Lake Chad Basin's counter-terrorism must adapt to defeat Boko Haram
Divisions among Multinational Joint Task Force members have handed both factions time and space to rearm, recruit and expand.
For nearly two decades, the Lake Chad Basin – bordering Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger – has borne the ravages of the Boko Haram crisis. The conflict has claimed more than 40 000 lives and displaced 2 million people.
As violence spread across borders in 2014, the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) member states established the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF). The African Union (AU) approved the force's concept of operations in 2015 and has since regularly reviewed its mandate, deploying a support mission to the force’s headquarters in N’Djamena to coordinate resources, training, equipment and quick-impact community projects.
The MNJTF has achieved significant results, notably reducing the militant group’s territorial control to levels not seen in 2014 and 2015. Many areas, particularly urban centres once controlled by Boko Haram, have been denied to the two factions, which once held a stranglehold over them, at times reaching the gates of cities such as Maiduguri.
They shifted to keeping rear bases in border areas, on islands, in forests and on the outskirts. The success of the stabilisation agenda in Lake Chad Basin lies in its holistic approach, which creates complementarity between the non-kinetic and kinetic tracks, with MNJTF playing a key role.
Despite these advances, Boko Haram factions continue to destabilise the situation. Indeed, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) quickly regained traction after the losses from MNJTF’s ‘Lake Sanity 2’ in 2024 and launched its Camp Holocaust. This exacted great pressure on military positions and troops and led to the capture of military equipment by the insurgents.
The MNJTF has had no regional operation since July 2024 – while Boko Haram rearms and expands
Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad, assumed weakened from clashes with rival ISWAP, is now conducting assaults on military formations in Nigeria and Chad. It also has active cells in central Nigeria between Abuja and coastal southwestern Nigeria. The lethality of the two factions is reflected in regular violent and bloody inter-factional confrontations. The two have adapted to the responses by reducing their footprint when harassed, resorting to more fragmented commandos, limiting large-scale attacks and taking refuge in islands, forests and swamp areas before reappearing.
A turning point occurred in 2025, with ISWAP increasingly using drones for intelligence and combat and better mastering improvised explosive devices. Communication progress, too, is clear, particularly propaganda. The obvious presence of foreign instructors promotes and accelerates this, adding pressure on national and regional armed forces.
Recruitment, intelligence and strategic procurement have continued. Reinforced and systematic extortion, with involvement in licit and illicit trade and exchange circuits, maintains military capabilities, specifically payment of combatants and funding of propaganda. The factions are also expanding clearly into areas beyond Lake Chad Basin.
By 2025, ISWAP was deploying drones in combat and refining IEDs – a qualitative leap in capability
Thus, MNJTF must step up its tactical and technological efforts and, above all, engage more consistently to continue weakening the factions and ensure stabilisation to facilitate support for affected communities. This cannot happen without political cohesion among LCBC states, which provide MNJTF troops and primary resources.
Since the military coup in Niger, diplomatic tensions have arisen between it and its neighbours, including Nigeria, a key LCBC member and at the MNJTF helm. Niger has withdrawn from the regional force, which has deprived it of its fourth pillar, namely sector 4 in Diffa, Niger. Boko Haram faction activity across the region since 2025 is alarming. To boot, MNJTF has conducted no regional operations since the end of Lake Sanity 2 in July 2024.
With clear danger looming, LCBC states must renew their political commitment and ease internal tensions to restore MNJTF’s regionality. As force sponsor, the AU must use its diplomatic influence to reunite Niger and Nigeria.
New armed groups are expanding across Niger, Nigeria and Benin – without any coordinated state response
Securing resources is vital to ramp up force capabilities and adapt it to Boko Haram advances. This must begin among member states, with continuation of current efforts and increase in financial contributions. The AU, which has always supported external funding, must push it further.
All LCBC partners must support MNJTF capabilities in civil-military activities, which constitute important counter-narrative and counter-propaganda means. With military abuses such as aerial bombardments rising, it is essential to remain close to and communicate with the population, as it is at the heart of the fight.
Boko Haram’s expansion is exacerbated by worrying developments in the border regions of Niger, Nigeria and Benin. Particularly alarming are emerging groups such as Lakurawa and Mahmuda and cells linked to Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin. Unfortunately, the states concerned are not collaborating on any joint response. The AU could be decisive in bringing the affected countries together into a joint framework and in capitalising on Benin’s existing participation in the MNJTF to build a more coherent regional architecture.
