Classification: Strategic Open Assessment | Prepared for National Security Discussion
Worldview International | Strategic Defence Commentary Series
PART I — STRATEGIC SITUATION ASSESSMENT (SITREP)
Nigeria is no longer fighting a single insurgency. It is fighting a convergent multi-front war — and it is currently losing the initiative.
ISWAP launched a renewed offensive in Borno State in March 2025, carrying out sophisticated assaults on military installations, towns, and roadways, seizing control of strategic sites. Nigeria’s armed forces are now deployed across two-thirds of the country’s states and are critically overstretched.
Boko Haram has also changed its operational doctrine, integrating drone surveillance and drone-assisted attacks, while ISWAP has adopted aerial technology suggesting increased funding from ISIS central command.
The southward creep of terror — the strategic fact that Nigeria’s political class refuses to name — is now documented and undeniable.
ISWAP has long sought to expand beyond Lake Chad, has targeted southern states including Oyo to access coastal West Africa, and sent five commanders with 25 fighters each into Central Nigeria, maintaining a presence in Kogi’s Okene axis.
The DSS has raised the alarm of a plot by ISWAP to attack communities in Ondo and Kogi States. The group has reportedly commenced surveillance on soft targets, and terrorists have infiltrated many communities in both states with cells being fortified for repeat attacks.
Bandits have been terrorising local governments in Kogi West — the senatorial district that shares a direct boundary with Ondo State.
From Ondo and Kogi, the vector runs straight into Ogun State — the southwestern gateway to Lagos. Once terrorists cross that threshold, they reach the economic capital of Africa’s largest economy. That must not be permitted.
A new Sahel-based terror group, JNIM, claimed its first attack in Nigeria in 2025 and has threatened to push south toward the Gulf of Guinea.
The most recent group to emerge, Lakurawa, is reportedly a partnership between terrorists and bandits who fund their operations through kidnapping for ransom.
Violent incidents involving Islamist groups in the tri-border area of Niger, Benin, and Nigeria rose 90% between 2024 and 2025, with deaths more than doubling to over 1,000.
Fighters aligned with al-Qaeda and Islamic State have deepened their presence in Nigeria’s Sokoto, Kebbi, Niger, and Kwara states, with operations reflecting continued spread, growing lethality, and rising risks to civilians.
Between January 1 and February 10, 2026, alone, 1,258 people were killed by violence across Nigeria.
PART II — COMMAND INTEGRITY: PURGE BEFORE YOU FIGHT
No military campaign can succeed if the enemy is reading your orders before they are issued. This is not a hypothetical concern — it is the documented operational reality.
In the June 2025 massacre of over 200 civilians in Yelewata and Daudu, Benue State, General Christopher Musa, Chief of Defence Staff, confirmed that troops had been deliberately misled by false intelligence — diverted by a fictitious report of an impending attack on a nearby village. The real target was left exposed.
Leaked UK diplomatic cables revealed that of the 20,000 troops Nigeria claims to deploy in the northeast, the real number is significantly lower — with thousands of ghost soldiers generating salaries collected by officers.
The parallel to Iraq before the fall of Mosul in 2014 is exact: when 1,500 ISIS fighters routed 60,000 Iraqi soldiers, the collapse came not from lack of firepower but from corruption.
According to CISLAC/TI-Nigeria, the ongoing war has failed largely because corruption has infiltrated every level of national security management — from procurement to deployment, intelligence gathering, promotions, and even posthumous entitlements.
Security contracts remain the biggest cash-out channel for political and military elites who profit from opaque procurement and ghost operations.
Before one round is fired in Operation Southern Shield, the following command elements must be removed:
Category A — IMMEDIATE RELIEF FROM COMMAND (Security Grounds):
Any officer who has served consecutively in a theatre for more than 36 months without verifiable operational results. Prolonged static posting is the primary vector for insurgent penetration of command structures. Rotate immediately.
