ANALYSIS: Terrorism Financing: Can Nigerian Senate unmask suspects?

On Wednesday, 3 December, the Nigerian Senate passed the Anti-Terrorism Act amendment bill for second reading.

A major highlight of the bill is the imposition of the death penalty without the option of a fine for all kidnapping offences.

The bill has now been scheduled for a public hearing, although the date has not been announced yet. The Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, stated that the hearing would address the role of sponsors and accomplices in kidnapping networks.

A similar commitment had been made in the House of Representatives. At the end of its three-day special session on security a week earlier, the lower chamber resolved to ask the executive arm to name terrorism financiers.

With its resolution, all eyes are now on the senators to see whether they will ensure that appropriate officials name terrorism sponsors at the public hearing.

Is this the first time?

For over a decade, Nigeria’s security crisis has been framed as a battle against terrorists, bandits, insurgents, and unknown gunmen.

Authorities have provided different explanations for their identities; some claim they are faceless, while others assert that they are known individuals. However, what is most important is that behind these violent groups are sponsors who fund, coordinate, or politically shield criminal networks. Their identities remain shrouded in silence.

Officials have consistently acknowledged that the terrorists operate with financial and political backing. Security agencies also maintain intelligence reports pointing to specific financiers. Despite this, the identities of the sponsors remain largely withheld from the public.

Lawmakers often summon security chiefs to plenary sessions and committee meetings, though most are held behind closed doors.

What is certain, however, is that lawmakers rarely use their oversight powers to expose individuals suspected of financing terrorism.

Perhaps the most worrisome aspect is the legislative silence whenever terrorism allegations implicate sitting lawmakers.

Lawmakers’ alleged involvement

At least two serving lawmakers were linked to terrorism-related cases. Both denied the allegations.

In 2011, Borno South senator, Ali Ndume, was linked with terrorism. It was a time when terror attacks were at their peak in Nigeria, especially in the North-east region where he comes from.

Mr Ndume, who has been a lawmaker for over two decades, was tried for six years on charges of terrorism financing at the Federal High Court in Abuja. The offence, according to the Nigerian government, contravened sections 3, 4, and 7 of the Terrorism Prevention Act of 2011.

However, the lawmaker described the charges as unjust and unfair, saying he gave the then Vice President, Namadi Sambo, and the then Director-General of the State Security Service (SSS) information he got from Boko Haram terrorists. He said his contact with the sect was established when he was a member of the presidential committee on security matters.

On 4 July 2017, the court dismissed the case, saying the government failed to link him with the allegation.

In 2024, the governor of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed, submitted a petition to the presidency, accusing Bauchi South Senator Umar Buba of sponsoring bandits. Many groups, including the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), an Islamic human rights organisation, defended the senator, arguing that the accusation was politically motivated.

In October 2025, a video went viral on social media linking the senator to banditry again. Again, some groups dismissed the allegation as politically motivated because of the reported plan by Mr Buba to contest the 2027 Bauchi governorship election.

Regardless of the motive for the accusations, whether politically driven or factual, the matter was never investigated by the Senate. At the time, Mr Buba was Chairman of the Senate Committee on National Security and Intelligence, a position that gave him privileged access to information about terrorism operations in Nigeria.

He was sacked as chairman of the committee on 26 November for failing to perform his oversight duties. He was reassigned to chair the Senate Committee on Livestock and Animal Husbandry.

Zamfara West senator, Abdulaziz Yari, has repeatedly been linked to illegal mining activities in the state, operations that intelligence reports suggest help fuel banditry. He has denied the allegations. Yet neither his colleagues nor the Senate as an institution has publicly scrutinised his alleged involvement.

Mr Yari, a former Zamfara governor, is an influential senator who contested and lost the Senate presidency in 2023.

Apart from the lawmakers, the current Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, had also been linked to terror groups. Mr Matawalle is the immediate past governor of Zamfara State and has denied the allegations. Although lawmakers have a constitutional duty to oversee government activities, none have initiated any formal scrutiny to determine whether these allegations are credible.

These examples illustrate the political reluctance within parliament to scrutinise terrorism allegations when they touch powerful insiders.

Do lawmakers really have the political will?

Terrorism financing allegations in Nigeria often involve powerful political or business elites.

