(OPINION) Nigerians in diaspora in the UK and America are calling for direct military involvement in peacekeeping in Northern Nigeria, which is now third in the Global Terrorism Index.

As more British forces prepare for deployment with UN peacekeepers in restive Mali to the north, calls are growing in London for a similar militaristic push in the Islamist-infested Northeastern and Middle Belt states of the former British colony.

Ayo Adedoyin, CEO of new Christian NGO PSJ UK and partner with ICON, points to the 5,500 troops the French have committed to their former colonies. 

“The British prefer soft power, but it’s not stopping the massacres,” Adedoyin said this week. 

Ministers of three government departments announced a postponement of a review of the 2018 so-called “pivot to the Sahel.” This pivot saw an increase in British diplomatic aid and critical military involvement in the vast semi-desert region. It builds on David Cameron’s decision in 2012 to support France in regaining control of Mali, after a jihadist insurrection was exacerbated by the destruction of Gadaffi’s Libya. 

But Nigeria suffers from the spill-over of Sahelian Islamism, which exploits grievances specific to each situation and appears to be pushing down toward Abuja, the administrative hub of the country.  

Nigeria is now third after Afghanistan and Iraq on the Global Terrorism Index, but the former powers still operate a mysterious quarantine between the Sahel and Nigeria.

It is likely Britain will stick to its commitment to send 250 troops in long-range reconnaissance and training to the UN peace-keeping mission based in Gao, Mali as part of its post-Brexit fence mending with old allies. 

There were jitters in Whitehall even before the military coup in Mali on 18 August. A tripartite review by defence, foreign affairs and development ministers due to have taken place in early August was postponed until September.

“This is unfamiliar terrain for the Brits,” Alex Vines, Africa Director at international affairs institute Chatham House told Religion Unplugged. “It’s a big deal.” 

The crisis has spread to Niger and Burkina Faso and may now spill over into Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Senegal. 

With Nigeria also facing insurgency in the Lake Chad basin, “all major regional security and economic anchors in the region are under threat, including key UK partners,” Vines said.

France’s recent 1,500 troop surge, additional to the 4,000 under Operation Burkhane already in the Chadian capital of Niamey, reflects their own post-colonial ties and their dependency on uranium from Niger. One in three light bulbs – and the Eiffel Tower in France – is lit from nuclear reactors powered by Nigerien uranium. Niger has the world’s fourth largest deposits of the mineral.

For the two British regiments involved, this will be one of the biggest peace-keeping deployments since Bosnia and the most dangerous since Afghanistan.

It augments the three Royal Air Force Chinook helicopters and almost 100 staff needed to support them – all of whom are still there, supported by the Joint Sahel Department in Whitehall. This department is headed up by Dr. Imogen Parsons, former Save the Children Fund emergency response leader.

In addition to that, MI6 had already pushed for the reopening of a full embassy in Bamako in Mali in 2010, and small, cost-effective embassies have opened in Niger and Chad.

The UK is also one of the largest humanitarian donors to the region and has contributed over £500 million in bilateral development and humanitarian assistance since 2015.

However, there seems to be a curious reluctance by Britain to join the dots from the Sahel to its old colony, whose boundaries it drew, and whose social infrastructure it helped create, leaving a legacy of inter-religious rivalry and what one local Nigerian analyst calls “an unwinnable war.”

Violent attacks killed at least 142 people in northern Nigeria in one seven-day period in July, according to US-based think tank the Council on Foreign Relations.

Militarised Fulani herders, supplied with guns by local cattle barons, bandits, Boko Haram terrorists and even Nigerian army forces were among major perpetrators, the report said.

Affected states included Kaduna, Borno, Zamfara, Taraba, Kogi, Niger and Adamawa, reflecting a ramping up of violence under cover of COVID-19. It prompted Edward Kallon, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, to say that 10.6 million people in the region – which has witnessed more than a decade of Boko Haram insurgence – will need some form of humanitarian assistance in 2020. This is close to a 50 percent increase in people in need since last year, he added.

The 2019 Global Terrorism Index states that 2,040 people were killed there in 2018 alone by radicalised Fulani militants.

Yet Britain remains content to operate a different trajectory in Nigeria from the Sahel, capacity building the Nigerian armed forces through a policy of “embedding” military advisors and contributing humanitarian funds only to the north. Vines describes its policy as “fuzzy.” 

Christians increasingly bear the brunt of the massacres that indicate the southward cross-border trend of Islamic militancy and its influence on the nomadic Fulani.  

The terror group Boko Haram are being investigated by the International Criminal Court for “crimes against humanity.” They are moved by religious ideology with a publicly declared policy of eliminating Christians.

However, attacks by Fulani herders – also on Christians – are not treated in the same way. Yet they proved “six times more deadly than Boko Haram’s insurgencies in the same year,” according to the ICON report Silent Slaughter. 

US activists, including Congressman Frank Wolff, are calling for a Special Envoy to Northern Nigeria, appointed by the State Department to coordinate thinking. 

The cross-border nature of the Islamist operations goes largely unremarked in countries that still operate along neo-colonial lines. 

“These are arbitrary lines which the traditional African groups don’t see that way,” said Dr. Manu Lekunze of Aberdeen University.  

The recent House of Lords Select Committee Report also admitted that the overspill from the Sahel had “not yet registered” as a “very serious cause of instability.”

With the recent UN warnings of potential far-reaching human suffering and regional instability, the UK will do well to make this a foreign policy priority.

Dr. Jenny Taylor is Journalism Fellow at the Kirby Laing Institute of Christian Ethics, and author of A Wild Constraint: the Case for Chastity published by Bloomsbury. Visit her website at www.jennytaylor.media.