Relations between the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) and Nigeria are flaring up again. At the heart of the dispute are remarks made recently by Nigerian President Bola Tinubu before a gathering of traditional rulers, in which he suggested that insecurity in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger was compounding Nigeria’s own security difficulties. « The problem of insecurity in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger is only worsening our difficulties, » he said, a comment quickly picked up and debated across the region.
The reaction from the AES’s three member states was swift. In a joint statement, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger expressed their « deep regret » over what they described as a hasty, overly simplistic and surprising assessment of the regional security situation coming from the Nigerian head of state. The three countries’ diplomatic services defended their security record, stressing that the Sahelian transitional authorities alone bear the responsibility of protecting their populations, using their own means and at a heavy cost.
Burkina Faso’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Karamoko Jean-Marie Traoré, was among the most vocal critics of the Nigerian president’s remarks, denouncing what he called an attempt to pin Nigeria’s own security failures on the AES. Burkinabe authorities also pointed to what they see as a contradiction in Nigeria’s messaging: even as the president singles out the AES countries, his own defense minister, General Christopher Musa, has simultaneously called for closer cooperation between ECOWAS and the AES against terrorism and cross-border crime.
This latest exchange of diplomatic barbs adds to a long list of tensions between Nigeria, the regional heavyweight within ECOWAS, and the Alliance of Sahel States, which formalized its exit from the West African regional bloc some time ago. Since Bola Tinubu took over the rotating chairmanship of ECOWAS in 2023, relations between Abuja and the Sahelian capitals have steadily deteriorated, marked by sanctions imposed after successive coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, followed by the threat, never carried out, of military intervention to restore constitutional order in Niger.
The three AES countries have since pivoted toward other security partners, notably Russia, while Nigeria continues to position itself as the leading force in counterterrorism efforts within ECOWAS. An earlier incident had already strained relations between Niamey, Ouagadougou and Abuja: in December 2025, Burkina Faso detained eleven Nigerian Air Force personnel after their C-130 aircraft made an emergency landing in Bobo-Dioulasso while en route to Portugal for maintenance.
This latest diplomatic spat illustrates the persistent difficulty of reconciling positions between ECOWAS, still chaired by Nigeria, and an Alliance of Sahel States intent on asserting its strategic autonomy, even as both sides continue, at least on paper, to float the possibility of security cooperation with their West African neighbors against a jihadist threat that respects no borders of its own.
