John Dunn offers some particularly relevant remarks about Sahelian political entities:

Being neither a placid and optimistic observer nor really an ideologue, of whatever tendency, and having studied Chadian politics for some years, I emphatically agreed with this diagnosis when I read it for the first time. Today, about ten years later, the Chadian experience attracts even less in the way of boundless enthusiasm or blind commitment. Since the publication of West African States, Chad has almost disappeared from the political map, and even in 1988 doubts about its survival as a political entity are not without foundation, in spite of the patient's slow recovery over the last few years.