By Blaise Udunze
Nigeria today faces a sobering dual reality: a deepening security crisis and an entrenched financial-crime ecosystem that quietly feeds, sustains, and normalises that crisis. Across the Northern part of the Federation, Middle Belt, and parts of the Southern region, kidnappers, terrorists’ cells and bandits engaged by political actors appears to have penetrated the ranks of security agencies operatives.
It was not surprising why these had made it possible for a complex chain of financial facilitators to operate within a shadow economy of violence, one that had claimed thousands of lives, to generate million of naira in ransom from victims and steadily erodes the authority of the state.
For over a decade, security experts and Nigeria’s international partners have warned that no meaningful progress will be made against insecurity unless the financial oxygen sustaining the violence is cut off.
Yet the country continues to prosecute its anti-terrorism efforts largely through military responses, as though the conflict could be resolved solely on the battlefield. What remains missing is a decisive, transparent, and politically courageous confrontation with the economic networks that make insecurity profitable.
This war is not only about guns and bullets. It is about money. Note that moves fighters, buys weapons, fuels political desperation and underwrites chaos Until Nigeria addresses the financial pipelines behind its insecurity, the crisis will continue to reproduce itself.
The rise in mass kidnappings is neither accidental nor spontaneous. It has evolved into a rational, structured, revenue-generating enterprise. Appearing on Channels TV’s Politics Today in October 2025, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed warned that insurgent and bandit groups now treat ransom payments as reliable “war funds.” The data support his claim.
A 2024 survey by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, found that Nigerians paid N2.2 trillion in ransom between May 2023 and April 2024. This astonishing sum does not account for unreported payments made through informal negotiators, mobile transfers, or unregulated community channels.
Kidnapping has matured into a fully formed economy with well-defined roles: negotiators, informants, logistics providers, cash couriers, and security collaborators. Proceeds are reinvested in weapons, motorcycles, communication devices, safe houses, and even land acquisitions.
In the words of a security analyst, “Every successful kidnapping is a fundraiser.
If Nigeria’s external security threats are troubling, the internal compromises are even more alarming.
A leaked memo by Major General Mohammed Ali Keffi accused senior government and military officials of diverting billions of naira earmarked for arms procurement under former Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai. Keffi’s allegations included: weapons paid for but never delivered,falsified battlefield reports,civilian casualties mislabeled to justify inflated expenditures andpolitical interference obstructing investigations into terror financing
His claims echoed the earlier warning by Gen. T.Y. Danjuma, who accused sections of the military of working in concert with armed groups and abandoning vulnerable communities.
Keffi’s memo became even more consequential following the 2025 detention of former Attorney General Abubakar Malami by the EFCC over allegations of money laundering, terrorism financing and suspicious financial activity linked to 46 bank accounts.
Together, these revelations paint a disturbing picture: even as Nigerians endure mass abductions, elements within the political and security elite appear to be enabling or shielding the financial networks behind the violence.
Nigeria’s insecurity which had persisted over the years cannot be divorced from the environment in which illicit finance deals thrive at local government, state and Federal levels which key enablers include informal Economies and Unregulated Cash Flows.
With over 70 percent of rural transactions still cash-based, terror groups exploit:Hawala networks,POS and mobile-money agents, cattle markets and mining sites, Barter systems centred on livestock and grains. These channels, according to market analysts operate beyond the reach of AML/CFT systems.
These also include such other problems as identity Fraud and Weak KYC Enforcement as well as criminal networks that routinely open accounts with: fake NINs, compromised SIM cards recycled BVNs and mule identities. More worrisome was the kidnappers’ collusion within Financial Institutions
The EFCC estimates that up to 70 percent of financial crimes involve bank personnel, primarily through:Uunauthorised cash withdrawals,suppressed Suspicious Transaction Reports, STRs, and manipulated internal alerts.
Weak Prosecution cases and Political Interference that was said to have dragged on for years, as many evaporate entirely before reaching court often due to political considerations. Another instance was ungoverned Spaces.
There is no gain saying the fact that large territories across the entire 19 states of the northern region serve as hubs for arms trafficking, illegal mining of gold, lithium, cobalt, uranium, and other mineral resources including rare earth elements, paving the way for kidnap-for-ransom camps and cross-border smuggling, particular, in the north western states of Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi, and the north central state of Kwara and the north eastern states of Borno and Yobe.
Public frustration is reaching a boiling point. On December 10, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, announced a nationwide protest scheduled for December 17, citing the “degenerating security situation” and the rise in mass abductions.
The NLC condemned the November 17 abduction of female students in Kebbi, noting that security personnel had been withdrawn from the school shortly before the attack. The union called the act “dastardly and criminal” and directed all affiliates and civil-society partners to fully mobilise for the protest.
