By Oluwakemi Kindness
The Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit, NFIUNigerian Financial Intelligence Unit
https://nfiu.gov.ng
Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, says a crowdfunding network is allegedly being used to raise money for terrorist activities in Nigeria.
According to NFIU 2025 Annual Report, foreign-based facilitators use social media to solicit donations from unsuspecting or sympathetic contributors under the guise of humanitarian and educational projects.
It notes that, the facilitators promote fundraising campaigns online and use encrypted platforms such as Telegram and Signal to direct donors to PayPal accounts and bank accounts.
According to NFIU, Individual contributions typically range from 50 to 500 dollars, allowing the network to raise substantial amounts through numerous small transactions that may evade automated anti-money laundering checks.
After collecting the funds, members of the network reportedly consolidate them in an account controlled by a senior facilitator based outside Nigeria.
From there, the money is allegedly divided into smaller amounts and sent to Nigeria through international money transfer operators and other remittance platforms.
“In Nigeria, intermediaries including students, small-business operators and relatives allegedly receive the funds and serve as money mules”.
“By using multiple recipients and keeping individual transfers small, the network can stay below reporting thresholds and make it more difficult for authorities to trace the source and final beneficiaries of the funds”.
Beyond crowdfunding, the NFIU says terrorist financiers are increasingly using bank accounts registered in women’s names.
It also reveals that some of these accounts are linked to telephone numbers that do not belong to the registered account holders or the actual beneficiaries.
“Taken together, the methods point to increasingly sophisticated terrorist financing networks and highlight the need for closer monitoring of suspicious crowdfunding, banking and remittance transactions”.
The NFIU added that stronger scrutiny of such transactions will be critical to identifying illicit funding channels and disrupting the movement of money to te(rrorist groups.
