Nigeria's 2025 Intervention In Benin Republic and the Political Economy of Counter-Terrorism Failure at Home

Nigeria’s successful intervention in Benin Republic’s 2025 coup attempt contrasted sharply with its persistent failure to contain domestic terrorism, raising crucial questions about state capacity, elite incentives, and the political economy of security. Guided by Political Settlement Theory (PST) and Neopatrimonial/Rentier Political Economy (NPE/RPE), this study interrogates why Nigeria performs decisively in external security crises yet remains unable to suppress violent extremism at home. Using qualitative methods and high-impact secondary data—including ECOWAS communiqués, defence briefings, UN/World Bank/IMF reports, ISS/ICG security assessments, and media and scholarly analyses (including Onya & Akpan, 2019; Onya, 2017)—the paper finds that Nigeria’s success in Benin stemmed from unified elite incentives, regional legitimacy, clear command structures, and the absence of entrenched domestic political rents. Conversely, terrorism persists in Nigeria because security is deeply embedded within a political marketplace structured around patronage, security rents, elite bargaining, and fragmented institutions. The state’s internal insecurity is thus not a technical failure but a political-economic equilibrium beneficial to competing factions. The study concludes that without altering these internal incentive structures, no amount of tactical or military reform will resolve Nigeria’s domestic insecurity. It recommends settlement-aware security governance, derentierisation of internal security budgets, transparent monitoring of security spending, and institutional restructuring that reduces elite capture and prebendal distortions. Keywords: Nigeria, Benin Republic, coup intervention, counter-terrorism, political settlement, neopatrimonialism, security rents, West Africa, political economy.