Insurgency and Counterinsurgency: Understanding the Patronage Politics of the Nigerian State

This conceptual review establishes links between insurgency, counterinsurgency and patronage politics of the Nigerian state. Derived from the population-centric approach, it purports, the failure of the state to earn public trust and tend the undercurrents that birth insurgency accounts for failed counterinsurgency. Apparently, ascriptive and particularistic responses to insurgent groups based on established affinity demonstrates an economy of affection towards familiar networks, reverberating patronage politics. Ultimately, socio-political undercurrents tend to undermine the effective and cohesive execution of counterinsurgency operations in Nigeria wherein belly politics and the subsistence of the culture of ‘strong men’ add force to insurgency and undermine counterinsurgency. Conclusively, the Nigerian state has a major counterinsurgency challenge that may only be overcome by a systematic reconsideration of the meeting points of the socio-political undercurrents that condition insurgencies in Nigeria and public trust earned by the country’s leadership which is consistent with the theoretical tenets of the population-centric approach to counterinsurgency. The study recommends among others that the central government of Nigeria needs to earn public trust by eschewing ascriptive and particularistic responses to insurgent groups based on established affinity, adopt a population-centric approach in its counterinsurgency operations, monitor the activities of key actors in the military institution to ensure that there is transparency in the counterinsurgency operations such that the counterinsurgency operations do not become lucrative as a conduit for looting state funds while the beneficiaries of this corrupt network concoct instrumentalised political disorder to keep their lucrative venture alive.