As terror spreads, Nigeria’s government confused

The growing spate of terrorism in Nigeria that has led to the loss of many lives in the country appears to have left the government confused.

Violence by Islamic extremists and violent herdsmen as well as the Indigenous People of Biafra, a separatist movement in the country’s southeast, is the most serious security challenge in the country.

On July 5, 2022, jihadists from the Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP) made a show of the extremely perilous security situation in the country when they attacked the Kuje Medium Security Custodial Centre in Abuja.

They released over 800 inmates in the prison including more than 70 of their fighters and operatives detained or serving sentences in the prison.

That same day, terrorists attacked President Muhammadu Buhari’s advance team convoy near Dutsinma, Katsina State, wounding two officials. The team was on its way to Daura, Katsina State, the hometown of the president, ahead of his visit there for the Sallah holiday.

A few days before the Kuje attack, ISWAP fighters had on June 29 ambushed and killed nearly 50 soldiers and policemen, when they attacked a mine in the village of Ajata Aboki in Niger State’s Shiroro region. The fighters abducted four Chinese nationals and several local workers of the mine.

Exactly one month before these well-choreographed attacks, on June 5, worshippers celebrating Pentecost at the St. Francis Catholic Church in Owo, south-western Nigeria, were attacked by a group of armed men who had been hiding among the congregation. The terrorists, using explosives and assault rifles, opened fire on the congregants, killing 40 people, including women and children.

Facing widespread condemnation for its inability to protect Nigerians and heavily denounced for allowing terrorists to have free rein in many parts of the country, Nigeria’s federal government quickly linked the killings to ISWAP.

Nasir El-Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, complained in April, after several attacks in the state and a bomb explosion on the Abuja-Kaduna rail line, which claimed nine lives with a yet-to-be-known number of people abducted, that “these people (terrorists) are getting money.

The way they are so emboldened; they fear no authority, no soldier and so why won’t security agents go to their enclaves and kill them all?

We know where they are, SSS gives reports on them every day; they have their numbers including that of Dogo Gide and what he is planning”.

The attacks on Kuje and in Owo may not have come as a shock to counterterror officials within the country’s security establishments.

In late April this year, acting on information collected by the security agencies, the country’s secret police and main counterterrorism agency, the State Security Services (SSS), warned Nigerians about plans by “some elements to launch bomb attacks on critical infrastructure and public places like worship and relaxation centres, especially during and after the festive celebrations”.

The warning by the SSS came a few days after suspected ISWAP terrorists detonated IEDs at a popular relaxation centre in Iware Community in Ardo Kola Local Government Area of Taraba State. Seven people died in that attack in April, and many more were injured. A similar blast had occurred at a Catholic school in January in Gassol Local Government Area neighbouring Ardo Kola.

A history of jihadi terror

Since 2010, Boko Haram, one of the largest Islamist militant groups in Africa, has conducted terrorist attacks on religious and political groups, local police, and the military, as well as arbitrarily attacking civilians in busy markets and villages.

In March 2015, the Abubakar Shekau-led group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and changed the group’s name to ISWAP. ISIL accepted the pledge the same month, with its spokesman Abou

Mohamed al Adnani releasing an audio message directing individuals who could not enter Iraq or the Syrian Arab Republic to travel to West Africa.

In August 2016, ISIL leadership recognised and appointed Abu Musab al-Barnawi as the de facto leader of ISWAP, which Shekau refused to accept. The resultant infighting led to ISIL-West Africa split into two factions, al-Barnawi’s faction (ISWAP) and Shekau’s faction (Boko Haram). It is estimated that ISWAP has approximately 3,500-5,000 fighters.

In August 2016, ISIL’s newspaper al-Nabaa published an interview with Barnawi. In the article, he described the group’s battle with West African states as one against “apostates” and “crusaders”, and threatened, as leader, to order the killing of Christians and the bombing of churches.

Since then, ISWAP has carried out numerous attacks in the country. In June 2019, the group attacked two military bases in the towns of Marte and Kirenowa, near the Borno state capital Maiduguri, ransacking weapons and pushing Nigerian troops back.

In May 2019, the group conducted an attack on a military base in the town of Gubio, north of Maiduguri, killing at least three Nigerian soldiers. In December 2018, the group conducted a series of attacks, taking over the commercial town of Baga, near the border with Chad as well as a nearby Multinational Joint Task Force base.

On November 18, 2018, the group attacked an army base in the village Metele, in northeastern Borno State, killing over 100 Nigerian soldiers. In September 2018, the group captured a town in Borno state after sacking and occupying a military base in northeast Nigeria. In April 2018, the group conducted attacks on the outskirts of Maiduguri, killing 18 people and leaving 84 wounded.

In February 2018, the group abducted 110 schoolgirls in Nigeria and kidnapped three aid workers the following month during an attack that killed dozens of other people.

