In Nigeria, the word “terrorism” is a moving target – a prism that bends law, politics and everyday experience into shifting shapes. To brand an act “terrorism” is to lift it out of ordinary crime and into a sphere where the state demands obedience and society bargains for safety. The National Assembly has codified offences and urged the proscription of errant groups; the courts have applied those statutes with sweeping force. Most recently, on November 20, 2025, a federal court sentenced Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to life imprisonment on seven counts, including terrorism and treason, underscoring how the label is wielded as a legal weapon.
Beyond the courts, the term stretches still farther. Clerics such as Sheikh Ahmad Gumi argue that bandits are not terrorists and therefore merit negotiation, while militants like Asari Dokubo invoke “God given resource control” to justify vigilante action. For Sunday Igboho and other agitators, the label is both badge and bludgeon – a stigma raised by the state to deflate dissent and multiply fear. The past weeks have laid bare this elasticity when a U.S. airstrike razed suspected ISWAP camps in Tangaza, Sokoto. It was hailed as a rare external intervention – proof that Nigeria’s crisis is not a sealed theatre but part of a wider geopolitical stage. Yet even that strike arrived cloaked in ambiguity: casualty figures were fuzzy, combatant identities blurred, and outcomes contested at every press briefing.
The “miraculous return” of kidnapped children and congregants was announced with familiar certainty – no ransom, no negotiation, no fight, no arrests. When pressed, the Niger State governor, Umar Bago, offered a terse evasion: “whether ransom was paid or not is beside the point.” This was not a mere dodge; it was an inadvertent confession that ransom has become a shadow tax, a parallel economy that monetises grief and subsidises silence.
The abduction of at least 177 worshippers in Kaduna, initially denied by the police before mounting evidence forced acknowledgement, epitomises this crisis of credibility. The denial was not a minor misstep; it was a rupture in the covenant of communication between state and citizen. When institutions reflexively dismiss lived trauma, they corrode the scaffolding of trust. The eventual admission, carried by most national newspapers, revealed a troubling pattern: truth is treated as negotiable, disclosure as optional, and accountability as expendable. In the endless conversation of the terror war, such reversals mainstream disbelief, teaching citizens that official statements are provisional until contradicted by reality. This denial turned confession sits alongside the “miraculous return” narrative, reinforcing the scarcity of truth at the heart of Nigeria’s security discourse.
The choreography of official communication is again on display in the Timbuktu Triangle. Troops of Operation Hadin KAI announced the discovery of mass graves containing insurgent bodies, framing “the shock-find” as evidence of “heavy losses” suffered by terrorists. The statement was less a forensic account than a morale script: neutralisations tallied, stability proclaimed, morale affirmed, commitment reiterated. The graves themselves – grim, unverified and unexplained – became props in a narrative of victory. This is spin in its purest form. The military sought to discredit insurgent propaganda by curating its own, presenting an absence of detail as proof of success. No independent verification, no accounting for possible civilian casualties, no timeline of burial or discovery – only the assurance that “troops remain resolute.”
Citizens are asked to believe in stability while living in insecurity, to accept graves as evidence of victory, whilst funerals multiply. The dearth of truth becomes the common denominator, and the endless discussion continues – not because terror is invincible, but because the narrative is mismanaged.
This grammar of denial and reversal has now extended beyond terrorism into the very architecture of state survival. Last Monday, (January 26, 2025), the Nigerian military finally admitted that a coup plot against President Tinubu had existed ─ a disclosure that followed weeks of official silence and earlier dismissals. The initial denial was not incidental; it was symptomatic of a communication culture that treats truth as a negotiable commodity. By first suppressing the possibility of a putsch and later conceding its existence, the state rehearsed the same choreography seen in Kaduna’s abduction denial, Niger’s “miraculous returns”, and the Timbuktu Triangle mass grave spin.
