Thread by @DefenseNigeria

Chadian military leader Mahamat Idris Derby sent troops to Dafur Sudan to prevent the spillover of Darfur crises into Chad. Derby said : " Tribal problems should not be exported Chad".

Why is this significant? They take the territorial integrity of their country very serious.

The day we take our territorial integrity serious enough that reprisals and proactive measures are 100% certain, is the day cross border attacks from ISWAP, illegal flow of arms into Nigeria or incidents of Cameroonian forces harassing Nigerian community ends.

Chad once closed its border with Libya over the of threat of a potential terrorist attack, to forestall terrorist infiltration into the country. This was in 2017 i think. This is what Chads Prime PM Albert Pahimi Padacket said a message broadcast on television to the people

QUOTE

Faced with the perils that threaten all of the nation’s territory, the government decided for one thing to close our land border with Libya, and for another to declare the regions bordering Libya military operation zones. The Tibesti desert border regions are sparsely

populated but are used for dealing in contraband by those living on both sides of the border, mainly the ethnic Tubu people. Following their defeat, some isolated terrorist groups have gathered in the south of Libya, putting the northern frontier of our country potentially

potentially exposed to a serious threat of a terrorist infiltration.

END QUOTE.

This was a "potential threat". In Nigeria we have a manifested threat. Boko Haram is degraded, but ISWAP is still putting up resistance because of the external dimension of their existence

Over 70% of ISWAP fighters speak Creole French. Which means they are from the futajalons or Sahel. There are over 5 million illegal firearms in West Africa. Eighty percent of them find their way into Nigeria. Now, I'm not a policy wonk or something, but the years when French and

Chadian forces refused to go after ISWAP sanctuaries in Lake Chad, one would have expected a threat of invasion or outright invasion and occupation of Lake Chad by Nigeria to stop it from being used as a staging base to launch attacks into Nigeria and a sanctuary to run to.

In 2015 Boko Haram carried out two suicide bombs attacks in Chad capital, killing 34 people. Idris Derby ordered airstrikes on Boko Haram poisons in Borno without authorization from Nigeria. Lemme tell you what was funny about this incident. The Nigerian government denied Chad

conducted air strikes in Borno. DHQ said the report is incorrect. Idris Derby himself called a press conference and insisted Chad carried out airstrikes in Nigeria in retaliation for twins suicide bombings in Ndjamena. Diplomatic consequences be dammed. He just didn't care.

Nigeria's refusal to have a gun ho attitude towards territorial defence has emboldened both state and non state actors. State actors routinely poke the bear, not because they can afford war with Nigeria but because they know the Nigerian government never respond forcefully

..to such naked aggression, so long they are measured. Countries like Niger and Chad can afford to adopt a laissez faire attitude towards arms merchant using their country as a conduit to smuggle arms into Nigeria because they know there will be no repercussions.

Only at sea does Nigeria does have non tolerant attitude to violation of its territorial waters, and will shoot first and ask questions later, and that is because that is where the lifeblood of the Nigerian economy is derived from.