Any officer whose logistics and procurement record cannot be verified by an independent biometric audit. Nigeria’s ghost-soldier problem requires fingerprint-based troop verification — the reform Iraq implemented after Mosul — applied immediately across all active theatres. 
Any Theatre Commander or Brigade Commander in whose area of responsibility a major massacre occurred following a documented intelligence warning that was denied, ignored, or suppressed.
Category B — SECURITY VETTING AND SUSPENSION PENDING INVESTIGATION:
All officers with undisclosed property, vehicles, or accounts disproportionate to rank and salary — standard practice in any functioning military.
Any intelligence officer (DHQ Intelligence, DIA, NSA liaison) who handled the Yelewata, Kebbi school withdrawal, or Kwara attack intelligence chains without a satisfactory audit trail.
Senior procurement officers across all three services where the 2025 GDI has identified the most critical vulnerabilities. Military operations in Sub-Saharan Africa scored an average of just 12/100 in the 2025 Government Defence Integrity Index — Band F, the lowest possible category.
Nigeria’s procurement and operational risk management remain critically weak.
Category C — RESTRUCTURE IMMEDIATELY:
The Theatre Command architecture must be broken from political loyalty appointments. No governor, no senator, no minister should be able to pick a Theatre Commander.
Appointments must flow through a merit board with DSS and external vetting, insulated from Aso Rock.
PART III — OPERATION SOUTHERN SHIELD: THE CAMPAIGN PLAN
Mission: To defeat, disrupt, and deny all terrorist, jihadist, and bandit forces the ability to operate, recruit, finance, or expand within the Federal Republic of Nigeria, with particular priority on halting southward advance into Kwara, Kogi, Ondo, and Ogun States.
Commander’s Intent: Seize the initiative from a multi-vector enemy through simultaneous operations across six axes, deny all safe haven, cut all financing chains, and restore civilian trust as the decisive condition of victory.
PHASE 1 — SHAPING OPERATIONS (Weeks 1–8)
“Fix, Identify, Isolate”
Before combat power is applied, the operational environment must be shaped.
- Fix the intelligence picture. Stand up a Joint Intelligence Fusion Cell (JIFC) in each of the six geopolitical zones, staffed exclusively by personnel who have passed the biometric audit. Each JIFC reports to the NSA, not to Theatre Command — breaking the leak chain.
- Aerial surveillance surge. Deploy all available ISR assets — UAVs, the Nigerian Air Force’s remaining Alpha Jets, and any assets made available under the U.S.-Nigeria security framework — to map militant movement corridors from Borno through Niger State, Kogi, and Ondo to the Ogun border. This is the intelligence baseline without which no ground offensive is valid.
- Close the southwestern border forest belt. The Omi Forest, Oluwa Forest Reserve, and Idanre Hills are the terrain features through which southward infiltration occurs. Establish a Forward Operating Base (FOB) at each of three key nodes: Ifon (Ondo), Kabba (Kogi), and Ijebu-Ode (Ogun). These become the defensive tripwires for any further southward movement.
- Community intelligence mobilisation. No external army defeats an internal insurgency without the population. Reconstitute and adequately fund the civilian JTF model with strict vetting, clear rules of engagement, and regular pay. An unpaid vigilante is a future bandit.
PHASE 2 — DECISIVE OPERATIONS (Months 2–9)
“Strike, Clear, Hold”
Six simultaneous axes of advance, denying enemy freedom of movement and mutual reinforcement:
Axis NORTH-EAST (Operation Lake Chad Closure):
Combined ground-air campaign in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa — focused specifically on the drone logistics network that ISWAP and Boko Haram have developed. Both groups have now adopted aerial technology suggesting increased external funding — these supply chains must be targeted first. Priority: destroy resupply routes, not just fighters. Clear and hold Maiduguri’s satellite towns.
Axis NORTH-WEST (Operation Savannah Sweep):
Concentrated ground force operations in Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi, and Niger State, targeting Lakurawa and bandit formations.
The U.S. Tomahawk strikes of December 2025 on Bauni Forest demonstrated that precision strike assets are available under the bilateral framework — this must be coordinated with a ground cordon to prevent fighter dispersal.
