Is Nigeria Building Enough Resilience in Local Communities to Tackle Rising Terrorist Attacks?

Many factors aided the incursion of the Lakurawa terror group into the satellite communities of Sokoto and Kebbi states in North West Nigeria. The cracks in military cooperation between Nigeria and the Niger Republic and the gaps in the country’s counter-terrorism schemes are emboldening the Islamist group and other terrorist organisations in the region.

Eight years ago, Nigeria launched a counterterrorism policy structured around five core objectives: to prevent, secure, identify violent conflicts, prepare, and implement measures against terrorism. This strategy was designed as a comprehensive framework to address terrorism and violent extremism in the country.

The policy’s work streams aim to prevent and mitigate violent conflicts, focusing first on stopping individuals from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. This involves raising security awareness among Nigerians and fostering a culture of vigilance. It also seeks to secure and safeguard citizens and critical infrastructure by reducing vulnerabilities to attacks, which includes bolstering border security measures.

Another vital pillar emphasises the pre-emption of terror attacks through early warning systems, disrupting terrorists’ funding networks, and collaborating with local communities to neutralise threats before they materialise. Building the capacity of security agencies to act as effective deterrents is also a central focus.

Another critical element is resilience-building, ensuring security agencies can “respond to and effectively recover from terrorist attacks.” This includes developing the capability to protect high-risk areas, such as symbolic sites and places of worship, and deploying specialised resources to mitigate risks in these sensitive locations.

However, despite these ambitions, rural and underserved communities remain particularly vulnerable to terror activities. These areas have become fertile ground for terrorist infiltration, underscoring a gap in the strategy to adequately respond to these threats, which have become deeply rooted in the region. But why has the country’s ambitious counterterrorism strategy failed to forestall, secure, and identify the infiltration of the areas by terror groups?

Terrorists have long held sway in the northwestern region, exerting socio-political control over local communities. They impose taxes, plunder villages, and run a large kidnapping-for-ransom industry, snatching lives out of the breath of residents at will. In some areas, residents work as labourers on land seized by terrorists. These groups even mediate local disputes, presenting themselves as alternative authorities to win over residents. 

According to local sources, the terrorists could infiltrate most tail ends of the region because of the sprawling ungoverned spaces in the area, mostly tied to the absence of government in rural communities and unresolved grievances. In many rural areas in the region, there are no access roads, and security presence is thin or non-existent because the military is stretched due to conflicts.

The terrible situation has forced local communities to forge some agreements with terrorists amid rising distrust in the authorities’ ability to protect them. There have been instances where terrorists razed down communities after some locals reported them to authorities. The fear has made many residents wary of providing real-time intelligence to the state as terrorists continue to target them. 

The extra-judicial killings –mainly from the excesses of state-supported vigilante groups and security forces – breeds grievances that make joining terrorism a just cause to seek revenge against the state. HumAngle has repeatedly documented how incidents of tit-for-tat killings, ethnic profiling, and extrajudicial killings take centre stage in the decade-old crisis, a reflection of the broader failure and distrust in the country’s justice system among residents. 

There is also widespread poverty in the northwestern region. Activities of the terrorists have disrupted the economy of the largely agrarian communities; about 45 million people in the region wallow in extreme poverty, according to Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics. No fewer than 20,000 people have been killed, and about 600,000 more displaced from their homes, occupying public spaces, schools, and uncompleted buildings without aid or support. This has spawned unprecedented malnutrition and preventable diseases in the region. According to analysts, the situation offers a fertile ground from which terrorists can recruit. A recent study exploring the terrorists’ recruitment strategy revealed that locals joined the ranks and files of the terrorists for as low as ₦50,000 ($29.84).

Armed groups exploit weak governance, intelligence deficiencies, and economic hardship anywhere in the world. This is no different for rural communities in North West Nigeria, says Samuel Malik, a Senior Researcher at Good Governance Africa, a pan-African think tank. Samuel, who has conducted field research in the region, added that the absence of adequate community-based intelligence, ineffective early-warning systems, and under-resourced community policing “hampers the ability of authorities, especially at the local level, to detect and respond swiftly to threats.”

Oluwole Ojewale, another security expert,  believes three fault lines are hindering the potency of the country’s counterterrorism approach, which are insufficient actionable intelligence, unaddressed grievances, and the socio-economic situation in most of the local communities where terrorists hold sway.

“Terrorists thrive on two things,” says the researcher from the Dakar-based Institute for Security Studies. “One is their capability to move logistics for their operations, arms trafficking in particular and other weapons like fear, any other logistics that aid their operations. There’s a need to strengthen intelligence gathering along that line and put their searchlight on terrorism financing.”

“Secondly, the vulnerability of local communities amid the socioeconomic crisis in the country, bottled-up grievances and widespread unemployment are other factors. These fault lines make it difficult to tackle terrorism across local communities,” he added.

Security analysts are worried that The National Counter-terrorism Strategy doesn’t seem to adequately put non-ideological, rural armed violent groups like those in the northwest under its radar — even though it is projected for further reviews to reflect present reality. Presently, as the conflict festers, the northwest is home to various armed groups, including jihadists. Despite authorities’ counter-terrorism measures and heavy military spending, the region has also seen Islamist terror groups stamping their authorities in its rural areas. 

Groups like Ansaru and, recently, Lakurawa have enjoyed a haven in the area for years. It doesn’t help that the country’s poorly policed 1,497km border with Niger has been a gate for arms smuggling, narcotics, and terror groups escaping military offensives in countries like Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger Republic. This is further compounded by the region’s vast forest reserves, which provide cover for them and make surveillance a major hassle. The multiplicity of these groups means one thing: there’s not much clarity on the specific roles and the interconnectedness of the groups, which makes allocating resources and response difficult — a twist that should have been properly spelt out in a document supposedly meant to mitigate terrorism in the country. 

“Criminal groups identified as bandits, along with terror factions such as Boko Haram’s JAS and ISWAP, and the recently surfaced Lakurawa extremist group, illustrate a complex landscape requiring clear delineation,” Samuel told HumAngle. “Terror groups leverage organised crime for resources and recruitment, while criminal groups depend on terrorists for protection and access to trade routes. These require distinct strategies and responses.”

At this point, with the resurgence of terror groups in the region and the unbridled attacks in rural areas, analysts agree that the country must shift its dominant reactionary measures to a preventive framework by leveraging on the depth of local leaders and trusted actors in these areas and investing in early warning systems. 

“The untapped potential of information at the community level, where most security issues originate, could be harnessed through the engagement of local leaders and trusted actors in intelligence gathering. Basic surveillance training and support for early-warning systems would empower communities effectively,” Samuel said. “This may sound like a cliche, but addressing socioeconomic and governance grievances, which foster recruitment into criminal or violent extremist groups, could mitigate conditions that allow these groups to flourish, thereby building resilience in rural areas against their infiltration.”

Ojewale concurs, adding that gathering intelligence and acting on them before they haunt local communities would help to reinstate lost trust among residents. “Being able to work on these issues would no doubt starve the oxygen-feeding terrorism in the region,” he urged.