The office of the president has signalled that Bola Tinubu may soon publicly identify the individuals and networks funding terrorism in Nigeria. According to Daniel Bwala, the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Policy Communication, the government has shifted from merely talking about terrorism to actively following the money behind it.
Bwala said the financial networks enabling insurgents and criminal groups are gradually being exposed, and that Nigerians should expect “firm actions that strike at the heart of the problem.”
He noted that groups such as Boko Haram, ISWAP, and various bandit gangs sustain their operations through sources like illegal mining, cattle rustling, kidnapping-for-ransom, extortion, territorial control — and by cooperating with smuggling networks across the Sahel.
Bwala also traced the roots of Nigeria’s insecurity to the destabilisation triggered by the 2011 upheavals in countries like Libya and Egypt. The collapse of the Libyan state, he argued, allowed traffickers linked to extremist organisations to flood the Sahel and West Africa with heavy weapons — a chain of events that eventually strengthened groups such as Boko Haram and ISWAP.
Finally, he said the government has stepped up joint security operations nationwide and is doubling down on intelligence-led efforts to dismantle the financial lifelines that sustain terrorism across Nigeria.
