Why Terrorism Persists in Nigeria: What the Latest U.S. Visit Reveals
- Oludare Ogunlana
- Jul 15
- 3 min read
This week, the new U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Frank Garcia, met Nigeria's National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, in Abuja. The U.S. Mission announced that both countries would use every tool available to hold ISIS and perpetrators of violence against Christians accountable. The handshake was warm. The language was familiar. Nevertheless, one question hangs over the photograph: after sixteen years, dozens of similar meetings, and billions of dollars in security assistance, why does terrorism persist in Nigeria?
The answer is uncomfortable but simple. Nigeria's insurgency survives not because the country lacks foreign partners, weapons, or communiqués. It survives because the conditions that produce terrorists remain untouched. Bilateral diplomacy treats the symptoms. The disease is governance.
The Diagnosis Keeps Shifting
Every external partner arrives with its own definition of the problem. Washington now frames the crisis as violence against Christians. That framing serves American domestic politics, but it misreads the battlefield. Boko Haram, ISWAP, and armed bandit networks kill Muslims in far greater numbers, and the epicenter of the violence remains the Muslim-majority Northeast and Northwest.
"When partners define the problem to fit their own politics, the response is calibrated to a misdiagnosis. Terrorism persists because the cure keeps changing while the disease does not."
A misdiagnosed threat produces misdirected tools: sanctions lists, accountability rhetoric, and kinetic support that never reach the recruitment pipeline.
The Partnership Treadmill
The Garcia visit follows a crowded diplomatic calendar. Ribadu met Vice President Vance and Secretary Rubio in May. Treasury and congressional delegations followed. Before them came the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership and years of Lake Chad Basin support. Each engagement produces the same three promises:
Intelligence sharing
Military capacity building
Deeper dialogue and cooperation
Moreover, each cycle ends the same way. Capacity never accumulates because the leakage points are internal: opaque defense procurement, poor troop welfare, weak oversight, and no consequences for failure. Foreign assistance poured into a leaking vessel does not fill it.
The Real Drivers Are Domestic
Terrorism endures in Nigeria because its root causes are governance failures, not capability gaps. Four drivers stand out:
Ungoverned spaces. Vast borderlands and rural areas operate outside state authority, providing insurgents with sanctuary and tax havens.
A broken justice pipeline. Thousands of captured fighters await trial for years. Impunity teaches communities that the state cannot deliver consequences.
An endless recruitment pool. Mass poverty and millions of out-of-school children in the North supply fighters faster than operations remove them.
A conflict economy. Insecurity has become profitable for some actors, from ransom networks to inflated security budgets.
"Foreign partners can supply drones, sanctions, and training. They cannot supply legitimacy, local policing, or a functioning courtroom in Borno."
What Must Change
The Joint Working Group is worth sustaining. However, Nigeria must set the agenda, anchor cooperation in verifiable reforms, and measure success by governance outcomes, not communiqués. Practitioners, policy makers, and analysts should judge every future meeting by one standard: did it address recruitment, justice, and accountability, or did it simply schedule the next meeting?
Sixteen years is long enough to learn the lesson. Partnerships do not defeat insurgencies. Governments that govern do.
At OSRS, we help governments, security agencies, and private organizations move from communiqués to capability. Our team provides strategic intelligence analysis, counterterrorism policy advisory, AI-enabled threat assessment, and security governance frameworks tailored to African and Global South environments. Contact us at www.ogunsecurity.com to schedule a consultation.
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About the Author
Dr. Sunday Oludare Ogunlana is the Founder and CEO of OGUN Security Research and Strategic Consulting LLC (OSRS), a Professor of Cybersecurity, and a national security scholar who advises global intelligence and policy bodies on counterterrorism, African security, and the governance of emerging technologies. His doctoral research examined terrorist exploitation of cyberspace, and his analysis on insurgency and statecraft appears regularly across leading African and international platforms.
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