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Abstract

Threats to security in the Lake Chad Basin have changed over the years and hybrid elements have become interweaved. Sustained Boko Haram and ISWAP activities have increased the insecurity in the region, enabling the mixing of armed insurgency and organized criminals, including narcotics dealers, extortion rackets, arms trafficking, drugs production and smuggling, kidnapping and fuel smuggling among Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon states. Nexus elements of illicit wealth, illicit transborder crime and terrorism were thus analysed as interdependent and contributing elements to Hybrid threats in the Basin. The study used a hybrid design (qualitative-quantitative) documenting data from the following institutions: ACLED, IEP, UNODC, UNHCR, and peer-review literature published at a regional security. Thematic analysis was utilized as the analysis technique and descriptive statistics, multiple regression, factor analysis and composite vulnerability indexes were used to analyze data. It revealed that there is a high level of support for the terrorist groups in the Basin as a result of the illegal economies and organized criminal networks, with illegal taxation (26.5%) and kidnapping for ransom (21.4%) being the most prominent, respectively. A regression analysis also showed that the can of greatest explanatory power of terrorist acts in the region was the border porosity (β = 0,53) and arms traffic (β = 0,47). Some of the other major effects of hybrid insecurity the policy study identified included higher rates of displacement, governance issues and a humanitarian crisis with mounting trans-border criminality

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