On Sunday, the United States and Britain warned of a possible terrorist attack in Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capital, especially aimed at government buildings, places of worship and schools, among other targets.
The most populous black nation is fighting, in the northwest, an Islamist insurgency. In July, the group claimed responsibility for a raid on the Kuje prison in Abuja, which freed around 440 inmates.
The recent alarm is raising fears that insurgents might attack again.
Sources disclosed that Nigeria’s security apparatus is not happy about the alarm raised by the United States Embassy.
The US embassy, according to sources, got their information from Nigeria security but was angry that the alarm would jeopardise intelligence work against the insurgents.
“The alarm raised by them did not do any good but helped the terrorists to achieve their aim which is to incite fear in people,” a source said.
Security experts, noted that Nigeria needs to strengthen its human resources and empower its Technical Intelligence to defeat terrorism in the country.
“The Army Cyber Warfare command in Abuja should deploy members of its organisation to the dark web as undercovers to unearth valuable information as ‘the kind of terrorist group operating from this part of the world (Nigeria) are not averse to the use of technology and the dark web, to minimize the risk of intercepting their communication,” Nicholas Ibenu, a security researcher, and founder stated.
According to him, “lasting peace comes with credible efforts. On the current threats from the US reports, it is imperative that citizens residing in Abuja and environs remain extra vigilant in places with large numbers of people and check the location of emergency exits around themselves and report suspicious situations.
“Subsequent to this, hint personnel should be deployed, most especially around the Northern Central Axis of the country (Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger & Plateau) to employ clandestine sophisticated methods like surveillance and intelligence gathering that’ll aid the enforcement of authorities to tackle the upcoming possible threats.
“Furthermore, for a long-lasting peace in matters of Nigerian National security solutions, it should look forward to adopting community forces, equipping and training more hint personnel across the 36 States. They should as well be trained in counter-terrorism strategies and tactics, asymmetric warfare, and desert warfare and adopt more use of conventional security (Cyber warfare) than traditional.”
Another security expert, Nnamdi Anekwe, in a separate interview said the country needs to strengthen its Human and Technical Intelligence to defeat terrorism.
According to him, “the human intelligence have techniques using human being as agent of collecting information from parties that are basic to any form of terrorist activities using the enemy and collecting information from them while the technical intelligence is that the government has resources to use every means to go through telecommunications network and cyber network to extract information from the enemy and use that information to counter their activities.
“Government has been on the front line in terms of battling Boko Haram in the North. In fact, they’ve chased Boko Haram in the far North East, especially in Sambisa forest and the bandit in the North West.
“They have also chased them away from the areas where they are operating. They’ve been successful in the past two months. All they just need to do is to pick up the offensive and work on gathering more intelligence to counter any attack that might come up.”
