The Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit has revealed new tactics allegedly being used by terrorist financiers to move funds, including the use of bank accounts belonging to women and telephone lines registered in the names of deceased persons.
The revelation was contained in the NFIU’s 2025 Annual Report, which also identified crowdfunding, proxy accounts and remittance platforms as channels increasingly exploited to finance terrorist activities.
According to the report, foreign-based facilitators have been using social media to solicit donations purportedly meant for humanitarian or educational causes before routing the proceeds through several layers to operatives in Nigeria.
The agency said donors were often encouraged to make relatively small payments which were subsequently consolidated in accounts controlled by senior members of the networks.
The funds were then split into smaller transfers and sent through international money transfer operators and remittance applications to individuals acting as money mules.
The NFIU identified students, small business owners and relatives among those allegedly used to receive the funds, which could later be converted to cash or used to acquire items such as motorcycles, fertiliser and satellite communication equipment.
The agency also raised concern over the use of women as fronts, saying terrorist financiers sometimes opened accounts in the names of wives, sisters or female associates while secretly controlling the cards, PINs and mobile banking credentials.
It added that pre-registered SIM cards and telephone numbers linked to deceased persons were being used for mobile banking and transaction alerts, making it difficult for investigators to establish the real beneficiaries of suspicious transactions.
The report further noted that some terrorist cells, including those linked to the Islamic State West Africa Province, employed coded or seemingly ordinary transaction descriptions to conceal the purpose of payments and evade automated banking filters.
Security analysts subsequently urged financial institutions and intelligence agencies to strengthen identity verification, intelligence sharing and tracking of illicit financial flows.