ADF STAFF
Nigeria opened two new facilities that will be the nerve center of its fight against terrorism.
In a March 2023 ceremony near the end of his presidential term, then-President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated the new Office of the National Security Adviser and National Counter Terrorism Centre in Abuja. Buhari said the state-of-the-art facilities will provide Nigeria’s incoming administration with infrastructure to effectively coordinate national security and counterterrorism efforts.
The facilities include office space, team rooms, laboratories, a conference hall, an auditorium and an operations/crisis center.
Nigeria has been plagued by violent extremism, particularly in the northeast, for 14 years, leading to the deaths of 65,000 people.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu visited the center on June 5, just days after being sworn in. He urged the military and all sectors of the government and civil society to work together to address terrorism.
“You can’t have disharmony in an orchestra of this security plan,” Tinubu said. “We must focus on one tunnel, coordinate shared information, shared intelligence, coordination and work harder.”
The complex is the culmination of new security policies adopted by the country to coordinate its counterterrorism approach. These include the National Counter Terrorism Strategy of 2016, the National Security Strategy of 2019, the National Cybersecurity Policy and Strategy of 2021, and the National Crisis Management Doctrine of 2022.
“In broad terms, these policy documents emphasize a whole-of-government [approach] involving all the ministries, departments and agencies in combination with a whole-of-society involving civil society organisations and the citizenry,” Buhari said in March 2023.
The center was established as the coordinating body to counter terrorism and terrorist financing in the country. It is staffed by representatives from government agencies and departments, and it houses Nigeria’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Branch, National Counter Terrorism Strategy, Explosive Devices Analysis Office and the Preventing Countering Violent Extremism Unit.
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