The implications are profound. If terrorism narratives already suffer from euphemism and concealment, the denial of a coup plot shows that even existential threats to the republic are managed as theatre. Citizens are asked to believe in stability while evidence of fracture accumulates. The eventual admission, carried by national newspapers, reinforced the pattern: truth arrives late, reluctantly, and only when contradiction becomes impossible. In the endless conversation over Nigeria’s security, this episode mainstreams disbelief, teaching citizens that official statements are provisional until reality intrudes. The coup plot thus becomes part of the same dearth of truth that corrodes counter terror narratives. It demonstrates that the republic’s communication crisis is not confined to insurgency but extends to the very guardians of constitutional order. Credibility, once squandered, is not easily restored, whether in forests, highways, or barracks, the republic fights not only adversaries but its own words.
In Katsina, the state government freed detainees charged with banditry related offences, invoking a “prisoner swap” logic it framed as a prerequisite for continuing peace accords with “repentant” bandits. Victims’ families, already scarred by abduction, are left to wonder whether their suffering is being monetised under the guise of reconciliation, while the federal narrative of relentless kinetic enforcement frays at the edges. Meanwhile, gunmen surged into Oyo National Park, looting facilities and threatening conservation staff before retreating under military pressure. Violence is no longer confined to the familiar bandit plagued northwest but is spilling into the ecological heart of the nation, eroding public confidence that the security apparatus can contain the threat within a limited theatre.
These episodes ─ Kaduna’s denial, Niger’s miraculous returns, Katsina’s negotiated releases, Oyo’s incursion, Timbuktu’s mass graves, and now the coup plot admission – expose a widening gap between the federal proclamation of “full blown kinetic enforcement” and the lived reality of negotiated compromises, narrative theatre and systemic fracture. Terrorism in Nigeria has become a term that stretches to accommodate both hard line military action and soft power bargains, each pulling the narrative in opposite directions. When the frame collapses, meaning -and victory – are contested. A state cannot win a war whose name its citizens refuse to accept.
Other nations provide cautionary and hopeful examples. Britain during the Blitz turned rubble into ritual defiance through transparent reporting; Vietnam’s “Five O’Clock Follies” demonstrated how spin creates a credibility gap; Israel after 1973 admitted surprise and then instituted independent inquiries that restored public confidence; contemporary NATO treats transparency as capability, acknowledging civilian casualties and launching investigations. These cases show that verified, timely, accountable language becomes armour; spin becomes a strategic liability.
Sri Lanka fused intelligence led targeting with maritime interdiction and diaspora finance disruption, while simultaneously recalibrating politically to neutralise rear bases. Colombia linked military aid to judicial strengthening, anti corruption oversight and systematic choking of cash flows. Kenya, after Westgate, learned that theatrical raids without sustained intelligence are pyrrhic and shifted toward layered policing, community coordination and honest after action reporting. Sierra Leone treated corruption as co equal to treason, auditing procurement pipelines and protecting whistle blowers. Israel has long understood deterrence as both kinetic and psychological, layering intelligence fusion, chokepoint superiority and calibrated negotiation, while keeping its home front truthfully informed. Each model is a parable with caveats, but together they instruct that victory is rarely singular.
Non kinetic approaches require their own grammar. Saudi Arabia’s Munasaha programme offers corridors of ideological disavowal, mentorship, community monitoring and economic reintegration; Indonesia’s local frameworks distinguish genuine repentance from deceit through real oversight. Such avenues work only when repentance is verifiable, oversight is real, relapse is costly, and communities are empowered to observe and report. Without those conditions, forgiveness becomes theatre and deradicalisation a revolving door. Carrots must be tied to conduct, sticks applied on breach and civil society present at the table, not invited after dessert. A state that cannot monitor cannot forgive responsibly.
Ransom payments remain the most corrosive shortcut. They spare lives in the short term but validate the economy of abduction in the long term. Where payments occur, they must be acknowledged as failures to be corrected, not triumphs to be celebrated. The political courage to say, “We paid, and here is how we are dismantling the chain that made payment necessary,” would be worth a battalion of euphemisms. Superior firepower without intelligence is sound and fury; superior intelligence without action is knowledge without justice. The synthesis is clear: intelligence led precision that disrupts logistics and leadership, protection of civilians as doctrine, legal pursuit of profiteers and fixers, calibrated negotiation only where it reduces threat without enlarging markets of violence.
