Jihadis from Africa’s Sahel have crossed into Nigeria’s north, a new report says. A lot is at stakehave settled in northwestern Nigeria after crossing from neighboring Benin, a new report said Wednesday, the latest trend in the militants’and settled in the Kainji Lake National Park, one of Nigeria’s largest which had been under security threats, according to the report by the Clingendael Institute think tank.
The security situation at the 5,300-square-kilometer park in Niger state and along the nearby border with Benin is “getting out of hand” and is “a much more explosive situation than we had anticipated,” said Kars de Bruijne, one of the authors of the report and senior research fellow at the institute.
Known as the global hot spot for violent extremism, the Sahel region’s worsening security crisis comes just as military coups are. As the military governments struggle to contain the violence, they are increasingly severing security with traditional partners France and the United States, and There were also concerns from conservationists warned that the presence of armed groups in the park could further threaten the remaining lions whose populations have declined as a result of climate change and poaching.