For the past three years, the governments of Buhari and Tinubu have dithered over releasing the identity of terrorism financiers in Nigeria, even after United Arab Emirate compiled and sent a list to Nigeria. Last week, the Tinubu government said it would release a list of terrorism financiers. And what did it do? It threw up the names of Simon Ekpa and his village people causing problem in the South East. When will there be seriousness and honesty in government in Nigeria?
Governance in Nigeria has become too farcical for the good of the society. Rigour and sincerity of purpose in the management of public policies and actions have steadily been on the decline over the years, quite alright, but nobody expected that the serious act of government will almost turn into skits.
In early February 2022, the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, which was never described by anybody, not even its staunchest supporters, as being enthusiastic about combating terrorism, woke up to announce that it had identified no less than 96 financiers of terrorism in the country, alongside 424 of their associates.
Minister of Information. Mr. Lai Mohammed, a man who had firmly established his profile as someone whose every word must be taken with a pinch of the salt, regaled the country with the uncommon accomplishment on the anti-terrorism frontiers.
The Minister declared, at a press briefing, that the breakthrough in identifying terrorism financiers, highlighted the success of the Buhari-led government, in combating corruption.
The media briefing by the Minister, was called to present the scorecard of the government on anti-corruption initiatives.
Mohammed was effusive in his commendation of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU). Through painstaking, professional work of the intelligence agency, he said, the Buhari government had cracked the desired nut in the raging war against terrorism.
According to his detailed briefing, the NFIU had successfully identified 96 financiers of terrorism in Nigeria, 424 associates/supporters of terrorism groups,123 companies and 33 bureau de change operators aligned to terrorist activities. Also identified were 26 suspected bandits/kidnappers and seven co-conspirators of the kidnappers.
With details of the said anti-terrorism breakthrough attributed to the NFUI, many assigned reasonable weight and significance to the facts, forgetting, that they were emanating, all the same, from Lai Mohammed.
Three months down the line, in May 2022, United Arab Emirate (UAE) listed six Nigerians as terrorism financiers and forwarded details of their investigation and conclusion to the Nigerian government.
According to the UAE, the six Nigerians had established Boko Harm cells in UAE, for the sole purpose of raising and channelling fund to Nigeria, to oil Boko Haram’s deadly enterprise. Indeed, the six individuals indicted by UAE, were charged for attempting to send $782,000 (seven hundred and eighty-two thousand US dollars) from Dubai to Nigeria, to aid the terrorist activities of Boko Haram.
It was up to Nigeria to continue from where UAE stopped. As a matter of fact, the Arab country reportedly forwarded to the Nigerian government also, names and identity of terrorism-supporting Nigerians. A number of these names were said to be high profile and well-heeled.
Curiously, for a country that was reeling under heavy barrage of assault by Boko Haram terrorists, mum was the word from the Buhari government on the critical matter of the identity of the criminals, availed by UAE. The government saw no need, anyway, to share details of the UAE disclosure, with the Nigerian public.
Six months later, in late November 2022, after the release by UAE to Nigeria, of a list of established terrorism supporters and financiers, Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, doubled down on the fantastic Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit-linked information, earlier released by his information counterpart, Lai Mohammed.
Speaking in India, through his aide, Abdulmalik Suleiman, at the 3rd Ministerial Conference on Counter-Terrorism Financing, Aregbeshola told the international gathering that “Nigeria has identified 100 high-risk financiers of Boko Haram”.
His statement was detailed thus,” In 2019 the NFIU commenced an in-depth analysis of the financing of Boko Haram group. This analysis, which took almost 18 months to complete, resulted in the identification of almost 100 high-risk financiers and identified links to 10 different countries;
“The NFIU was able to build a thorough picture of the transnational sources of the group’s finance, using intelligence from several countries, including our immediate neighbours, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Togo”.
The impression the Buhari government was assiduously creating for itself before the world, was that of a committed combatant against terrorism. The reality on the ground, at home, was, however, remarkably different.
Within this period, a presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, informed the country, that the government was prosecting about 400 Bureaux de Change operators, for allegedly funding Boko Haram. As usual, it was all figures. There was no clear identity of those supposedly being prosecuted. Indeed, when another presidential spokesperson, Femi Adesina,was pressed about the identity of the suspect terrorism financiers purportedly being prosecuted, his answer was that the Buhari government “was not interested in naming and shaming the financiers of terrorism, but in their prosecution”.
Matters remained at that till the end of the Buhari presidency. No terrorism financiers were named or shamed or prosecuted. After Buhari came Bola Tinubu.
Now,one of the major distinctions between Buhari and his successor, Tinubu, as it has turned out, is that if Buhari failed to do something, he at least, kept silent, and did not insult people with claims of what he did not do. Not so with Tinubu and his team. Tinubu will not do anything, absolutely nothing, but so much energy and resources will be deployed to generate a tumult about what he is doing or has done. Reconciling the reality and the claims these days, seem to require a permanent truth commission.
Under the Tinubu presidency, the military may make identifiable claims, that it has launched more spirited and targeted campaigns against terrorists in various fronts across the country. The reality on the ground, however, shows no remarkable improvement in any of the zones under pressure. Not in the North West. Not in the North East and not in the North Central. Of course, the southern flanks, still have the South East in the throes of criminality and the local equivalent of black-on-black violence.
When, last week, it was announced that the Tinubu government would release names of terrorism financiers, Nigerians were full of expectation. Finally, many had thought, what his predecessor could not do, Tinubu was about to do.
Lo and behold, what did the Tinubu government do? They released a list featuring Simon Ekpa, a veritable loose cannon causing mayhem in the South East from Finland, alongside 16 of his village people. The 17th name on the list of terrorism financiers, from the government, was Lakurawa group, an exogenous terrorist group, brought in, according to knowledgeable reports, to fight Boko Haram. And that was it.
Coincidentally, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Rev. Dr. Mathew Hassan Kukah, was reported in the media last weekend, bemoaning the failure of government, to checkmate the expansion of terrorism activities in the country. The situation has led to what the notably patriotic prelate measuredly described as “one of the worst phases of Nigeria’s national life”.
On multiple planes of existence, Bishop Kukah, must be bearing pains of the failure of the Nigerian state. Over 200 Christians, are reportedly being held hostage by terrorists in camps in Kaduna, presently. Catholic Reverend Fathers are, once more, increasingly targeted by religious fundamentalists cum terrorists for kidnapping, or worse, and the state pretends not to notice. Sokoto State, the prelate’s episcopal headquarters, has now deteriorated to a hot bed of terrorist incursions, too. If Bishop Kukah talks of “one of the worst phases of Nigeria’s national life”, he must be speaking from the soul.
In the face of this scenario, this expanding, strangulating onslaught by terrorists, across the vast space of northern Nigeria and the rest of the country, if the best the Tinubu government can do in identifying terrorism financiers, as a step to combating the menace, is to release a list that comprises of just Simon Ekpa, with a rag tag supporting cast of individuals, who may well include POS operators, that receive money from Ekpa, to stoke violence in the South East, then the country is very far from being ready to confront the existential threat before it.
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IKE EZEANI, a veteran journalist, former newspaper editor and government agency spokesman, is a syndicated columnist.
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