THE SAHEL AS A NEW EPICENTER OF TERRORISM: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE CAUSES

Following military defeats in Syria and Iraq, Islamic State (IS) shifted its attention to the Sahel, with deaths from terrorism rising ten times in the region since 2007. The Sahel has become the new epicentre of terrorism. Terrorism in the region is compounded by high population growth, lack of adequate water and food, climate change, and weak governments. Adding to the complexity, many criminal organisations are representing themselves as Islamic insurgencies. Despite the national and international efforts to curtail the high tide of terrorism in the Sahel in the past four years, there are still unprecedented attacks. Terrorism in the Sahel has a grave, uncountable socio-economic, humanitarian, and environmental implications. It is on this note, the study aimed to critically examine the cause of the prevalence of terrorism in the region. The study applied a descriptive method of content analysis. Data were gotten from secondary sources like magazines, internet materials, newspapers, and journals. The paper adopted the failed state theory to solidify the arguments in the study. The study observed that, factors like poverty, food insecurity, population explosion, availability of small and light weapons, endemic conflicts, and the failure of the governments of Sahelian states to perform their statutory functions. Particularly, the failure of the government to deliver good governance to its young population is the immediate trigger of terrorism in the Sahel. Apart from the uncountable loss of lives, a considerable amount of resources that would have been used to provide social infrastructure including social welfare are used for counter-terrorism. Thereby making life to be more difficult. The study recommends that governments should discard peripheral capitalist formation and adopt an economy of welfare. The economy will put the needs of the citizens first