President Bola Tinubu has urged West African leaders to revive a regional standby force and adopt a more coordinated security architecture to confront escalating threats in West Africa and the Sahel.
In a message delivered on his behalf by the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, at a high-level security conference in Accra, Ghana, Tinubu warned that the region is facing a dangerous convergence of terrorism, organised crime and cyber-enabled threats that no country can tackle alone.
The president called for the reactivation of a regional standby force capable of rapid deployment, arguing that fragmented national responses and thinly spread defence formations have created power vacuums exploited by militant groups. He said these gaps have enabled Sahel-based extremists to push southwards into coastal states, with Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ghana increasingly exposed.
Tinubu urged West African governments to use Nigeria’s National Counter Terrorism Centre in Abuja as an intelligence and operations hub, noting that the centre already works with African Union structures and regional fusion units to track and disrupt terrorist networks. A memorandum of understanding between the NCTC and the AU, he said, positions Abuja as a natural focal point for continent-wide counterterrorism coordination.
He also highlighted the growing use of cyberspace by extremist organisations for recruitment, propaganda and disinformation, and pointed to “momentous gains” made through Nigeria’s National Cyber Security Centre. Tinubu invited neighbouring states to plug into Nigeria’s cyber infrastructure to build a shared shield against online radicalisation and cyber-enabled attacks.
Beyond operational gaps, Tinubu identified political rifts within the region, including tensions between ECOWAS and the Alliance of Sahel States, as a major obstacle to effective cooperation. He urged leaders to separate political disagreements from security collaboration and to rebuild an inclusive framework that reflects common security and economic interests.
The president cautioned that intensified anti-narcotics operations in South America may be pushing drug cartels toward weaker jurisdictions in West Africa, raising the prospect of alliances between traffickers and insurgents. Such partnerships, he warned, could inject significant funding and logistics into extremist campaigns.
Tinubu insisted that military measures must be matched by efforts to address root causes of instability, including poverty, governance failures, marginalisation and the over-militarisation of state responses. He expressed confidence that ongoing deliberations among intelligence chiefs and security strategists would help shape a durable, region-wide counterterrorism strategy anchored in shared responsibility.
