Background
The etymological patrimony of the word ‘cornucopia’ is typically characterised by abundance, harvest, nourishment, and plenty. Conceptually however, this treatise utilises the oxymoron, terrorism cornucopia, in the sense of the abundance of extremist violence and terrorism.
Terrorism itself has a contentious lexicon not least because one person’s terrorist is another person’s great emancipator, freedom fighter, liberator, or separatist.Three postulations exhibit some of these inherent definitional complexities.
First, the United Nations Security Council (2004) defined terrorism as “…any act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organisation to do or to abstain from doing any act.”
Second, in The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research (2011), Alex P. Schmid opined that terrorism is “…an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby – in contrast to assassination – the direct targets of violence are not the main targets.”
Third, and no less important is Noam Chomsky’s polemic contention in The Myth of American Idealism (2024), that applying the U.S. Department of Defence definition of terrorism as “the unlawful use of violence or threat of violence, often motivated by religious, political, or other ideological beliefs to instil fear and coerce governments or societies to the pursuit of goals that are usually political” is inherently problematic because it would instantly render the United States a terrorist state!
This, he further argued, would condemn leading American figure George W. Bush, as a terrorist because the latter “unlawfully used violence, motivated by ideological beliefs, to coerce societies in pursuit of political goals”; as that logic would implicate Henry Kissinger, and the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Barack Obama.
Former U.S. President, Richard Nixon, would equally be trapped in that terrorist characterisation according to Chomsky, because the former launched the “Christmas bombings” (Operation Linebacker II) in 1972 dispatching 200 B-52 bombers to drop 20,000 tons of bombs on NorthVietnam…to force the Vietnamese to the negotiating table…”
Chomsky further floats a striking view that U.S. terrorism is “doctrinally inadmis sible regardless of the facts” because terrorism is “something done to us or by our allies. It cannot be done by us or our allies.”
That hypothesis exposes three seminal deductions. One, the U.S. and its allies operate outside the frontiers of the rule of law on the specific issue of applying force in the pursuit of policy objectives relative to the characterisation of terrorism.
Two, is the philosophical objection of the U.S. and its ally, Israel, for example, to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding the investigation of serious crimes involving their armed forces.
Three, which is therefore of strategic consequence, is that of a superior power bombing its enemies into submission, and ultimately negotiation, given the superior power’s military capacity; -is only too obvious with extant developments in the Israel-U.S. versus Iran war (2025); Israel versus Hamas war (2023 to present); and the Russo-Ukrainian war (2022 to present).
The minutiae of those definitional complexities are outside the scope of this analysis. Nonetheless, terrorism for these purposes, invokes the adoption of extremely violent methods of terror, or genocidal means to destroy, kill, kidnap, maim, rape, or coerce innocent people, communities, groups, and non-combatants for the overriding purposes of annexation, apartheid, displacing rational political orthodoxies, ethnic cleansing, exhumation of human remains for the sole purpose of annihilating or otherwise obliterating archaeological, anthropological and historical facts, forcible religious conversion, nihilism, ritual murder, stealing autochthonous and ancestral lands et al!
Because all of these factors are present in various degrees in Nigeria, the objective and unimpeachable contention establishes that the country is battling a terrorism cornucopia, of which insurgency is a sine qua non.
The latter entails stochastic rebellions against civilians, constituted government, and systems. They are characterised by asymmetric warfare, bombing campaigns, extreme violence, genocide, kidnapping, rape, murder, and are propagated by militias, non-state actors, outlaws, and terrorist groupings with stated or unstated economic, ideological, political, and or religious goals.
The unpredictability of insurgencies often times impedes effective military strategy, planning, interoperability and intelligence-led kinetic operations. The perverse corollary of insurgency is the elongation of insurgent campaigns, which further implicates willing or, via coercive means, unwilling collaboration by locals. To all intents and purposes therefore, insurgencies and terrorism, are different sides of the same coin, obviating the necessity fortenuous semantic distinctions.
Discourse
The complexity, scale, typology, and unpredictability of terrorism jinxes even the most formidable actionable intelligence, crime prevention, defence, and national security strategies. Whereas law enforcement must get it right every time to safeguard lives and property, a terrorist needs to succeed once to destroy lives and property.