In January 2017, the group conducted a midnight attack against Nigerian troops in the village of Kamuya, resulting in the death of three Nigerian soldiers.

ISWAP’s July 2018 raid on a battalion-sized camp (approximately 700 soldiers) in Jilli, Yobe state was a good indicator of the group’s growing capabilities.

The choice of target, according to the International Crisis Group, “suggested that ISWAP possessed reliable intelligence about the camp’s vulnerability (the battalion was far from the centre of fighting and comprised fresh, inexperienced recruits with new equipment); effective internal coordination (the raiding party reportedly included a few hundred fighters coming from distant locations); and operational sophistication (ISWAP used captured vehicles bearing the latest Nigerian army markings and camouflage)”.

In November 2021, a Nigerian army general, Brigadier General Dzarma Zirkusu and three soldiers were killed during an attack by ISWAP militants in Askira Uba, Borno.

In April this year, the organisation claimed responsibility for an attack on a police station in Adavi LGA of Kogi State, claiming that five people were killed in the raid. On Wednesday, May 11, at least three persons were killed and several others injured, when an explosion occurred at a local bar in Kabba town.

That same month, reports from field offices of international NGOs indicated that attacks on Rann, the headquarters of Kalabalge Local Government Area of Borno, left about 50 people dead.

In June this year, at least two persons were killed and many injured in an explosion that occurred during an annual festival in the Idoji area of Okene, Kogi. ISWAP claimed responsibility for the attack, saying 20 people were killed.
The Owo church attack was the first time ISWAP, which has carried out many assaults in the North-East, North-West and North-Central, was blamed for an attack in the South-West.

Across the country, militia groups, and criminal networks linked to ISWAP have ensured unprecedented despoliation of security across defenseless communities using large-scale kidnapping for ransom operations.

A series of intelligence failures

The attacks in Abuja (Kuje), Owo and Shiroro, among many others, clearly show ISWAP’s capacity to deploy men and resources, and execute complex terror activities outside its North-East base.

From its main area of operations in Lake Chad, ISWAP has steadily and stealthily expanded attacks to the North-West, North-Central, including the nation’s capital, and the South-West.

The failure of Nigeria’s intelligence and security services to curtail the terror group’s growth has left many Nigerians worried.

According to a 2019 report by the International Crisis Group, Nigerian troops are badly led, poorly equipped and insufficiently supplied. Army bases are poorly fortified.

Troop rotation is rare, medical evacuation capacity is feeble, coordination with air support (which has occasionally been essential to repelling attacks on ground troops) is weak, and senior leadership has been slow to grapple seriously with its problems.

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A retired senior security officer with good knowledge of counterterror operations in Nigeria told BusinessDay: “What happens is that the SSS, military intelligence and defence intelligence use three major methods to gather information about groups like ISWAP.

For the SSS to have released the information they did in April alerting Nigerians to the likelihood of attacks shows that they may have either infiltrated some cells of the group, or intercepted their communications, or received credible information from captured operatives of ISWAP during interrogation.

“What tends to be gathered when cells are infiltrated or when criminal groups’ communications are intercepted or during interrogations of field operatives of these groups is information of a general threat. From a purely intelligence point of view, it is very difficult to know specific threats if you do not have access to the main decision-makers.

It is the top decision-makers that determine what to attack and where and when to attack. So, if captured operatives of ISWAP are not close to the top-level decision-makers of the group, it will be very difficult to know when and where these attacks will take place.”

According to a senior military intelligence officer, terror cells, including cells of ISWAP, have become more widespread and atomised, making it more challenging to gather information about the operations and decision-making landscape of the group.

“It is possible; in fact, we believe that the decisions to attack in Owo and other places outside the Lake Chad region were not taken at the highest levels of ISWAP but by the leadership of local cells in these places,” the officer said.

“The worst stance we seem to have taken as a country,” said a retired Nigerian diplomat and former intelligence officer, “is the decision to be reactive. There is no strategy that says that we are going to take a series of actions to bring an end to these crises in one year or two years. ISWAP decided to eliminate Shekau and finished it in no time. Meanwhile, Nigeria had been trying to eliminate him for over 10 years.”

On May 19, 2021, Abubakar Shekau, the long-time leader of Boko Haram, was killed during a clash with ISWAP’s fighters. It came a few weeks after ISIL ordered his surrender when he had refused to accept ISIL’s empanelled leadership of ISWAP. His death came after 11 years of fighting Nigeria’s military, which was unable to kill or capture him.

Years of violent attacks in northern Nigeria have left over 35,000 persons dead and displaced more than 2 million people, according to the United Nations. It said the prolonged instability, hunger and lack of health services caused by the insurgency had indirectly caused the deaths of more than 300,000 additional people.