Artificial intelligence should be incorporated as an integral component of counterterrorism strategy in Nigeria, public policy researchers at Nextier SPD have advised the Federal Government.
Also, community policing must be emphasised as part of counterterrorism strategies to gather intelligence from local communities, according to a recent security research report released by Nextier.
The report, titled ‘Increasing Lethality of Terrorists and the Future of Terrorism in Nigeria’, is authored by the duo of Dr.. Chukwuma Okoli, a Lecturer at the Political Science Department at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria; and Dr. Ndu Nwokolo, an Honorary Fellow at the School of Government and Society at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.
They further recommended that regional counterterrorism measures should go beyond kinetic strategies of the use of force and deployment of the military to locations where terrorist organisations are operating.
According to Okoli and Nwokolo, three key futures will shape the future of terrorism in Nigeria include “the possibility of terrorist organisations deploying drone technology for their operation across Nigeria; worsening political instability and governance deficits across the Sahel; and the increasing activities of unknown jihadists/terrorists across the Sahel and in Nigeria.
“These possibilities require the Nigerian government to rejig its counterterrorism strategy by considering increased integration of artificial intelligence in counterterrorism strategies, deepening community policing and emphasising integrated regional counterterrorism measures that adopt hard and soft counterterrorism approaches.”
Explaining the recommendations, the Nextier researchers propounded that “o fight today’s terrorism, accuracy, speed, and rapid decision-making based on information at your disposal is very important. The Nigerian government must urgently introduce artificial intelligence in the fight against terrorism in the country.
“Artificial intelligence and technologies such as drones should be integrated into the current counterterrorism operations and used for reconnaissance missions, intelligence gathering and direct combat operations.
“This will reduce human casualties on the side of the Nigerian troops and enhance the precision with which terrorist organisations are targeted.
“Using AI will help the agencies fighting terrorist groups in name matching, entity extraction, event extraction, cross-lingual semantic search, and data enrichment.
“Community policing must be emphasised as part of counterterrorism strategies aimed at gathering intelligence from local communities, particularly as it concerns the operations of unknown jihadists/terrorists hibernating in rural communities.
“Integrated regional counterterrorism measures: regional counterterrorism measures should go beyond kinetic strategies of using force and deploying the military to locations where terrorist organisations are operating.
“Measures should be implemented to address governance deficits and their impacts, such as growing poverty and socio-economic deprivations suffered by communities, especially those in conflict-affected areas. This will go a long way in denying the jihadists/terrorists the tacit support of the communities.”
The Nextier report recalled that despite efforts by the government to annihilate Boko Haram and end terrorism in Nigeria, more deadly terrorist organisations emerged and remained resilient with devastating impacts.
It got so bad that the 2023 Global Terrorism Index (GTI) published by the Institute for Economics & Peace ranked Nigeria as the eighth country most impacted by terrorism in 2022.
The report showed that: three of the twenty most fatal terrorist attacks in 2022 took place in Nigeria, and three of the top ten deadliest terror groups in the world operate in Nigeria.
The Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Boko Haram ranked as the sixth and seventh deadliest terror groups of 2022, respectively, and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) made the list as the 10th deadliest terror group of 2022.
