OBLONG MEDIA INVESTIGATIVE SPECIAL REPORT ON TERRORISM AND BANDITRY IN NIGERIA.

THE SHADOW SYNDICATE: How Nigeria’s Governments Became Too Compromised to Name Terror Sponsors, From Jonathan to Buhari to Tinubu

Foreword

This article is an expanded, updated and heavily enriched version of my earlier investigations dating back to 2017, when Nigeria was drowning under the insecurity, corruption, and internal betrayal of the Buhari administration. Regrettably, more evidence has now emerged confirming that what we suspected then was not conspiracy theory, it was Nigeria’s tragic, documented reality.

Today, insecurity has metamorphosed from Boko Haram insurgency into a nationwide cancer of banditry, jihadist expansionism, pastoralist militancy, illegal miner–mercenary networks, arms smuggling syndicates, and political protection rackets. Yet, from Goodluck Jonathan to Muhammadu Buhari to Bola Tinubu, there remains one disturbing constant:

No Nigerian government has found the courage to name and shame the sponsors, enablers, financiers, military collaborators, and political protectors of terror and organised insecurity, even as the country edges toward collapse.

This is not incompetence. It is not oversight.
It is systemic complicity.

And here is the deep dive.

I. THE JONATHAN YEARS (2010–2015): THE FIRST ADMISSION OF INFILTRATION

In 2012, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan made the most explosive statement ever uttered by a Nigerian president:

“Boko Haram sympathisers are in the executive, the legislature, the judiciary, and even in the armed forces and police.”

With this admission, Jonathan inadvertently revealed the root of Nigeria’s terror crisis: the enemy was not just in Sambisa, he was in the State House, the barracks, the ministries, and the security architecture itself.

Why Jonathan Could Not Name Them

1. Political Suicide:
   Naming sitting governors, ministers, senior judges and generals would have ignited a political earthquake capable of collapsing his government.
2. Institutional Capture:
   Boko Haram had grown powerful enough to infiltrate intelligence operations, security communications and procurement lines. Naming insiders would expose just how hollow the Nigerian state had become.
3. Military Corruption:
   Arms procurement under Jonathan became an unregulated bazaar. The Dasuki scandal later revealed that over $2 billion meant for weapons was diverted into pockets, politics, and patronage.
4. Fear of Mutiny:
   By 2014, soldiers were openly complaining of sabotage, fuel theft, ammunition diversion and “orders from above” preventing them from engaging insurgents.

Thus Jonathan did the unthinkable:
He admitted the truth but refused to name names.

II. THE BUHARI YEARS (2015–2023): “WE KNOW THEM, BUT WE WILL NOT NAME THEM.”

When Buhari came to power, Nigerians believed a retired general would finally confront terror with backbone. Instead, Buhari delivered one of the most disturbing policies in modern counterterrorism history:

“We will not name and shame the sponsors of Boko Haram.”

This policy decision set Nigeria back decades.

1. THE UAE EXPOSES WHAT NIGERIA REFUSES TO SAY

Between 2019 and 2021, the United Arab Emirates arrested, tried and convicted six Nigerian businessmen for funding Boko Haram.

They publicly released their names.
They froze their accounts.
They exposed their networks.

Nigeria refused to prosecute them.
Nigeria refused to publicize them.
Nigeria refused to dismantle the networks the UAE exposed.

Why?

Because those networks were linked to powerful interests whose exposure would have sent shockwaves through the political establishment.

2. STAND-DOWN ORDERS AND “FIFTH COLUMNISTS”

Journalists, soldiers, officers and foreign observers consistently reported that:

Troops were ordered not to engage even when Boko Haram was within kill range.

Advance intelligence on Boko Haram movements was ignored before several massacres.

Fighters were ambushed repeatedly, suggesting operational leaks.

Soldiers believed their coordinates were being sent to terrorists.

Ammunition, fuel and weapons were routinely diverted by insider networks.

Even American officials privately complained that Nigeria’s military could not be trusted, with intelligence, with planning, or with weapons.

3. THE WAR ECONOMY

Under Buhari, the war became an economy.

Security budgets ballooned beyond transparency.

Arms procurement became an endless river of classified spending.

Terrorism justified emergency purchases that were never audited.

The worse insecurity became, the richer the security contractors became.

Nigeria created a class of crisis profiteers, men whose fortunes depend on the war never ending.

III. THE TINUBU YEARS (2023–2025): NEW GOVERNMENT, SAME SECRECY

Many Nigerians hoped Tinubu would break the circle. What has happened instead?

