A Bad Case of Crisis-Resource Mismatch: How Serial Misdiagnoses of Violence Have Made Nigeria a Fertile Ground for Insurgencies

Abstract

“Playing host” to a motley collection of insurgent groups has transformed Nigeria into the sixth most “terrorized” country in the world. And the statistics — over 30,000 persons killed in 2023 alone, millions more displaced since 2009, and vast swathes of near-ungovernable territory —confirm that dubious distinction. But the Nigerian government has not sat idly by: she has spent billions of defense dollars, and her military has lost hundreds of soldiers in numerous counterinsurgency campaigns. Yet, things have gone from bad to worse: from a lone Boko Haram insurgency of 2009, Nigeria today faces multiple insurgencies — Ansaru (since 2012), Islamic State, West Africa Province (since 2016), Indigenous People of Biafra (since 2016), Lakurawa (since 2017), etc. The question becomes: why have those huge defense expenditures and military sacrifices not put an end to insurgencies?

Introduction

Nigeria is faced with a proliferation of insurgencies. What began in 2009 as a localized Boko Haram rebellion in northeastern Nigeria has metastasized into a patchwork of insurgencies across the country. A principal reason for that metastasis is a counterinsurgency doctrine which uses the intensity of violence — number of deaths or scope of destruction — as the primary trigger for counterinsurgency intervention. That doctrine falsely assumes that more violence equals more threat. In reality, what matters is not the intensity of violence, but its purpose. Insurgent-generated violence that seeks to undermine state legitimacy is categorically different from, and more threatening than, opportunistic or profit-driven non-insurgent-generated violence. The former signals insurgency. The latter may not. Conflating the two has allowed groups with insurgent ambitions to fester so long as their violence remains “low-grade.” Only when the death toll and destruction climb to ‘intolerable levels’ does the military intervene — by which time the insurgency has become entrenched, gained legitimacy, mobilized local support, and become costlier to confront. Seeing violence as a technical problem to be suppressed — rather than a political signal to be decoded — has produced serial misdiagnoses of threats and birthed classic crisis-resource mismatches: interventions are too little, too late, and with the wrong tools.

A Flawed Counterinsurgency Doctrine Is a Reason Nigeria Has Become a Hotbed for Insurgencies

Insurgencies, because of their potential for large-scale disruption and destruction, are brutal audits of a government’s crisis management ability. And, if crisis management is defined as “the actor’s attempt to bring a disrupted or weakened system at any stage of crisis back into alignment to achieve normal function” then, Nigeria’s counterinsurgency doctrine is the crisis management model followed by her military as she attempts to “bring a disrupted system. . .back. . .into normal function” amid insurgent-generated violence. Crucially, that doctrine, like other crisis management models, is undergirded by a set of assumptions. The premise of this article is that a key assumption undergirding that doctrine is not only flawed, but it is also a principal reason for the metastasis of insurgencies across Nigeria.

Nigeria’s Counterinsurgency Doctrine Conflates ‘Insurgent-Generated Violence’ With ‘Non-Insurgent-Generated Violence’

In his 2018 Master’s thesis at the United States Army Command and General Staff College, Major (as he then was) Aliyu Hassan, highlighted a key assumption undergirding Nigeria’s counterinsurgency doctrine, saying,

“In the various deployments of the Nigerian military for counterinsurgency roles, ROMO [the range of military operations] has been determined by the intensity of violence.” (Emphasis added)

This categorical statement shows that the intensity of violence, rather than its purpose, is the primary trigger for determining when and how the Nigerian military is deployed in counterinsurgency operations. Plainly put, the Nigerian military will only intervene when, in her estimation, ‘higher than tolerable” levels of violence are being perpetrated.

Major Hassan, a Nigerian army officer, in his aptly titled thesis, The Nigerian Military in Domestic Counterinsurgency Operations: A Study in Range of Military Operations, 1960-2017, goes on to describe the six phases of Nigerian counterinsurgency doctrine:

In order to be able to cope with. . .crisis, there is need to identify the phases of IS [internal security] operations. The phases. . .are the Situation Development Phase; Information Management Phase; Police Intervention Phase; Military Intervention Phase; and Consolidation Phase; and Reappraisal Phase.

The Situation Development Phase may be described as a period of uneasy peace. . . objective monitoring of the situation is carried out by all the security agencies, and information is made available to the political leadership. . . The Information Management Phase marks the phase in which the eruption of a crisis is imminent. It requires the contribution of critical information by security agencies and institutions.

The [Information Management] phase escalates into the Police Intervention Phase when a crisis situation escalates and grows in intensity. In that phase, the police intervene professionally. . . It is when the police fail to restore order that the crisis crosses over into the Military Intervention Phase, and the military is invited to intervene in the crisis situation. . .” (Emphases added by author)

When a crisis situation escalates and grows in intensity. . . the military is invited to intervene in the crisis situation. (Emphases added by author)

Again, these words are categorical: the intensity of violence is the primary trigger for determining when and how the Nigerian military is deployed in counterinsurgency operations, and military intervention occurs late in the game —in stage four of a six-stage process.

The problem with this approach is that it is generic — unable to discriminate between insurgent-generated violence and non insurgent-generated violence. The latter is violence perpetrated by groups motivated by profit or opportunism, while the former is violence perpetrated by groups with more baleful aims — the overthrow of state authority. Crucially, while the use of the intensity of violence as the trigger for military intervention is appropriate for non insurgent-generated violence, that metric is inappropriate for determining when the military should intervene in cases of insurgent-generated violence. That is because waiting until the intensity of violence perpetrated by insurgents becomes “high-grade” is tantamount to giving space and time to insurgencies to take root and gain local support and legitimacy, by which point they are costlier to contain.

