The current security crisis in Nigeria’s neighbouring African countries, especially in the Sahel, could further worsen insecurity due to growing efforts by extremist groups and terrorists in the Sahel to gain access to Lake Chad and the Northwest of the country.
Observers are worried that the Niger Republic, Burkina Faso and Mali are deeply troubled by the al-Qaeda-affiliated JNIM and the Tuareg separatist rebels JNIM /FLA coalition. They warned that JNIM/FLA access to the Lake Chad Basin would significantly serve as safe havens and boost their capacity for smuggling of arms and foreign fighters unhindered due to porous borders.
Consequently, the Sahel countries of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are widely regarded as the epicentre of terrorist activity, with insurgent networks linked to ISIS and Al-Qaeda particularly entrenched in Burkina Faso and Mali. The Nigerian government has been battling Boko-Haram terrorists for 16 years, and its arch-rival ISWAP fighters; Bandits, Lakurawa, Ansaru and recently Yaro Mallam terrorist groups.
According to the 2025 Global Terrorism Index, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace, the Sahel accounted for 19 percent of all terrorist attacks worldwide and 51 percent of global terrorism-related deaths in 2024, up from 48 percent in 2023.
