Killing of ISWAP commander, good omen

Politics Spice Special Features Education Sex & Relationship Interview Columns Opinion Advertise with us Killing of ISWAP commander, good omen Editorial October 20, 2026 12:02 am Troops of Operation HADIN KAI during operations against Boko Haram/ISWAP terrorists across Borno State. | Credit: Army

NIGERIA’S war against terror is winnable. The reported killing of Abdussamad Ohida, an ISWAP commander, is a good omen. It is an indication that more commanders can fall. But the security community must sustain its efforts, indeed redouble them.

Terrorists’ havoc in Nigeria is a festering, open wound. About 79,323 people were killed in terrorism-related circumstances between 2020 and 2025, according to the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa. Terror groups like Boko Haram and ISWAP have driven over 2 million people out of their homes into internally displaced persons’ camps.

ISWAP is a peculiar monster. Although a splinter of Boko Haram, it is the most brutal, remorseless and mindless of all terror groups in the country. It abducts, indoctrinates and trains minors to become frontline combatants, suicide bombers and executioners.

It holds public executions in its controlled territories. It subjects captured women and girls to forced marriages, sexual slavery and rape.

Beyond committing extreme violence, the group has no regard for government, laws or democratic institutions. It sees Nigeria and the entire West Africa as a province of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Muslims opposed to its extremist views are treated as ‘infidels.’ ISWAP horrifies even other terrorists.

That is why the killing of its commander Ohida is a good thing. It portends a bright future in the antiterror war.

Ohida was linked to several attacks, including the one on Ipele Divisional Police Headquarters in Owo LGA on December 31, 2025. Eight police AK-47 rifles were reportedly looted in that assault.

But mindless and madly ambitious as ISWAP is, it is far from invincible.

Nigerian troops, along with other security agencies, including Amotekun, armed with reliable intelligence, located Ohida in a forest in Owo. There they silenced him and his fighters before Ohida could hatch his reported plan to attack civilians in the South-West and South-South.

His grand aim was to disrupt the 2027 polls.

The ISWAP commander’s killing is good news to all Nigerians but especially to the Owo people of Ondo State.

On June 5, 2022, about 40 worshippers at St. Francis Catholic Church, Owo, were slaughtered by terrorists. About 100 other congregants were wounded.

On June 3, the Federal High Court sentenced four of the killers to death by hanging.

At last, security agencies and the judiciary have delivered justice.

On May 16, the United States Africa Command and Nigerian troops killed the ISIS global second-in-command, Abu-Bilal-al-Minuki, in the Lake Chad area of Borno State. His commanders also went down with him.

Al-Minuki had reportedly been coordinating ISIS’ nefarious activities in Nigeria and the Sahel.

Under his command, several communities were overrun, especially in Borno. Military forward operating bases and other facilities were razed. Troops were killed. Armouries were looted. Farmers and fishermen around the Lake Chad basin were put under stringent tax regimes.

As the terror group acquired drone surveillance and attack capabilities, it began to inflict telling wounds on Nigeria and the military. The group killed Musa Uba and Oseni Braimah, both brigadier-generals and task force commanders.

But the killing of the generals can be avenged by eliminating terrorism in Nigeria.

The elimination of Ohida and al-Minuki is proof of this possibility. The collaboration with the US provides leverage. The authorities must therefore go all out to crush the terrorists and bandits in the Nigerian space.

There’s ample reason to crush them. Several schools have been shut after mass abductions of schoolchildren, many of whom have yet to return to the classroom. This poses grave danger to learning and the future, not just of the children but also of the country itself.

Every child forced out of school swells the population of the 18-20 million Nigerian children out of school. Terrorist recruiters find this pool of idle young minds irresistible.

Farming is just as precarious. Many farmers have been slaughtered by terrorists. Several have been chased out of their fields or forced to pay steep fees to plant and harvest their crops. This has monumental consequences on food security across the country.

Nigeria must eliminate the monster of terrorism but must first quit living in denial or downplaying its atrocities. Terrorists must be called terrorists and so treated. They must not be termed “prodigal sons” or “our brothers.”

Trying to appease them with so-called “peace deals” is fruitless. That should stop forthwith. Terrorists are never appeased. Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Kaduna and other North-West states should know that those “peace deals” mean nothing.

The intelligence community should fish out informants to terrorists and prosecute them as terrorists. They should shrink the terror ecosystem.

Security budgets must be judiciously implemented. Modern weapons needed to fight the monsters should be duly acquired. The money must not end up in some officials’ bank accounts.

Inter-agency and multinational collaboration have proven quite consequential. Nigeria should deepen this collaboration. The cancer of terrorism must be excised.

Nigeria is the fourth most terrorised country globally. This is an unflattering identity the country must get rid of.

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