1. SECRET TRIALS OF FINANCIERS

In 2024, government announced that 125 Boko Haram facilitators had been quietly tried and convicted.
Names not released.
Networks not detailed.
Assets not exposed.

2. SAME POLITICAL CALCULUS

Tinubu cannot afford to expose his own party’s financiers, northern political allies, powerful clergy networks, security oligarchs, or business patrons implicated in jihadist financing, banditry logistics, and illegal mining networks.

3. AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE RAISES ALARM

Recent U.S. assessments (2023–2024) quietly confirm:

Nigerian military armouries are still leaking weapons.

Soldiers continue to sell ammunition to jihadists and bandits.

Several state security units have been infiltrated by non-state actors.

Terror sponsors remain untouched at the top.

The Americans acknowledge what Jonathan already confessed:
Nigeria’s security system is porous, compromised, and financially incentivised to fail.

IV. THE ARMS-PROCUREMENT RACKET: HOW WAR BECOMES BUSINESS

Let us be brutally honest:

A stable Nigeria is not profitable to the corrupt. An insecure Nigeria is a goldmine.

From Jonathan’s tenure to Tinubu’s, the pattern is identical:

1. Inflate the threat
2. Inflate the budget
3. Inflate the contracts
4. Divert the money
5. Purchase substandard weapons
6. Allow weapons to “leak” to the enemy
7. Use fresh attacks to demand new budgets

It is a cycle, a deliberate cycle.

Some security chiefs and defence ministry officials became billionaires.
Contractors became oligarchs.
Politicians became financially dependent on the war economy.

And ordinary Nigerians became corpses, refugees, widows, and orphans.

V. THE INSIDER COLLUSION: WHEN SOLDIERS BECOME ARMS DEALERS

Documented cases include:

Soldiers arrested in Borno and Zamfara for selling rifles and ammunition to Boko Haram and bandits.

Officers in charge of armouries caught altering inventory records.

Troops ambushed immediately after receiving movement plans, clear evidence of moles.

Western partners refusing to share intelligence because Nigerian security channels leak.

This is not speculation.
This is Nigeria’s open secret.

VI. WHY NO NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT WILL NAME THE SPONSORS

1. BECAUSE THE SPONSORS ARE THE SYSTEM.

Governors, senators, generals, clerics, businessmen, intelligence officers, traditional rulers, the list spans Nigeria’s elite.

2. BECAUSE NAMING THEM MEANS GOVERNMENT COLLAPSE.

You cannot expose the men who finance your party, control your votes, or stabilize your power.

3. BECAUSE THE WAR IS PROFITABLE.

Multi-billion-naira contracts depend on insecurity.

4. BECAUSE FOREIGN POWERS ARE PLAYING THEIR OWN GAME.

At the moment, the U.S. is using insecurity as leverage to reassert dominance in Nigeria and the Sahel after being sidelined by China and Russia.

5. BECAUSE REVEALING THE TRUTH WOULD DESTROY NIGERIA’S IMAGE.

If the international community hears that Nigeria’s own officials sponsor terror, the country risks sanctions, arms embargoes, banking freezes, and diplomatic isolation.

So the Nigerian state hides the truth.

Nigeria bleeds.
But the political class survives.

VII. THE AMERICAN DISCOVERIES: A POROUS, COMPROMISED SECURITY STATE

During the Chibok era and afterwards, American forces and intelligence agencies discovered:

Boko Haram had sympathisers inside the military command.

U.S. cannot share real-time intelligence with Nigeria because it leaks.

Planned rescue missions were compromised before execution.

Several units were so infiltrated that Washington preferred working through Chad, Cameroon, and Niger.

In diplomatic language, the U.S. essentially said:

Nigeria’s military is not fully trustworthy.

And nothing has changed since then.

VIII. ULTIMATELY: THE TRUTH IS SIMPLE, THE ENEMY IS WITHIN

Nigeria is not simply fighting terrorists.

Nigeria is fighting:

Terrorists in the bush

Terror financiers in government

Terror collaborators in the military

Terror enablers in the security agencies

Terror protectors in political parties

Terror profiteers in the procurement system

This is why no president, Jonathan, Buhari, or Tinubu, has ever named the sponsors.

To expose them is to bring down the entire structure holding Nigeria together.

But here is the final warning:

If Nigeria does not name the sponsors today, Nigeria will collapse under the terror they created tomorrow. And when that day comes, neither the rich nor the powerful will escape the consequences.

The time for pretence is over.
The syndicate must be exposed.
And Nigeria must reclaim its soul.

Oblong Media Unlimited Investigating the truths others fear to touch.

http://www.oblongmedia.net