Nigeria’s Poor Criminal Justice System Is Fueling Terrorism. Here’s How

He was arrested for aiding and abetting terrorists; eleven months later, he became a free man.

Abubakar Yussufu, also known as Ndadati, allegedly worked in cahoots with terrorists to abduct several people in Tsonfada Gabi, a village in Niger state, North-central Nigeria, and obtain millions from them as ransom. When the villagers found out that Ndadati was behind the abduction, they gave him out to a group of vigilantes, who handed him and his criminal ring leaders to the police.

That was the last update the villagers said they heard about the case, according to a report by the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ). Later, they saw Ndadati roaming the streets of Tsonfada Gabi and babbling that he was now a free man. No one could explain why he was released — not even the Niger state authorities. 

Widespread injustice and impunity, like in Ndadati’s case, are driving violence in many volatile states, especially in the northwest and central parts of Nigeria. These have also torn apart the confidence many have in the country’s criminal justice system, a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) noted. The report suggested that “the criminal justice system struggles with effectively responding to the deteriorating security situation across the country.”

The weaknesses in Nigeria’s justice system are multifaceted, featuring both a lack of capacity to properly prosecute criminal cases and a tendency among state officials to compromise such cases. The consequences of this are varied. On the one hand, some criminals have tried to justify their terrorist activities by claiming they picked up guns against unarmed citizens after people close to them or they themselves became subjects of severe injustice. On the other hand, there have also been cases of suspected, convicted, or self-confessed terrorists finding their way into civilian society only to launch more attacks.

In many northwestern states, where rural terrorism thrives, security researchers and experts noted that insecurity is deeply rooted in the failure of the criminal justice system, among other factors. Vigilantes have often complained that the police force is unreliable because arrested culprits are sometimes not prosecuted as stipulated by law. Such trends have encouraged civilians to take up arms in self-defence, which has led to cases of extrajudicial killings and ethnic profiling, further worsening the vicious cycle of violence and revenge attacks.  

The rots afflicting the formal justice system also plague the traditional judicial system, which operates in parallel under the control of the Emir, district heads, and ward leaders, who mediate on certain issues.

Some terrorists who spoke to researchers and journalists at the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) claimed that the high-handedness of security agents and a lack of judicial redress on many occasions fuel a cocktail of violence in the region. One terrorist leader said over 1000 cattle belonging to his family were rustled by criminals, but they couldn’t get justice when they went to court over the matter.

“Not long after, the soldiers and Yan Sakai killed my stepfather, and nothing was again done about it. There’s no place to report this injustice. Therefore, I feel the only way out is to bear a gun and fight for my freedom,” he said. “All the security agents and the emirs that were supposed to protect me were unable to protect me. But had these agencies assisted me and provided me with justice, I would never kill anybody.”

CDD says there’s a consensus among all actors they interviewed, suggesting that injustice and impunity escalated the armed conflict in the region.

Similar cases are found in northeastern Nigeria, especially in Borno, the birthplace of the Boko Haram insurgency. The arbitrary arrest and prolonged detention of people remotely suspected of being members or allies of the terror groups have led to the unjust treatment of thousands of innocent civilians. This has made it easier for Boko Haram to gain sympathy and recruit more members.

The deradicalisation and reintegration programmes executed by the federal and state governments have also drawn criticism from many residents who believe the former terrorists should instead be prosecuted and jailed. They fear that many of the “repentant terrorists” have tendencies to return to their old ways.

Some events have solidified their fear. In 2023, for instance, some “deradicalised” Boko Haram terrorists asked the Nigerian authorities to provide them with a means of livelihood, lest they return to the forests to rejoin insurgent militants.

“I am one of those that surrendered their guns, and I did it because I got tired of killing and stealing and needed to start a new life,” one of them told Channels Television. “We took up arms because of lack of jobs or tangible source of livelihood. As such, I will plead with the government to provide us a source of livelihood so that some of us that have genuinely surrendered will not be tempted again.”

When calls to prosecute surrendered terrorists heightened in 2021, the federal government at the time insisted that was against global practice. 

However, terrorists behind bars still found their ways to plan operations with the help of corrupt prison officials. Earlier this year, Christopher Musa, Nigeria’s Chief of Defense Staff (CDS), accused prison warders of aiding and abetting terrorists in their custody to plan deadly attacks even from confinements. He stressed that some of the officials also help the terrorists move funds through their bank accounts.

“In the north-east, when we were debriefing some of the arrested Boko Haram, they were able to tell us how, from the prison, they could plan operations out in the field,” Musa said. “They use some of the warders there. We are not saying all of them are corrupt. They use their accounts and the deal is that anyone whose account is used, they share it 50/50.”

Musa seemed to have opened a can of worms when he spoke, but similar issues questioning Nigeria’s justice system had happened before his public outburst. In Yobe, a state in the northeastern region, a repentant terrorist was recruited as a prison official, sparking controversies on the internet following a Premium Times report. The prison authorities discovered he was a former Boko Haram member when they interviewed him over his seeming masterful use of guns and military-grade weapons.

“Usually vetting is to be done before recruitment, but in the Correctional Service, little or no vetting is done,” a prison official said in the report. “People pay for jobs and receive their employment letters at home. Level 8 is sold for [₦]800k Level 4-7 for [₦]400k.”

The revelation came when there was a scary surge of terrorist attacks on prison facilities across the country. With speculations that many Boko Haram terrorists might have found their way into public service, many were worried the correctional centres, as one of the justice enforcement institutions in Nigeria, might have been breached by terrorists with the help of insiders due to the porous recruitment system.

Meanwhile, thousands of jihadi fighters arrested and jailed across northeastern Nigeria are yet to be properly sentenced for the cruelty they committed. In December 2023, the Nigerian Correctional Services said 69 per cent of the 77,849 inmates in its custody across the country are awaiting trial, while 3,413 others are on death row. The lack of adequate evidence-gathering mechanisms means that it would be difficult to secure the conviction of detainees who are known to be guilty. This situation is overwhelming the Nigerian prisons, which have limited spaces for thousands of inmates and pose security threats to correctional facilities.

Some experts believe that Nigeria’s criminal justice system inadvertently aids jailbreaks due to multifaceted problems of underfunding, shortage of staff, and overcrowding, among other factors. They said in a report that the nature of jailbreaks in recent years reflects the activities of terrorists, insurgents and secessionists. 

The experts suggest that judicial authorities must facilitate justice as quickly as possible to reduce prison congestion or build separate facilities for dangerous inmates such as insurgents, kidnappers and other criminals posing threats to the security of the country.