Notes for File
The federal government last Thursday again revealed that it had uncovered 96 financiers of Boko Haram and the Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) between 2020 and 2021.
The Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, who disclosed this during a press conference addressing the current administration’s fight against corruption, said to check terrorism financing in Nigeria, the FG deployed a plethora of tools to deal with the issue of corruption and money laundering.
He said analysis by the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) discovered 424 associates/supporters of terrorism financiers; the involvement of about 123 companies and 33 bureaus de change.
He added that not less than 26 suspected bandits/kidnappers and seven co-conspirators were also identified by the agency.
What the minister said is not new. Since the incumbent government came to power in 2015, this has been what they have been telling Nigerians. It seems they are not tired of pushing these lies each time they have the opportunity to speak on this issue.
While the United Arab Emirates had long ago helped us to arrest, prosecute and sentence about six persons sponsoring terrorism in Nigeria, the government here lacks to political will to do same despite the havoc they have wreaked in the country.
Earlier in 2021, the President Muhammadu Buhari regime had disclosed that it arrested 400 alleged Boko Haram sponsors and financiers including bureau de change operators but about a year later, the office of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, has not prosecuted the moneybags behind the nefarious activities of the bloodthirsty marauders who have viciously mauled thousands of Nigerians in the North-east for over a decade.
It is surprising that it cannot leverage technology to fish out those sustaining these terrorists with resources in order to bring the war against terrorism to an end.
Many now know that the action of the government lays credence to the assertion that it has something to hide and that some of their colleagues and family members are culpable.
