President Muhammadu Buhari has stated that individuals who finance terrorism in various parts of the country do so to remain relevant.
The president stated this on Friday in an interview with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and monitored by PREMIUM TIMES.
Mr Buhari, while responding to a question about the alleged financiers of terrorism his administration recently apprehended, stated that most of them are wealthy individuals who are no longer relevant in government.
He said such people will be made to face the law.
"Their motive is that they are made irrelevant and they want to use their resources they accumulated over the years to prove that they are still around and the administration will deal with them. Anybody caught will be dealt with," the president said.
About 400 businessmen, including bureau de change operators, were recently arrested for allegedly funding Boko Haram
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...terrorists.
No one has been convicted in Nigeria for funding Boko Haram, the terror group that has caused tens of thousands of deaths in Northern Nigeria since 2009.
According to Daily Trust newspaper, the recently arrested businessmen were arrested in an operation being coordinated by the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), in collaboration with the State Security Service (SSS), Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The operation was said to have been approved by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2020.
The newspaper reported that an initial list of 957 suspects comprising bureau de change (BDC) operators, gold miners and sellers and other business persons was acted upon. The prosecution of the arrested persons was stalled because of the two months strike by judiciary workers which was called off two days ago, the attorney general had said.