Terrorists Recruiting New Followers, Coordinating Attacks Via Social Media, Minister Alleges

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Mr. Isa Pantami, yesterday raised the alarm that terrorists now use social media as a medium for communications and the recruitment of new followers who will commit crimes in Nigeria.

Pantami while delivering a lecture on leadership in counter-terrorism and counter violent extremism in Abuja, said, “It is evident that terrorists are exploiting social media, encrypted communications, and the dark web to spread propaganda, recruit new followers and coordinate attacks.”

The minister noted that this rapidly evolving phenomenon requires the use of innovative approaches to both “counter” and “prevent” terrorism and extremism.

According to the minister, the development of new and emerging technologies such as, “Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), Robotics, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI),” will help counter and prevent the terrorists’ latest ploys.

He said the military and intelligence agencies can use big data to fight the war against terrorism. Data can be analyzed to understand background, motives, modus operandi and methods of communication of persons or groups of interest.

Pantami cited an example of a project by the Qatar Computing Research Institute, in which big data was used to scrutinize and analyse social media such as

Facebook and Twitter in order to locate the origins of supporters of the terrorist organisation ISIS.

Pantami explained that the internet access is available to wearables and household devices such as fridges and washing machines, the IoT technology can easily be used for monitoring, location tracking, identification, surveillance and gaining access to networks.