By Femi Macaulay
Update on Nigeria’s reported prosecution of terrorism-related suspects further exposed serious minuses in the fight against terrorism-related crime in the country and punishment of perpetrators.
The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), in a statement by the Special Adviser to the President on Communication & Publicity, office of the AGF, Kamarudeen Ogundele, said: “The courts convicted 85 persons for terrorism financing, 22 for International Criminal Court (ICC) related crimes while others were convicted for terrorism. They were sentenced to various jail terms.”
According to the AGF, the trials were held on July 23 and 24, under Giwa Project Kanji Phase Five, before five Federal High Court judges led by Justice Binta Nyako, including Justices Joyce Abdulmalik, Emeka Nwite, Obiora Egwuatu, and Mobolaji Olajuwon. The trials were said to have been observed by the National Human Rights Commission, the Nigerian Bar Association, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes, among others.
In November 2023, Fagbemi had said efforts were on to resume the trial of those categories of people. The latest information on the prosecution and punishment of those involved came about eight months after his announcement at the 40th Technical Commission/Plenary Meeting of the Inter-Governmental Action Group Against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA), in Abuja. GIABA is an organ of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), responsible for facilitating the adoption and implementation of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter Financing of Terrorism (CFT) strategies in West Africa.
It is, obviously, never enough to make such an announcement. Failure to arrest, prosecute and punish terrorism enablers cannot encourage public confidence in the fight against terrorism. Ironically, it even suggests that the authorities are enabling terrorism.
A major minus in the country’s fight against terrorism is the unjustifiable delay in prosecuting arrested suspects. Clearly, terrorism sponsors fuel the activities of terrorists, and disabling them is as important as crippling terrorists. Terrorism financiers and terrorists should not only be identified but arrested and prosecuted without delay. Failure to do so amounts to enabling terrorism.
For instance, in April 2021, the President Muhammadu Buhari administration announced that it had arrested 400 alleged Boko Haram sponsors. The claimed arrests suggested a new level of seriousness in the fight against terrorism.
The arrested alleged financiers of the Islamic terrorist group were said to be businessmen, including bureau de change operators. They were said to have been arrested in Kano, Borno, Lagos, Sokoto, Adamawa, Kaduna and Zamfara states, and Abuja.
The arrests were said to have been carried out following investigations involving the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Department of State Services (DSS), Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The unnamed suspects were expected to be prosecuted without delay. There was no evidence that they were prosecuted before Buhari left office in May 2023. Is that how to fight terrorism?
Also, in 2022, army authorities in charge of the Northeast Joint Operation announced that “A total of 886 detainees are awaiting transfer to Giwa Project in Kainji for prosecution.” The Giwa Project is in Kainji, Niger State. They said there were 1,893 suspects in custody at the Giwa Centre. There was no evidence of prosecution. Without prosecution, how can it be proved that arrested terrorism suspects are guilty and deserve to be punished? Can deterrent effect be achieved without punishing the guilty?
The Terrorism (Prohibition and Prevention) bill, 2022 signed into law by ex-president Buhari, stipulates a range of sanctions, including life imprisonment and death sentence, for anyone convicted of terrorism-related activity.
The legislation, which came after previous ones in 2011 and 2013, sought to “provide for an effective, unified and comprehensive legal, regulatory and institutional framework for the detection, prevention, prohibition, prosecution and punishment of acts of terrorism, terrorism financing, proliferation and financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in Nigeria; and for related matters.”
Fighting terrorism and its sponsors demands prosecution of arrested suspects based on existing law, without which stipulated sanctions cannot be applied. There are available lessons on how to fight terrorism effectively. The question is whether the country’s authorities are teachable.
For instance, in 2021, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added the names of six Nigerians to “the List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons… for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, Boko Haram.”
It accused the Nigeria-based terrorist group of “numerous attacks in the northern and northeastern regions of the country as well as in the Lake Chad Basin in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger that have killed thousands of people since 2009.”
The six Nigerians were: Abdurrahman Ado Musa, Salihu Yusuf Adamu, Bashir Ali Yusuf, Muhammed Ibrahim Isa, Ibrahim Ali Alhassan, and Surajo Abubakar Muhammad.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Federal Court of Appeals in Abu Dhabi had convicted them of transferring $782,000 from Dubai to Boko Haram in Nigeria. Adamu and Muhammad were sentenced to life imprisonment for violations of UAE anti-terrorism laws; Musa, Yusuf, Isa and Alhassan were sentenced to 10 years in prison, followed by deportation.
The US sanction against them, the agency said in a statement, “will prevent these individuals’ funds from being used further to support terrorism.”
In these cases, in the US and in UAE, the identified Nigerian terrorism sponsors were not only named; their names were also publicised. In Nigeria, terrorism enablers and terrorists reported to have been arrested, or even prosecuted, are usually faceless because their identities are unpublicised.
The identities of the 85 persons said to have been recently convicted of terrorism financing in the country, for instance, are not in the public domain. If they are real persons, why are they publicly unnamed? Not naming them may well suggest that the authorities are trying to hide something. Or, to be charitable, it does not make the authorities believable.
The facelessness of suspects arrested and prosecuted for terrorism-related crimes, which is a result of the government’s silence, is another major minus in the country’s fight against terrorism.
In this article
