The Nigerian government is backing the US decision to sanction some Nigerian nationals for terrorism financing, but it is unlikely to follow this up with arrests of the individuals involved. The US government announced on 24 June that it was placing sanctions on Mukhtar Muhammad, a Lagos-based Bureau de Change operator, and three firms linked to him for allegedly funding Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), an Islamic State-linked group.

ISWAP has been waging an insurgency in the Northeast for nearly two decades, seeking to impose its version of extremist Islam on the country. Since last year, the US has become increasingly involved in efforts to curb the group’s attacks, which Washington claims have mainly targeted Christians. The sanctions imposed on Muhammad and his firms are part of an effort to disrupt the group’s activities. Muhammad reportedly played a key role in ISWAP’s finance network in Nigeria.

Beatrice Jedy-Agba, secretary of Nigeria’s sanctions committee, claimed on 24 June that the US sanctions followed work carried out by the committee to identify individuals involved in terrorism financing. She said Muhammad was added to the sanctions list ‘after extensive intelligence gathering, financial investigations and inter-agency assessments.’ She added that the ‘investigations established reasonable grounds to believe that the affected individuals and entities facilitated, financed, supported or otherwise contributed to the activities of ISWAP and associated terrorist networks.’ The Nigerian sanctions list added five further individuals: Ibrahim Ogirima, Mukhtar Adamu, Adamu Chiroma, Ibrahim Abubakar, Abdullahi Usman and Babangida Hammajam.

The statement was silent on why these individuals have not been arrested after the extensive investigations linked them with the financing of terrorism in the country. There is no indication whether the sanctioned persons remain in the country and are at liberty or whether they have left the country. A local newspaper which visited the address of Muhammad as given in the US statement revealed that the house has been largely abandoned, with neighbours saying that the place has been unoccupied for at least two years. It is therefore likely that Muhammad is either no longer in the country or at least has abandoned that address that is traceable to him.

This is not the first time Nigeria has failed to act decisively against high-profile suspected terrorism financiers. In 2019, the UAE convicted six Nigerians of setting up cells for Boko Haram and raising more than USD 800,000 to fund operations in Nigeria. The federal government did not carry out a local investigation to identify the Nigerian collaborators of those convicted in the UAE, despite calls from Babagana Zulum, the governor of Borno State, for it to do so.

In February 2022, Lai Mohammed, then minister of information, announced that the government had identified 96 financiers of terrorism, including 424 associates and supporters. However, the names were not revealed before the end of the late President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. Nor was anyone prosecuted, except Nnamdi Kanu, who was renditioned from Kenya and put on trial.

A shorter list of 19 individuals and six business entities was released in 2024, followed by an expanded list of 48 individuals and organisations in April this year. However, prosecutions of individuals and businesses accused of funding terrorism remain rare.