By
Sa'adiyyah Adebisi Hassan
Seventy-five Nigerians slaughtered in Kwara. More bodies in Benue. Same ritual: condolences, deployments, operation names, silence, repeat.
Nigeria keeps acting like terrorism is a mysterious force of nature. It is not. It is organized violence sustained by ideology, money, fear, and state hesitation.
Other countries faced the same thing. Some worse. They survived because they made hard, often unpopular choices. Nigeria keeps choosing comfort, ambiguity, and politics.
How Other Countries Actually Defeated Terrorism
1. #Sri Lanka - Total War Against Terror Infrastructure
The Tamil Tigers weren’t bandits. They ran courts, taxed citizens, controlled land, recruited children, and executed dissenters.
Sri Lanka defeated them by:
Declaring no-go areas illegal
Cutting off diaspora funding
Targeting command structures, not foot soldiers
Refusing negotiations once violence continued
Reasserting full territorial control
They didn’t ask whether the Tigers had “legitimate grievances” after they chose terror. They chose the state.
Lesson for Nigeria:
You cannot defeat terror while allowing terrorists to control forests, roads, or communities.
2. #Colombia - Intelligence First, Not Sympathy First
FARC hid in jungles, kidnapped civilians, and financed itself through drugs.
Colombia:
Built deep intelligence penetration
Turned fighters against commanders
Attacked funding routes relentlessly
Used special forces surgically, not randomly
Combined force with credible state presence afterward
No romance. No moral confusion.
Lesson for Nigeria:
Killing random fighters without dismantling financing, recruitment, and leadership is a waste of bullets.
3. #Egypt - Crushing Ideological and Physical Space
ISIS affiliates in Sinai tried to replicate Iraq and Syria.
Egypt:
Declared emergency powers
Regulated mosques and sermons
Arrested clerics who incited violence
Flattened terror logistics
Treated extremism as national treason
Western NGOs complained. Egypt survived.
Lesson for Nigeria:
A state that allows unregulated preaching during an insurgency is committing slow suicide.
4. #Indonesia - Professional Counterterrorism
After Bali, Indonesia realized the police were not enough.
They created Densus 88, a specialized counter terror unit:
Intelligence-led raids
Financial tracking
Rehabilitation for low-level recruits
Zero tolerance for leaders
Terror attacks collapsed dramatically.
Lesson for Nigeria:
Nigeria needs elite counter terror units focused on brains, not bodies.
5. #Morocco - Control the Religious Space
Morocco understood something Nigeria refuses to accept: Extremism grows fastest where the state abandons theology to radicals.
Morocco:
Centralized imam training
Standardized sermons
Criminalized extremist rhetoric
Monitored funding sources
No endless massacres. No excuses.
Lesson for Nigeria:
If the state does not control religious narratives, extremists will.
6. #Saudi Arabia - Surveillance + Zero Mercy
Al-Qaeda attacked the Kingdom repeatedly.
Saudi Arabia responded with:
Total financial surveillance
Harsh sentencing for terror links
Rehabilitation programs backed by force
No tolerance for “sympathizers”
They made terrorism unsustainable.
Lesson for Nigeria:
Fear must change sides.
7. #France - Law, Force, and Intelligence Fusion
After ISIS attacks, France expanded:
Surveillance laws
Preemptive arrests
Intelligence coordination
Rapid-response units
They didn’t pretend it was about “poverty”.
Lesson for Nigeria:
Rights without security are meaningless to the dead.
#Why Nigeria Keeps Failing
Nigeria fails because it refuses to accept five brutal truths:
1. Terrorism in Nigeria is ideological, not accidental
2. Extremists have enablers - religious, political, and financial
3. Negotiation culture emboldens killers
4. The state does not control territory
5. Narratives are protected more than lives
Nigeria wants to defeat terrorism without offending anyone. That is not how states survive.
#How Nigeria Can Actually Defeat Terrorism
Not slogans. Not hashtags. Not operations with poetic names.
1. #Name the Enemy
Stop calling terrorists “bandits” when ideology is involved.
Designation matters. It unlocks laws, surveillance, and consequences.
2. #Criminalize Ideological Incitement
Any sermon, lecture, or message that justifies violence must be treated as national security sabotage.
Free speech does not include recruiting killers.
3. #Cut the Money
Terrorism dies when funding dies.
Track cash movements
Freeze accounts
Prosecute sponsors publicly
No sacred cows.
4. #Restore Monopoly of Violence
No community militias replacing the state. No forests ceded to killers. No roads controlled by fear.
If the state cannot enter an area, it does not exist there.
5. #Build Elite Counter terror Units
Not general troops chasing shadows. Elite, intelligence-driven units that dismantle networks quietly and permanently.
6. #End Negotiation Culture
You don’t negotiate with mass murderers. You outlast, outthink, and outgun them.
7. #Reclaim the Moral Center
Every victim must matter equally. No tribal filters. No religious shielding. No selective outrage.
Terrorism does not defeat states.
Indecision does.
Every country that survived terror chose the authority of the state over the comfort of excuses. Nigeria keeps choosing politics, optics, and fear of backlash.
Kwara. Benue. Tomorrow is another name.
Until Nigeria decides that the state matters more than narratives, the graves will keep filling.
This is not a security problem anymore.
It is a test of whether Nigeria still wants to exist as a serious country.
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