ECOMOG Revival: Can Nigeria Lead West Africa Against Terror Again?

LAGOS — As jihadist violence spreads across West Africa and the Sahel region deteriorates, a compelling argument is gaining traction: Nigeria should revive the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group as a regional counterterrorism force. Punch Newspapers published an in-depth analysis on Thursday examining whether a revived ECOMOG could be the answer to West Africa’s security crisis.

ECOMOG was deployed successfully in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s and early 2000s, ending devastating civil wars and restoring stability under Nigerian military leadership. The force demonstrated that regional military cooperation under Nigerian command could achieve outcomes that individual states could not manage alone.

The current situation in West Africa shares disturbing parallels with those crises. Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are all under military governments that have expelled French forces and invited Russian Wagner Group mercenaries. Jihadist groups including JNIM and ISIS Sahel are expanding their territory. The regional architecture for managing these threats has collapsed.

Nigeria’s Capacity and Will

Reviving ECOMOG would require Nigeria to commit significant military resources, political capital, and financial support. Nigeria’s military is already stretched across multiple domestic fronts including the northeast, northwest, and now the southwest. Adding a major regional deployment would require either expansion of the armed forces or reallocation of existing resources.

Nigeria’s improved economic position, with foreign reserves at $50 billion and a stronger naira, provides a better fiscal foundation for such an undertaking than existed during the economic turbulence of 2023 and 2024. However, political will for a major regional military commitment must also overcome domestic political resistance.

Security analysts said a revived ECOMOG approach would need to be fundamentally different from the 1990s model. Modern counterterrorism requires intelligence-led operations, civil-military cooperation, and community engagement alongside conventional military force. Nigeria’s joint operation with the US that killed al-Minuki shows what is possible when these elements are combined effectively. Scaling that approach regionally would be a game-changing contribution to West African security.