For lawmakers, exposing them could destabilise political alliances, threaten campaign financing sources, trigger internal retaliation, implicate colleagues or political patrons, or even expose their own compliance failures.

Kabir Adamu, the managing director of Beacon Security and Intelligence Limited, in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES, argued that lawmakers face an additional risk because their own private companies may be violating anti-money laundering rules.

Mr Adamu noted that many lawmakers do not comply with regulations of the Special Control Unit Against Money Laundering (SCUML), a unit under the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which requires businesses to be registered and vetted before they can receive contracts or financial privileges.

He suggested that strict auditing could unexpectedly expose some lawmakers as unwitting, or even deliberate, financiers of terrorism due to non-compliant business dealings.

“The whole idea is, before you are awarded a contract, you are supposed to check with SCMUL and make sure the organisation you are registering, or you are issuing the contract, has been registered. Likewise, before issuing a contract, you are supposed to ensure that the organisation is not on the sanction list I mentioned earlier.

“So, the risk for our parliamentarians, and in fact all government officials… because as you know, all of them have companies, and I’m almost certain they are not compliant with this. By the time we do a thorough check, we may find out that some of them have inadvertently also sponsored terrorism unknowingly, or sometimes even knowingly. So that would be the risk, frankly,” he said.

What lawmakers are not telling Nigerians

Mr Adamu noted that Nigeria already has a structured legal process for identifying terrorism sponsors, one that members of the National Assembly surprisingly failed to reference during the debates.

Under this system, anyone, including lawmakers, can report a suspected terror financier to the Nigeria Sanctions Committee (NigSac), chaired by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice. The committee reviews and verifies the allegation. If credible, it seeks a court ruling confirming the designation. Thereafter, the suspect’s name will be uploaded to the national sanctions list.

Nigeria currently has 118 names on the sanctions list, including about 30 identified terror financiers. The list contains names of individuals, mainly BDC operators, and companies. No one on the list is known to be a politician, despite consistent claims by security and intelligence sources that terror groups enjoy political backing.

Mr Adamu warned that weakening this due process could allow powerful actors in security agencies to label innocent people as terrorists, a practice he says had happened before.

The intelligence expert referenced a case in Jigawa State where a man was detained for five years after a security officer falsely accused him of being a Boko Haram member because they were courting the same woman.

He said checks and balances are crucial to prevent such abuses and that lawmakers should strengthen, not bypass, the process if they’re serious about exposing terrorism financiers.

“I run a company called Beacon Security and Intelligence Limited, and there was a time when we had up to 500 names of missing persons. We found out that most of them were arrested on charges of terrorism.

“If we allow the process to be lax, innocent people may end up finding themselves in prison because someone in the military or someone in SSS has called them terrorists. That is why I love the process, the fact that there are checks and balances. I think it’s about evaluating whether the process is working, and if it’s not working, how do we make sure it works better for us,” he said.

The Senate spokesperson, Yemi Adaramodu, did not respond to calls and text messages sent to his phone.

Similarly, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on National Security and Intelligence, Abdullahi Yahaya, did not respond to multiple calls and messages seeking clarification on the committee’s position regarding the investigation into allegations linking lawmakers and senior government officials to terrorism financing.

The missing institutional accountability

While lawmakers demand the naming of terrorism sponsors, they rarely challenge the executive’s reluctance to release intelligence findings publicly. The lawmakers also rarely question the secrecy within the State Security Service (SSS), the military and sometimes the police.

A former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, who served in the Muhammadu Buhari administration, had pledged to reveal the identities of financiers of terrorism in Nigeria. He never did so before the administration left office in May 2023.

At least 20 of the current 109 senators, including the immediate past Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, were in the Senate when that promise was made. Yet, they did not push for the publication of the list.

Will lawmakers name terrorism sponsors this time?

Based on antecedents and historical patterns, the lawmakers may not take the bull by the horns. The existing sanctions system already identifies dozens of suspects, but legislators appear unaware of or unwilling to engage with the mechanism.

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For parliament to demonstrate genuine political will, it must acknowledge the existing sanctions framework, strengthen oversight of intelligence agencies, insist on public accountability, and confront the political costs of naming powerful actors.

Until these issues are addressed, the promise to expose terrorism sponsors may remain symbolic. It may simply become another cycle of talk without real action or reform.