On the international front, that assertion is exemplified, in part, by evidence over the last 30 years of, amongst others, the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York, USA, where Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four planes, crashing two into the World Trade Centre in New York City, one into the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and another in Pennsylvania, killing approximately 3,000 people (including the 19 terrorists) and injuring over 6,000 persons.
Likewise, the Oklahoma City domestic terrorist bombing on April 19, 1995 by Branch Davidian cultists, allegedly in response to FBI raids, claimed approximately 170 lives and injured over 680 persons resulting in criminal damage of circa $652 million.
Two decades ago on July 7, 2005, domestic Islamist terrorists in the UK, unleashed coordinated suicide bombs targeting ordinary commuters across London’s arterial bus and underground public transportation network killing 52 people of 18 different nationalities including the Nigerian oil executive, Anthony Fatayi-Williams; and injuring 784 persons.
The attackers’ motive was the perception of bias against UK and the West’s foreign policy objectives pursuant to the unlawful 2003 Iraqi invasion, regime change, which displaced Saddam Hussein, and de-Baathification!
Other examples include the 2008 Mumbai, India, attacks where Lashkar-e-Taiba militants executed coordinated attacks killing 166 people and wounding more than 300; the 2004 Beslan School siege, in Russia, where Chechen terrorists overpowered over 1,000 people causing 334 deaths of which 186 were children; the 2016 Karrada, Iraq, bombing caused by ISIS, which claimed over 300 lives. A terrorist attack on an Egyptian mosque in 2017 claimed the lives of 311 worshippers in northern Sinai and injured countless others. In early 2025, 40 Malian troops were killed by the terrorist group, Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al Muslimim (JNIM) in Boulikessi.
Evidently, terrorism is borderless. That Nigeria’s terrorism cornucopia has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths (50,252 fatalities between 2006 and 2021 alone, according to the National Library of Medicine’s National Centre for Biotechnology Information), hundreds of thousands of injuries, and the internal displacement of millions of people over the past three decades, raises a fundamental question.
What is an enduringly effective, intelligently adaptable to emerging and future challenges and threats, and robust counter-terrorism strategy to sustainably safeguard the lives of Nigerians pursuant to the provisions of section 14 (1), (2) (b) of country’s 1999 Constitution (as amended), which stipulates that “Nigeria shall be a State based on the principles of democracy and social justice…the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government?”
Of course, there is no silver bullet to tackling the country’s complex terrorism challenge and there has been a plethora strategic and operational policy initiatives in this realm. Notably, redeployment of service chiefs, troop redeployment, coordination, recasting and recalibration of kinetic and non-kinetic operations with the West African Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJF) comprising Nigerian, Chad, Nigerien, Cameroonian, Ghanaian, Senegalese and Beninois forces; the so-called carrot-and-stick model where “repentant terrorists” are pardoned and “reintegrated” into mainstream society, whilst others are prosecuted for terrorism offences.
Nevertheless, the serious challenge of terrorism continues to plague the country, thereby impeding socio-economic development and undermining the sanctity of the lives of ordinary people. That the epicentre of terrorism in Nigeria traverses the Northern region and the Middle Belt, is no insurance against the spread to the Southern region therefore Emperor Nero cannot afford to fiddle whilst Rome burns to ashes to invoke ancient mythology.
Nigeria is amongst the top 10 ranking countries in the 2025 Global Terrorism Index, with Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Israel, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Syria, and Pakistan.
Between 2011 and 2023, Boko Haram (BH) was responsible for thousands of deaths in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. Yet, Nigeria is the country most affected by BH terrorist onslaught. Boko Haram, ISWAP and related terrorist attacks in the country has directly contributed to over 100,000 deaths, and approximately two million internally displaced persons.
Ansaru, Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), Lakurawa and other terrorist organisations remain active in the Northern parts of the country, just as armed robbers, ritual murderers, kidnappers, and separatists operate in swathes of the Southern region.
To be continued next week.
Ojumu is the Principal Partner at Balliol Myers LP, a firm of legal practitioners and strategy consultants in Lagos, Nigeria, author of The Dynamic Intersections of Economics, Foreign Relations, Jurisprudence and National Development (2023).
