Sahel fuel smuggling and terrorist taxation: How ECOWAS subsidy reform created a Jihadist revenue haven along the Niger–Nigeria border (Magaria–Jibia Axis)

Milton Ayoki

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: After the ECOWAS-backed abolition of Nigeria’s premium-motor-spirit (PMS) subsidy in June 2023, the pump-price gap between Nigeria and Niger widened overnight from 0.23 to 0.71 USD litre⁻¹. Using a difference-in-differences design that exploits (i) 400+ border checkpoints (Clingendael 2022 GIS), (ii) 13 241 ACLED road-block events 2020-24, and (iii) monthly NBS price panels 2010-24, we show that jihadist taxation revenue on the Magaria–Jibia corridor increased by 0.9–1.4 USD million per month (≈ 18 % of IS-Sahel’s estimated budget). A structural gravity model calibrated to OECD-SWAC trade elasticities implies that a 0.10 USD litre⁻¹ price gap raises the probability of an Islamist checkpoint by 6.3% (SE 1.7, p

Keywords: Keywords: Fuel subsidy; smuggling; jihadist taxation; Sahel; border checkpoints; difference-in-differences; ECOWAS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 F14 H22 H25 O17 Q34 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-05-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-ene, nep-iue and nep-tre
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/126590/1/MPRA_paper_126590.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:126590

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().