched for a quote from a high-ranking Nigerian official at that time on the security implications for our region if Gaddafi fell. I am still searching. Nigeria’s one meaningful contribution to all African Union-led efforts to bring an end to the crisis in Libya was to join the Ethiopian Prime Minister who argued during the AU Summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, that Gaddafi had to go. Perhaps, this was our country’s payback to Gaddafi for suggesting Nigeria should split into many states like India to end religious violence.

Libya’s neighbours, namely Algeria, Chad, and Niger, were, as Professor Alex de WAAL put it in his 2013 article, “aware that if Gaddafi’s grip on the sundry transnational armed groups present in Libya were to be relaxed, at just the same time as the vast arsenals in his many military bases were opened, instability could rapidly spread across the region”. They were all accused by the international press of being sellouts. Their refusal to outrightly call for the killing of Gaddafi was mischaracterised as payback for the financial largesse the Libyan leader had extended to them and an indication of their support for the Libyan dictator at the expense of the Libyan people. 

In 2016, the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee published a report titled: “Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK’s future policy options.”  The opening paragraph of the report says: “In March 2011, The United Kingdom and France, with the support of the United States, let the international community support an intervention in Libya to protect civilians from attacks by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi. This policy was not informed by accurate intelligence. In particular, the Government failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated ….”

As it turned out, the German diplomat quoted above was better informed than the only diplomat representing the West African region at the United Nations Security Council. To understand what the German diplomat meant by “a protracted military conflict that could draw in the wider region’”, one needs only to look at the map and the demography of Mali and Niger.

The Malian population in 2011 was 16,039,734 according to World Bank data. That of Niger was 17,283,112. That is 16,039,734 people for an area of 1,241,238 square kilometres in the case of Mali and 17,283,112 people for an area of 1,267,000 square kilometres in the case of Niger. With even their current population of below thirty million, neither Mali nor Niger has enough manpower to defend that vast landmass. To get a sense of the challenge these nations are dealing with, it may help to reflect on the difficulty Nigeria, with her larger population and larger military budget, is having dealing with the insurgency in some parts of the country. Until the United Nations resolution 1973, security in the Sahel depended to a substantial extent on what happened in the Maghreb.

When the Tuareg, a nomadic people who served as mercenaries in the Libyan Army under Gaddafi, found themselves landless following the death of the Libyan leader, they created a new geopolitical reality in northern Mali. For the first time in that part of our continent, a people, whose mode of life is based on mobility, claimed sovereignty over a large swath of northern Mali. The Malian army was in no position to defend that territory against these battle-hardened Tuareg. It took another French military intervention to bring the various rebel groups and the Malian government to sign an agreement in Algiers, in 2015.

The practical consequence of the implementation of what is now known as the “Algiers Accords” is the partition of Mali into two: one part controlled by Bamako, the other controlled by the various rebel groups with the French and the United Nations forces between them.

Considering what happened following the Nigerian vote at the United Nations in 2011, one would expect the Nigerian Foreign Policy Establishment to have learned the lesson by now. But, following the military coup on 26 July 2023 in Niger, the Nigerian government unleashed an economic war on Niger and threatened an actual military intervention to restore constitutional order. 

What would have happened, if the new Administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had carefully considered the impact of the previous ECOWAS sanctions on Mali and Burkina Faso and decided on a different course of action? 

We would have certainly antagonised many within the region and outside the continent. But we would have retained our capacity to shape the ensuing events. Instead, we followed and still follow the ECOWAS trajectory, hoping that a combination of vain threats and empty democratic rhetoric would bring the solution we seek to the problem at hand.

Except that Nigerian foreign policy is a tool in the hands of others, our excessive focus on democracy in the language we use to talk about regional issues needs to change. We also have to recognise that we cannot shift to Senegal, however willing that country is, the responsibility to bring Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger back to ECOWAS. Our country not only betrayed the trust Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso placed in us as the region representative at the United Nations Security Council in 2011, we were prepared to double down in the name of upholding democratic rule instead of helping them deal with the aftermath of our disastrous vote.

In the situation in the Sahel, Nigeria has erred, not once. The least we can do now to be able to play any meaningful role in the crisis is to acknowledge our role. The challenges facing our region require collective and coordinated efforts. We cannot lead that effort if we continue to act as though 17 March 2011 meant nothing. The region is crying for Nigeria’s leadership. We cannot lead if our neighbours cannot trust our judgement. So far, we have done more to break their trust than to earn it. 

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