Military Alone Cannot Track Terrorist Financiers—Buratai

A former Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai, has blamed lapses across security agencies for the Nigerian Army’s failure to eradicate insurgency.

Nigeria’s first recorded terrorist attack occurred on December 26, 2003, when an extremist group launched an attack on police stations in Geidam and Kanamma, Yobe State.

The group, which later became associated with Boko Haram, seized weapons and later launched its first major attack that gained national and international attention on July 26, 2009, in Bauchi, Borno, Kano, and Yobe states.

Speaking in an interview monitored by THE WHISTLER, Buratai, who served as Chief of Army Staff between July 2015 and January 2021, attributed the failure to effectively tackle insurgency to a lack of intelligence across security formations.

Though the 65-year-old retired general maintained that no leadership vacuum was left upon his retirement, he noted that the army struggled to understand the root cause of the security crisis.

According to him, despite his achievements across formations and units of the Nigerian Army, and with his successors being highly professional and well-trained, intelligence coordination and advancement stalled the progress in identifying and arresting the financiers of insurgency.

“First of all, you must understand it from a particular background. The enormous challenge that the country faced from 2009 up to 2015. You know, if we understand that challenge, it will be a complete approach, not only within the military angle, but also the comprehensive approach that I’ve always said to be a whole government approach in tackling the insecurity in this country.”

“However, I know what we did while I was there. Very importantly, I would have loved to continue with our intelligence operations which is very fundamental.”

“I think if we had the intelligence and the capability, from where we stopped, especially between 2019 and 2020, we were able to achieve a lot. If it is continued, and I believe it is being continued by my successors, much is still needed to be done to get that intelligence operations right.”

“We had not relented, especially in seeing that we followed those insurgents, their supporters in terms of logistics suppliers, their arms couriers, those that give them food, water and petroleum oil and lubricants.”

Buratai emphasised that intelligence gathering remains crucial to military operations, adding that understanding the geographical terrain is equally fundamental.

“You know, this country is so vast, with so many forests across the country that are uninhabited. That’s why you have these continuous challenges here and there. By and large, I believe with complete support and involvement of all stakeholders, in this case, the government at all levels, the other security agencies, it will help a lot,” Buratai said.

He further stressed that there was still much work to be done at both the tactical and operational levels.

“Those on the ground need to have up-to-date intelligence on what is happening in their environment, and the coordination is also fundamental.”

“I know the police have very good intelligence. The Department of State Services also has very good intelligence,” he said.

Buratai noted that financing terrorist activities was a complex issue that required coordination across various agencies.

“When you talk of terrorist financial support or terrorist funding, this is where we have different establishments or different sectors of the security who really need to coordinate.”

“You don’t expect the soldier who is in the field to start going about hunting for terrorist financiers locally or even internationally,” he said.

He revealed that during his tenure, the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) was actively involved in tracking terrorist financiers, leading to the establishment of a task force to address the issue.

“That’s why we have the NFIU, which during my time, we coordinated very well and you can see, just before I left, a task force was established in order to track and get those financiers.”

“A compilation was made by NFIU on the terrorist financiers, and that is left to the appropriate authority or agency to handle them.

“Although that aspect is not strictly a military responsibility, we coordinated because it involved a task force that was set up to get to the root of the matter,” said Buratai.

Military Alone Cannot Track Terrorist Financiers—Buratai is first published on The Whistler Newspaper