Interagency collaboration and the management of counter-insurgency campaigns against Boko Haram in Nigeria
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Interagency collaboration and the management of counter‑insurgency campaigns against Boko Haram in Nigeria Okechukwu M. Ikeanyibe1 · Charles N. Olise1 · Isah Abdulrouf1 · Ikechukwu Emeh1
© Springer Nature Limited 2020
Abstract This paper examines interagency collaboration (IAC) among key security agencies and how this has impacted the counter-insurgency campaign against Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria. Interagency collaboration is often perceived as a panacea for dealing with many complex social problems. But there still exists fogginess about the nature, triggers, and what determines results of interagency collaboration. This study focuses on these issues. We employed the complexity theory to argue that organizations are like complex adaptive systems (CAS) that can naturally be drawn to interdependence and connectivity in reaction to a shared problem. Weiss theory helps to explain the determinants as depending on available resources and the capacity of collaborating institutions. We conclude that despite the tendency towards conflict among the Nigerian security agencies, the initial failure of traditional approach of police and military brutality in quelling the insurrection led to a perception of a shared problem by the government and law enforcement agencies. However, resource and weak institutional capacity to mount collaboration largely explained why the counter-insurgency collaboration has not yielded the expected results. Keywords Interagency collaboration · Counter-insurgency campaign · Complexity theory · Institutional capacity · Boko haram · Nigeria
Introduction Most problems which countries face today are complex, diffuse, and ambiguous and usually defy a scalar chain solution. Such threats like terrorism, cyber-attacks, drug trafficking, infectious diseases, energy threats, displacement, migration and climatic * Okechukwu M. Ikeanyibe [email protected] 1
University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria Vol.:(0123456789)
O. M. Ikeanyibe et al.
change, and natural disasters are multidimensional, making it difficult if not impossible, for any single agency to effectively address them alone. On security, the paradigm has changed as countries no longer face conventional threats that could be matched through a military might of a strong army (Jurasek 2012). Terrorism, for instance, requires out of the box thinking and planning, gathering of intelligence, sharing of resources, and coordinated execution of different operations beyond the required capacity and mandate of one security agency. Some scholars (Eme 2018; Ogbeide 2011) perceive IAC as an elixir for all kinds of social problems, terrorism inclusive, without due attention to the triggers, barriers and challenges, and what determines its impact. Interagency cooperation is not a new phenomenon in management sciences. The classic administrative theorists underscored the importance of cooperation and coordination within and among agencies. More recently, there has been a renewed emphasis on collaboration in the public administration
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