Lakurawa Terrorists Exploiting Porous Borders, Forest Reserves In N/West – NSA

The National Security Adviser Mallam Nuhu Ribadu has stated Lakurawa terrorists had been exploiting porous borderlines and ungoverned forest reserves to introduce superior fight techniques into the North-West theatre, blurring the road between prison enterprise and transnational insurgency.

This is simply because the NSA unveiled a 5 level disaster response framework to curtail banditry and different prison components in Sokoto State.

He stated, “The safety challenges confronting rural Sokoto have crossed a vital operational threshold. This is as a result of what started years in the past as opportunistic cattle rustling, rural theft, and disjointed freeway extortion has hardened into organised, territorial warfare. Today, closely armed syndicates search to impose unlawful levies on farming communities, dictate agricultural planting and harvesting calendars, and limit rural transit. This poses a direct, insupportable problem to this nice nation’s sovereignty.

“We are witnessing a dangerous convergence along our 120-kilometre frontier with the Republic of Niger. The emergence and entrenchment of Lakurawa, formally designated by the Federal Government as a terrorist organisation, signals the operational intermingling of profit-driven bandit cartels with the ideological, logistical, and tactical networks of the broader Sahelian jihadist ecosystem. By exploiting porous borderlines and ungoverned forest reserves, these elements introduce advanced combat tactics into the North-West theatre, blurring the line between criminal enterprise and transnational insurgency”.

Ribadu represented by the Director Legal on the Office of the National Security Adviser Zakari Mijinyawa stated 350 abductions had been recorded throughout 21 of our 23 Local Government Areas Sokoto State between July 2024 to June 2025.

“Epicentres such as Sabon Birni, Isa, Tangaza, Goronyo, Rabah, and Gudu have borne an unacceptable human cost. More than 580,000 compatriots across Katsina, Sokoto, and Zamfara have been displaced from their ancestral homes – most of them women and children”.

He stated the the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA)  to be able to completely dismantle this cycle, has transitioned a nationwide response from fragmented, episodic campaigns to an institutionalised, whole-of-government and whole-of-society structure codified below the National Crisis Management Doctrine (NCMD).

He defined that the NCMD bridges historic inter-agency boundaries by standardising command hierarchies throughout three useful tiers: Strategic (Gold Command) on the govt and coverage degree, Operational (Silver Command) throughout the multi-agency Joint Operations Centre (JOC), and Tactical (Bronze Command) amongst area models and first responders

For Sokoto State, he stated operationalising the NCMD requires implementing a synchronised, five-phase disaster response framework of Reclaiming Ungoverned Spaces and Border Domination;Establishing a Unified Common Operating Picture (COP)