All Crises Are Not Born Equal

All crises are not created equal. Non insurgent-generated crises motivated by profit or opportunism can usually be handled by effective policing and, if that fails, defeated by late deployment of the military. Not so for insurgent-generated crises. The latter, when ignored, tend to fester and build up local support that helps them better challenge state authority. Crisis researcher Pat Lagadec, in his widely acclaimed work on crisis management practices, drives the point home, saying,

“Some specific situations must be handled with extreme urgency. [They contain] chains of events that tend to snowball. Time is on the side of the crisis, working against those in charge . . Every delay causes things to get worse. . .[exacerbating] the immediate issue…”

Insurgent-generated crises, whose aim is to undermine state authority, fit the bill of “some specific situations” that “must be handled with extreme urgency.” Therefore, a counterinsurgency doctrine that places military intervention as the fourth stage in a six-stage process, is akin to a “delay [causing] things to get worse. . .[exacerbating] the immediate issue. . .”

Case in Point: The Insurgency in Southeastern Nigeria

This insurgency is led by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a separatist group in southeastern Nigeria. It began as a multi-year ‘low-level’ campaign that saw insurgents raid weakly defended Police stations in a bid to secure weapons. It then burst into the limelight with a violent simultaneous raid on Police headquarters, a large correctional center, and the Governor’s Mansion in Owerri, the Imo State capital, in April 2021. If the purpose of violence (attempts to undercut state authority) had been used as the primary trigger for determining when the military should be deployed, then that deployment should have occurred earlier, between 2018-2020, by, for example, “hardening” Police stations with embedded troops to make those stations harder to overrun. But, since the intensity of violence was the metric for determining the timing of military deployment, the military only fully intervened (helicopter gunships and a ground offensive) after the violent attack of 2021, by which point insurgents had become entrenched and more difficult to defeat.

Interestingly, the metamorphosis of the insurgency in Nigeria’s southeast described above strongly mirrors that of the Islamist Boko Haram group in the early 2000s. Even more interestingly, the timing of military intervention in the Southeastern insurgency also closely mirrors the timing of the military deployment in the Boko Haram insurgency!

Nigeria’s Counterinsurgency Doctrine, by Design, Produces Crisis-Resource Mismatches

A key drawback of Nigeria’s counterinsurgency doctrine is that it always produces crisis-resource mismatches in cases of insurgent-generated crises. Crisis-resource mismatches occur because the initial weak signals given off by the insurgency seduce leaders into taking correspondingly weak actions to counter the problem. Later, when the insurgency has become full-blown and is giving off strong signals, leaders begin to respond more vigorously. But those vigorous responses are too little, too late, and with the wrong tools. Researchers Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe, in their widely cited work on crisis management, buttress the point, saying “Managing the unexpected often means that people have to make strong responses to weak signals, something that is counterintuitive and not very ‘heroic.’ Normally, we make weak responses to weak signals and strong responses to strong signals.”

Interestingly, since early 2025, the Mamuda group, taking a page out of the playbook of southeastern insurgents and Boko Haram, has begun raiding police stations and conducting kidnap-for-ransom raids in Kwara State, north-central Nigeria. Unsurprisingly, relying on the intensity of violence to trigger military intervention has meant that the Mamuda insurgents have yet to experience the full weight of the military, giving the group room to fester and entrench itself.

Conclusion: Nigeria’s Counterinsurgency Doctrine Is in Dire Need of Review

To all intents and purposes, the Nigerian military is capable of conducting competent counterinsurgency campaigns. But the persistent crisis-resource mismatches resulting from delays in her deployment — the result of a flawed assumption in Nigeria’s counterinsurgency doctrine — is a principal reason for the poor results she has obtained on the battlefield. Therefore, attempts to improve the military’s counterinsurgency performance should begin with a review of Nigeria’s counterinsurgency doctrine.

The Two-Handed Model of Crisis Management

The data-flow diagram below highlights the “Two-Handed Crisis Management Model” — a “smart” alternative to Nigeria’s current crisis management model.

The cornerstone of the Two-Handed Model is a doctrinal shift from “violence suppression” to “violence decoding”; a shift that helps leaders see violence as a political signal to be decoded, rather than a mere technical problem to be suppressed. Crucially, the incorporation of a ‘violence decoding’ distant early warning mechanism also makes the model ‘smart’ — able to discriminate between insurgent-generated crises and non-insurgent-generated crises.

If the purpose of violence is ‘decoded’ as ‘political’— aimed at overthrowing state authority —then the shorter “left hand” of the data flow diagram should be followed; military resources should be deployed in a timely manner. Crises on the shorter “left hand” of the data flow diagram are classic insurgencies; “specific situations [that] must be handled with extreme urgency. [Because they contain] chains of events that tend to snowball.” In practice, this timely deployment of the military entails a merger of the Police Intervention and Military Intervention Phases. That merger is akin to throwing more resources at the early stage of an insurgency —the counterintuitive strong response to a weak signal that sidesteps the crisis-resource mismatches that have hitherto hobbled counterinsurgency operations in Nigeria. On the other hand, if the violence perpetrated is ‘decoded’ as motivated by profit or opportunism, the longer “right half” of the data flow diagram should be followed: the police should be deployed. Only after the failure of the police should the military be deployed.