This marks a significant shift. For the first time in years, Nigeria’s most influential labour body is placing insecurity at the centre of national mobilization, further underscoring the argument that the current crisis is not simply a security failure but a systemic breakdown of governance, accountability, and financial integrity.
A Sahara Reporters investigation uncovered a network of 20 Nigerians and three foreign nationals allegedly linked to the financing of Boko Haram and ISWAP. Their transactions, running into hundreds of billions, were quietly channeled through personal and corporate accounts.
Among those named by the publication includes one Saidu Ahmed, Zaria businessman, who was said to have funded the criminal gangs allegedly to the tune of N4.8bn to sustain the cash inflows,Usaini Adamu, Kano trader with 111 accounts: N43bn inflows, N50bn outflows, ,Muhammad Sani Adam, forex and precious stones dealer: N54bn across 41 accounts
Also included on the list was Yusuf Ghazali, a forex trader linked to UAE-convicted terrorists, operated 385 accounts,Ladan Ibrahim, a Sokoto official, is accused of diverting public funds.
Foreign actors included the late Tribert Ayabatwa ,N67bn inflows, and Nigerien arms dealer Aboubacar Hima, who moved over $1.19 million. Strikingly, several of the suspects arrested in 2021 were quietly released without trial, continuing a pattern of impervious investigations and political bottlenecks.
This network confirms a painful truth: Nigeria’s insecurity is not driven solely by men wielding rifles in the bush. It is sustained by individuals in cities, businesses, and bureaucracies, people with access, influence, and remarkable financial mobility.
The political undertone of Nigeria’s insecurity was reinforced by the former Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Lucky Irabor,rtd, who admitted that politicians were among those financing terror groups. According to him, some trials were conducted “away from public consumption.”
His statement was said to have revived key questions:Why is the state shielding the identities of terror sponsors? who benefits from the secrecy? And what political consequences are being avoided?
A security source had told Truth Nigeria that Nigeria’s published list of 19 terror financiers in 2024 represented only a fraction of the full network.Baba-Ahmed’s accusation that former Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai was part of the political forces that aggravated Northern insecurity, an accusation the former governor has previously denied, adds further urgency to demands for transparency.
Despite repeated assurances, violence continues to spread:303 students and 12 teachers abducted in Niger State, 38 worshippers kidnapped in Kwara, simultaneous raids across Plateau, Kaduna, Benue, and Niger and whole communities uprooted by the bandits and terrorists’ weekly attacks in Zamfara, Sokoto and Borno states, particular.
As Amnesty International had observed, that“In many rural communities, in the north have become not only the graveyards of the criminal elements but are expanding.” SBM Intelligence now describes large portions of the North as “open killing fields,” areas where the state’s influence has collapsed, and community vigilantes have become the default security providers.
Security experts converge on a single message: Nigeria cannot defeat terrorism without dismantling its financial infrastructure. Dr. Friday Agbo, a security researcher, disclosed, “Terror groups survive because their financial lifelines remain untouched.”
Jonathan Asake, analyst and former SOKAPU president, said, “Publish the full Dubai list. Without transparency, impunity will remain the norm.”
Gen. Irabor (rtd.) revealed, “There are politicians involved. The conflict is multi-layered: ideology, criminality, and political manipulation.”
These assessments underscore one reality: ideology is secondary. Money is primary. It is the oxygen of Nigeria’s terror landscape.
Nigeria must elevate financial crime to the level of a national-security emergency. Key reforms include: integrating BVN-NIN-SIM identity databases and upgrading real-time monitoring, targeting illicit markets: illegal mining hubs, cattle markets, unregulated border posts, deploying AI-driven analytics to detect layered transactions, mule networks, and ransom flows.
This is in addition to strengthening bank compliance units and protecting whistleblowers, improving inter-agency intelligence sharing with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, NFIU, DSS, NDLEA, Police, BN, criminalising unexplained wealth, especially in conflict zones and investing in safe-school infrastructure, rural policing, and local reporting channels
Nigeria’s two-front war is neither mysterious nor new. It is a well-documented, financially engineered crisis protected by silence, vested interests, and institutional decay. The NLC’s mobilisation signals a turning point; citizens are unwilling to accept official evasions while insecurity intensifies. To end this crisis, Nigeria must: expose and prosecute terror financiers, purge corrupt insiders in the security system, dismantle ransom economies, strengthen financial intelligence and end political protection for criminal networks.
Many believes that until these reforms are pursued to its logical conclusion by the Nigerian Government with integrity, to stop the billions of naira that have continued to move through the nation’s financial system into the hands of these terrorists, bandits and kidnappers, and their appointed negotiators, the criminal gangs would continue to procure weapons and the country will continue to bleed.
Udunze, is a Lagos based Journalist and PR, Consultant, who can be reached via: blaise.udunze@gmail.com
