Nigeria’s Defence Chief Calls for Global Action Against Terrorist Funding

Nigeria’s 18th Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, has appealed to the international community to help trace the funds that support terrorist operations in Nigeria. Speaking in an interview monitored by Radio Now’s Newsdesk, General Musa revealed that these groups receive significant external support, stressing that identifying and cutting off their financial resources is crucial to undermining their operations.

“It is a cause of concern, you know, actually for them to have been able to sustain their operations for all this wealth, we’re talking of 16 years. Like I said during the surrendering exercise, we were able to see some of them with hard currencies, different different denominations. Besides that, like I said, they have a lot of support coming from outside. Now what we have done is that we have raised these observations, the Office of the National Security Advisor, the NFIU, the Central Bank, the NIA, the DSS have all moved into it. What we are also doing is that we have reached out to the international community on the importance to trace the funds, trace the movement of the money. If we’re able to take that out, we’ll take the oxygen that keeps them going, which is very, very vital. It’s a very dangerous and very high value organizations that we believe they’ll be able to do that, that has made it difficult for them to be traced. So we’re doing everything. Again, not only from the international, we know also, we have the belief that locally they also have resources of funding, probably through taxes, levies, kidnapping and so on. And that’s why we’re making all the efforts to ensure that we deny them ability either. But I can show you the federal government has stepped in. We have reached into United Nations, European Union and all other international organizations to help assist in tracking the funds.”

Also Read: Over 10,000 Terrorists Killed Nationwide in 2024 says Defence Headquarters

The General underscored the shifting nature of warfare, noting that today’s conflict is characterised by non-state actors blending into local populations, rather than traditional military confrontations. He called for increased global cooperation to address this evolving threat.

“In the past, it used to be the conventional type where we are dealing with one enemy against the other. Now, we are dealing with non-state actors that are like normal citizens within the area. So it makes it extremely difficult identifying who is who.You can only tell when you see them armed. If they are not armed, they’re just like any other normal human. And because again, a lot of them also are dealing with ideology.Now, ideology is of the mind. And once a person believes what he’s doing is right, that when he dies, he’s going to heaven, he’s benefiting so much, he has nothing to lose. And that is the most dangerous enemy you have to fight with. There is no disconnect between the kinetic and the non-kinetic. And that’s why we’ve always preached that it is a whole of society approach. In the beginning, we started making it look as if it was an armed forces affair.It was an armed forces war. And so measures were not put in place. Now, what the kinetic and non-kinetic has done is to bring everybody together to make that very important.We started this deliberately when we were in the Northeast. And that has worked. And that’s where I see the number of people that have surrendered.Now, we’re also adopting same.”

Gen. Musa also highlighted the importance of governance in the fight against terrorism, emphasising that poverty and hunger are often manipulated by terrorists to recruit new members. He argued that addressing these issues is key to disrupting the terrorist recruitment cycle.

“Understand that Nigeria is over 900,000 square kilometers. It is massive. A lot of ungoverned areas with a lot of forests that cross across the region.Most of these forests that you see cross from Sambisa down to Niger State, across into Benin, Chad, and all those other areas. So it is very, very critical. It is massive. So what we are doing is that we’re working together with the communities. Now, for us to have a final solution, if there’s anything like final, is that we must have the backings of good governance. Good governance is important because most of these societies, when we get to these communities, a lot of them don’t even know anything about government. You go there, there are no roads, no water, no electricity. And as long as we have poverty and hunger, it’s going to, these are areas, these are tools that they use to bring them into the fold. And that’s why they recruit quite easily. I can tell you on a weekly basis, we are taking them out as many as possible. But the more you do that, the assets they get from these other countries into Nigeria, movement of small arms and light weapons into Nigeria, movement of drugs. There’s a continuous, and that’s why it’s important that we must work together with our neighbors because working with them, make sure that they block their own borders. And once they do that, these things don’t get into Nigeria.”