No single instrument will win the symphony; only a disciplined sequence will. The constitutional lodestar remains. Section 14 (2) (b) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) declares: “The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.” To be more than an inscription, this must be lived through equal protection, consistent deployment of assets and fair application of justice. Fusion centres must truly fuse; joint tasks must speak without contradiction. Auditors must follow the money from the budget to the battlefield and return with indictments. Whistle blowers within the security architecture must be protected, not punished. Under those conditions, discipline can breathe, and trust can return; otherwise, we remain governed by slogans that cannot hold a roadblock.
A workable pathway starts with a covenant of communication that binds ministries, agencies and commanders to verified disclosure, time stamped updates, rapid corrections and disciplined after action reporting. It requires a crisis communications unit staffed by professionals in war communication, behavioural psychology and information forensics, insulated from political interference by statute. Mandatory pre brief fusion – intelligence, military, police and relief agencies reconciling facts and agreeing on language before any microphone is approached – must become routine. A rapid counter propaganda window, with published forensics that teach the public to read the enemy’s media and signal that the republic replies in time and in truth, is essential. Financial trail disclosures after mass releases – redacted where necessary, prosecutorial where possible – must accompany the courage to admit when ransom economies, protection levies, SIM swap schemes, cattle markets or illicit mining revenues feed the beast. Policing of elites must cease to drain security from ordinary citizens; redeployments from VIP convoys to public protection must be visible and measurable, not merely tweeted. Embedded community liaison officers in hotspots will revive cooperative policing and early warning networks. Modernised communications, counter drone capabilities, ISR platforms and secure field devices must follow doctrine, not substitute for it; equipment is a multiplier, but it can multiply nothing – nor can it multiply credibility that has been eroded.
On the kinetic front, rules of engagement must marry protection to precision. Schools, markets and clinics are strategic soft assets that must be guarded as such. Logisticians and financiers should be targeted with investigative depth that survives court scrutiny. Illicit mining, contraband flows and fixer networks must be interdicted not as headline events but as habitual statecraft. After action accountability should move beyond internal memos to public facing summaries that restore confidence and teach lessons that save lives. Externally, partnerships must dignify rather than subordinate: technology transfer anchored in the rule of law, training in modern ISR doctrine, joint drills that simulate multi agency communication under pressure and shared playbooks against ransom economies. Pride is not policy; collaboration is not capitulation. The compass is effective.
None of these matters if language does not change. We must retire the vocabulary of self celebration and adopt the grammar of accountable realism. “Neutralised” should give way to names and numbers, recovered material and timelines. “Technical defeat” must yield to concrete benchmarks – areas secured, networks disrupted, prosecutions advanced, victims restored. “Miraculous return” should be replaced by verifiable accounts – rescue, payment, mediation or abandonment under pressure – paired with steps to deter repetition. The first audience for this change is domestic; the republic must believe itself before anyone else does.
Terrorism remains an endless conversation because the adversary is agile, institutions are fallible, politics is tempted by theatre, and grief is inexhaustible. But conversations are not merely endured; they are directed. Nigeria must seize the grammar and governance of this conversation: weigh words, verify figures, fuse intelligence and turn maps into movement. Every child who stumbles back from captivity, every soldier who does not, every widow holding an empty uniform demands new terms.
An end must be in sight ─ not the illusion declared from podiums at noon and dispersed by evening, but the measurable ebbing of terror’s markets and morale. The pathways exist: ethical communication married to operational reform; disciplined fusion that produces action; non kinetic corridors that rehabilitate the willing and restrain the deceitful; kinetic precision that protects the innocent and punishes the guilty; financial strangulation of ransom and contraband economies; constitutional fidelity that refuses exceptions as policy. Other lands achieved this through sequence, not chance ─ Britain through candour, Israel through layered deterrence, Sri Lanka through relentless pressure, Colombia through institution building tied to external support, Kenya through learning, fusion and community engagement, Sierra Leone through anti corruption reconstruction. Nigeria can do the same if it chooses doctrine over slogan, courage over convenience, truth over theatre.
The conversation will not end in a paragraph; it will end in practice. Begin with words ─ clear, verified, honourable ─ and let them compel the actions they announce. Then perhaps we may speak of miracles again, not as smokescreens, but as the ordinary fruits of competence. The kidnapped will return, and so will the truth. The endless conversation will become a closing chapter ─ not because terror ceases, but because the republic refuses to be its own audience.
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