TRANS-BORDER CRIMES AND THE SECURITY CHALLENGES ALONG NIGERIA-CAMEROON BORDER

Nigeria has increasingly become unstable due to armed conflicts occasioned by banditry activities aided by trans-national criminal networks. Terrorism and armed banditry traverse Nigeria. The Nigerian borders especially her border with Cameroon remains porous and unprotected, allowing all sorts of cross-border criminal activities such as arms trafficking, smuggling, drug trafficking, armed robbery and illicit activities resulting in proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW). More worrisome are the ways sophisticated weapons are smuggled into Nigeria. This project work interrogates Trans-border crimes and the security challenges along Nigeria-Cameroon border. Survey research was adopted and theory of tans-nationalism was used. The study discovered that, the dominance of banditry activities along Nigeria-Cameroon border has been promoted by many factors including among others: border porosity, connivance by border communities, corruption on the part of trans-border security management personnel, lack of facilities and logistics, abuse of ECOWAS protocol, negative impact of globalization, lack of adequate manpower, and inter-agencies co-operations among tans-border security management agencies. The paper suggests that, surveillance drones and Israel developed fencing system should be used. Integrated approach to trans-border security management in which border communities as well as border management agencies could cooperate in mitigating trans-border crimes along the Nigeria-Cameroon border.