Combating Terrorism in Nigeria: The Domestic Legal Architecture and Best Practices from Other Jurisdictions

Abstract

Terrorism constitutes the gravest security challenge confronting the Nigerian state, from the Boko Haram insurgency and its Islamic State West Africa Province offshoot in the North-East, through the judicially proscribed bandit confederations of the North-West, to separatist violence in the South-East. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the legal framework for combating terrorism in Nigeria and to distil best practices from other jurisdictions capable of strengthening that framework. It is the argument of the paper that Nigeria’s counter-terrorism architecture, now consolidated in the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022 and its companion statutes, is no longer deficient on paper; the enduring deficits lie in implementation, accountability and the protection of constitutional rights. The paper adopts doctrinal research methodology, involving the systematic analysis of statutes, judicial decisions, official records and scholarly opinion, supplemented by a functional comparative method drawing on the experience of the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Australia, Kenya, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Denmark and the multilateral United Nations and Financial Action Task Force frameworks. The paper further examines the nature, characteristics and typologies of terrorism, situating the Nigerian variants, from the religious insurgency of Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province through the crime-terror continuum of the North-West bandit confederations to separatist and resource-driven militancy, within the global taxonomy, and drawing out the juridical significance of these classifications for definition, proscription, sentencing and strategy. It is the finding of the paper that Nigeria has recorded substantial achievements, including ten phases of mass trials yielding 1,721 convictions and exit from the FATF grey list in October 2025, but that these achievements coexist with opaque proceedings, prolonged pre-trial detention, weak forensic capacity and provisions of the 2022 Act in tension with constitutional guarantees. The paper recommends, among other measures, the establishment of an independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, a specialised terrorism prosecution directorate and designated judges, judicial safeguards on detention powers, prioritised terrorism financing prosecutions, professionalised rehabilitation programmes and guaranteed access to counsel. The paper concludes that a nation defeats terrorism with law or does not durably defeat it at all.

Keywords: terrorism, counter-terrorism, terrorism financing, Boko Haram, national security, comparative law, Nigeria

DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/155-01

Publication date: August 28th 2026