Regional Cooperation and the War on Terror: Augmenting Military Operation in North-eastern Nigeria

Terrorism has been a serious threat and challenge to security in different parts of the world but the involvement of different sovereign states and regional organizations in tackling this menace is a fairly recent development. This paper established the essentiality of regional cooperation in North-eastern Nigeria, the relevance of a collective security force in deterring terrorism and how new subtle approaches such as youth empowerment programmes, mutual extradition treaty, a defined international legislation and laws on Small Arms and Light Weapons can fill the gap and be employed to augment traditional military tactics in stopping the Internationalization and a displacement spill-over of perennial ‘Boko Haram’ into neighbouring West Africa states and beyond. The paper emphasized that terrorism in the Northeast of Nigeria cannot be countered via traditional, domestic military actions only. But with a combination of other feasible variables which will prevent the indoctrination and radicalization of individuals into joining the terrorist cell.