Axis NORTH-CENTRAL (Operation Middle Belt Shield):
Plateau, Benue, and Nasarawa — the highest civilian casualty zone. Establish inter-communal buffer zones enforced by Nigerian Army companies, not police. Remove farmer-herder violence from the hands of state governors who have political incentives to allow it to fester.
Axis SHIRORO-KOGI (Operation Niger Corridor):
The JAS Shiroro cell in Niger State is the lynchpin connecting the northwest insurgency to the southward push. ISS research confirms ISWAP maintaining a presence in Kogi’s Okene axis as a staging point for coastal access. Two battalions of Nigerian Army Special Forces, supported by air, are tasked to clear this corridor and sever it permanently.
Axis KOGI-ONDO-OGUN (Operation Southern Wall):
This is the decisive axis. A hardened defensive line is established along the Kogi-Ondo boundary. No terrain between Okene and the Ogun State border is to be conceded.
Three infantry battalions forward-deployed, with FOBs in Kabba, Akure, and Ore. DSS/NIA cells embedded in each LGA along the corridor actively running HUMINT networks.
Axis MARITIME-DELTA (Operation Creeks Denied):
The creeks of Rivers, Bayelsa, and Delta States must not become a second front insurgents exploit for financing through oil bunkering. The Navy’s Eastern Naval Command must interdict all illegal waterway movement and deny any coastal access from Gulf of Guinea-facing terrain.
PHASE 3 — CONSOLIDATION (Months 10–18)
“Hold, Build, Reconcile”
Military victory without political consolidation is not victory — it is a ceasefire. Sandhurst calls this “Phase 4 Operations.” West Point calls it “Stability Operations.” Both doctrines agree: you must build what replaces the vacuum.
— Reconstruction and governance must enter cleared areas within 30 days of military clearance. Not 90 days. Thirty.
— De-radicalisation and community reintegration must be funded, not performative. The current model has failed. Unmet government promises, community rejection, limited political will, and a weak framework have caused many ex-combatants to return to the trenches. 
— Soldier welfare must be addressed as a strategic variable, not a line item. More than 1,000 soldiers resigned from the Nigerian Army between 2020 and 2024.  A military that cannot retain its own men cannot hold ground it has cleared.
PART IV — STRATEGIC ENABLERS
Intelligence: The Joint Intelligence Fusion Cell architecture described above, reporting to the NSA, with U.S. AFRICOM liaison embedded.
Air Power: Prioritise the acquisition and deployment of ISR drones. The Alpha Jet fleet is ageing. Additional Super Tucano light attack aircraft — Togo has just contracted four Embraer A-29 Super Tucano aircraft , a model proven in this theatre — should be acquired without delay.
U.S. Partnership: The deployment of U.S. forces and the Tomahawk strikes stemmed from high-level talks under the Aqaba Process — a Jordanian initiative promoting military cooperation against IS affiliates.  This framework must be deepened, including AFRICOM intelligence sharing and Special Operations advisory support.
Regional Coalition: Reconstitute the Multinational Joint Task Force with Cameroon, Niger, and Chad under a new operating agreement — specifically targeted at closing cross-border infiltration routes. Nigeria established this force in 1994 and has allowed it to decay. Revive it or the borders remain open corridors.
PART V — COMMANDER’S SUMMARY
Nigeria is not losing this war for lack of soldiers. It is losing it because the enemy reads its orders, its officers steal its soldiers’ salaries, its intelligence is compromised, and its political class profits from the perpetuation of insecurity.
The military solution exists. The tactical doctrine is sound. The terrain is known. The enemy is not invincible.
What is required is the political will to do what every serious military culture — from Sandhurst to West Point to the Israeli Staff College at Glilot — teaches as the first principle of command: you cannot lead what you have not first cleaned.
Purge the compromised. Secure the chain. Then fight.
Nigeria’s south is not yet lost. But the window is closing.
Kio Amachree | President, Worldview International | Strategic Defence Commentary
