Military Security Issues (MSIs) and the Challenge of Internal Security Operations (ISOPs) in Nigeria

Abstract

The Nigerian state over time have witnessed an increasing novel security issues that make the calls for military involvement on existing and emerging non-traditional security issues through Internal Security Operations (ISOPs) inevitable as these issues continues to metamorphosed revealing their high level belligerencies continually.In view of the aforementioned issues and many others, this paper adopts the empirical qualitative method to underscores Nigeria’s military security issues (MSIs) and the challenge of internal security operations (ISOPs) in establishing a clear understanding of existing military security issues, causes, challenges and implications of military involvement in internal security operations (ISOPs).The overarching theme of our findings would be that the Nigeria’s peculiar historical experience and security reality is that which has compelled military involvement in ISOPs and these issues fall within the theoretic spectacle of non-traditional security issues unlike the developed countries where their military security issues are still within the scope of traditional security issues. Also, the increasing novel security issues are dis-enabling militarism in many third world countries but the political, economic, socio-cultural, human and environmental cost of not involving the military into ISOPs is disastrous to national security and proper functioning of such countries experiencing hydra like security issues.This paper concludes that the fluid and ever changing nature of contemporary security issues especially with the increasing intra-state violence and the dwindling of inter-state violence, we will be witnessing continued and increasing military involvement in ISOPs inevitably in many countries and the need for professionalism in such military involvement cannot be overemphasized.

Keywords: Issues, Internal Security, Military Security Issues (MSIs), Internal Security operations (ISOPs), Nigeria.