NFIU uncovers new methods terrorists are exploiting to collect and distribute funds

Nigeria’s Financial Intelligence Unit says it has discovered a new method used by terrorists to collect and distribute funds for their operations in and around Nigeria.

Disclosures contained in the NFIU 2025 Annual Report stated that terrorist financiers opened bank accounts in women’s names to avoid suspicion.

Another method adopted is the use of telephone numbers for mobile banking or account alerts that are not registered with the actual account holder or beneficiary.

The third way is to use crowdfunding schemes conducted by facilitators based abroad who use social media platforms to solicit donations under the guise of humanitarian aid or educational support, before channeling the funds through various layers to terrorist agents in Nigeria.

The NFIU states that hundreds of well-wishers are typically encouraged to make relatively small donations, ranging from $50 to $500, through PayPal pages or conventional bank accounts, with the amounts deliberately kept low enough to avoid automatic anti-money laundering warnings.

According to the report, the funds were then pooled into a “main account” controlled by senior members of the group living legally abroad.

NFIU said the funds were then split into dozens of smaller payments and transferred through International Money Transfer Operators and money transfer apps to money mules networks in Nigeria.

The report identified students, small business owners and relatives among those used as donkeys, and noted that the strategy was designed to circumvent reporting thresholds and obscure the origin and purpose of the funds.

The report describes the final stage as “integration” of the funds into operational terrorist financing.

The unit also identified the use of gender-based proxy accounts as one of the emerging terrorist financing techniques, where terrorists open bank accounts in women’s names while male commanders or logistics managers secretly control the accounts, while women are often unaware of the transactions and their volumes.

The report further revealed that terrorist facilitators also do not use phone numbers that are not registered to actual account holders or beneficiaries for mobile banking and transaction alerts.

It said that pre-registered SIM cards, numbers registered to deceased persons, and SIMs linked to gender-based proxies were used to break the link between bank accounts, SIM cards, and Bank Verification Numbers.

NFIU also uncovered sophisticated methods to disguise terrorist transactions through coded narratives.

It said that cells, particularly those linked to the Islamic State Province of West Africa (ISWA) used precise transaction descriptions to maintain what analysts described as an internal accounting system.

According to the report, logistics-related payments with detailed narratives were often sent from one source to multiple recipients, reflecting the structured financial system in terrorist networks.

However, NFIU said some facilitators used innocuous words, secret codes and alphanumeric strings in transaction descriptions, sometimes switching between languages, to hide the purpose of payments and evade automated bank filters.