The Changing Architecture of African Peacekeeping: Nigeria’s Doctrinal Evolution from ECOMOG to Hybrid Missions

This dissertation traces the doctrinal evolution of Nigeria's approach to peacekeeping and peace enforcement from the ECOMOG era of the 1990s through the contemporary hybrid mission environment, developing an original theoretical account of how learning, normative change, and institutional adaptation have transformed Nigeria's peacekeeping doctrine over three decades. Nigeria's trajectory from improvised ECOMOG operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone to participation in AU-UN hybrid missions in Darfur and Mali represents a significant evolution in both capability and conceptual approach to multilateral security management. Drawing on organisational learning theory, military sociology, and peacekeeping studies, this study employs a process tracing methodology to examine how specific mission experiences have generated doctrinal lessons, how those lessons have been institutionalised within the Nigerian Army and the National Defence College, and how Nigeria's peacekeeping doctrine has been shaped by engagement with international standards including the UN Capstone Doctrine. Primary data are drawn from National Defence College curriculum documentation, Nigerian Army peacekeeping training manuals, interviews with retired senior officers who commanded ECOMOG and later missions, and analysis of after-action review reports from selected missions. The dissertation makes an original contribution to peacekeeping studies by theorising doctrinal evolution as a learning process conditioned by the interaction between operational feedback, normative pressure from international organisations, and domestic civil-military relations. Keywords: peacekeeping, Nigeria, ECOMOG, doctrinal evolution, hybrid missions.