West Africa Sub-region Research Articles

Burkina-Mali War: Is Nigeria Still a Regional Power

Suddenly Burkina Faso and Mali were at war.‘Burkina was the aggressor***! No, it was Mali.!‘ And the attack and counter-attack continued. For the man on the street, Nigeria moved in barely four days after the war had started and that is good enough. For a student of West African states' foreign policy, that was a late more for Nigeria, more so when the hopes of Nigerians moves were dropped. For whatever the cause, Nigeria was expected to get the grasp of any crisis erupting in West Africa regardless of the countries involved—Francophones or Anglophones. Why? Authorities in the seventies had seen Nigeria in the subregion of West Africa as its “regional power.” John Ostheimer, in 1973, wrote that‘…Nigeria is now obviously the “giant of Africa” in a new sense. Nigeria… (is) the dominant power in the West Africa Region.’1 Colin Legum in the same year-wrote: Nigeria is Africa's most important country—in size of population and in resources—as well as in trained people. Properly developed and with a properly functioning political system-it could provide decisive leadership for the entire continent strong enough to consolidate a powerful organization embracing Anglophone and Francophone African States; militarily and economically strong enough to play a leading role in challenging the minority while regimes in Portuguese and Southern Africa and to provide more muscle for the OAU; and influential enough to strengthen the whole of Africa's relationships within the international community.2 In the same vein, and American paper in 1977 summed it up thus: ‘As the biggest, richest and most influential black African State, ‘Nigeria has an evident capacity to reduce the prospect of great power involvement in an African quarrel and and an evident self interest in doing so.3 But Nigeria did not react immediately to the Burkina-Mali crisis when it came into the open. Could it be that the impetus had gone or the ability had been reduced by internal problems? Attempts will be made to answer these important questions. For now, it is desirable to look at the remote and immediate causes of the border clash between the two warring states.