Criminal Master Minds, Financiers Still Evading Arrest: Experts
By Mike Odeh James
ABUJA — Nigeria’s Federal Government says 653 suspects have been convicted in the 11th phase of its mass-terrorism trials at the Federal High Court in Abuja.
Attorney-General Lateef Fagbemi said 1,060 suspects were brought before the court in this phase, which he described as the largest since the exercise began, with at least 10 judges sitting simultaneously.
By 12:15 p.m. on Friday, October 23, 880 cases had been concluded, including 653 convictions, seven acquittals and 27 discharges, leaving 193 cases unaccounted for in that tally. Final figures had not been published by October 27.
But who was convicted, and where were the men who ordered village massacres?
Safety, Not Statistics
For David Onyilokwu Idah, Director at the International Human Rights Commission in Abuja, verdicts mean little unless villages become safer. Idah said the state’s credibility will be judged not by how many it convicts, but by whether convictions bring safety to communities in Benue, Plateau, Kaduna, Taraba and Niger states.
“When a government rewards perpetrators and ignores victims, it is making a political choice,” Idah told TruthNigeria.
He said the mass convictions are a welcome departure from rewarding perpetrators, provided deradicalization does not become a back door to impunity. Fagbemi says discharged suspects must undergo deradicalization before reintegration.
The Federal High Court earlier this year in Abuja formally arraigned nine men on 57 terrorism-related charges for planning and executing the June 2025 massacre in Yelwata, Benue State, which killed 271 people according to TruthNigeria, or 150 lives, according to Reuters. The suspects, identified in local reports as “Fulani herders,” pleaded not guilty to all counts. The court ordered them to be held at the Kuje Correctional Centre pending the conclusion of their trial, where they face potential life imprisonment or the death penalty if convicted.
Guilty Pleas, No Witnesses
Human Rights Watch, which observed the ninth and tenth phases this year, found prosecutions targeted mainly low-level suspects, with convictions resting on guilty pleas and little other evidence. Eyebrows were raised when some defendants pleaded not guilty, and prosecutors withdrew the charges. Yet, one man who admitted raising goats for Boko Haram received 25 years.
“Authorities repeatedly prosecute people with tenuous connections to the most serious crimes,” said Anietie Ewang, Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Prosecutors say they balance counterterrorism with constitutional rights.
Closed Doors?
An observer writing for TheCable reported seeing no journalists, civil-society observers or relatives in the sessions attended.
“Don’t forget, what we are dealing with is terrorism and security is involved,” Fagbemi said, rejecting claims that journalists were barred.
Where Are the Masterminds?
Writing in The Authority, commentator Lemmy Ughegbe warned that punishing expendable foot soldiers while leaders and financiers escape justice treats symptoms, not the disease.
“Justice is not a competition in numbers,” Ughegbe wrote.
The government has not said how many of the 653 were charged over attacks in the Middle Belt, where Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) raids continue to kill farmers and empty communities. The trial program, begun in 2017, has largely processed suspects tied to Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), the Islamic jihadists of the Northeast.
Go After the Financiers
“Any conviction that does not include the trial, jailing and sentencing to death of Fulani Ethnic Militia members for their activities in Kaduna, Benue, Taraba, Plateau and Nasarawa states would not amount to much,” Adam Adakole of Adakson Security Consultancy in Takum, Taraba State, told TruthNigeria.
“These groups are well funded and well organized. They get funds from members of Fulani sociocultural groups to attack Christian villages, and these same sociocultural groups also offer justifications for Fulani involvement in terrorism and banditry,” he said.
“Leaders of these sociocultural groups should be arrested and prosecuted as well,” Adakole added.
The View from Washington
On Capitol Hill, the Nigeria Religious Freedom and Accountability Act of 2026, sponsored by Reps. Chris Smith and Riley Moore, would require the State Department to report whether Nigeria prosecutes perpetrators and to name those sanctioned or under consideration under the Global Magnitsky Act.
“Great news for Christians in Nigeria!” Moore posted this month after the reported arrest of Mahmoud Adam, whom he called a Fulani terrorist leader. Washington is watching who is convicted, not just how many.
Adakole credits that pressure for the trials. “Before now, there were arrests but no trials, and we don’t know what happened to the terrorists who were arrested. But that has changed,” he said, attributing President Bola Tinubu’s push to President Trump.
“I wish to thank the U.S. President for keeping Nigerian leaders on their toes in the fight against terrorism in Nigeria,” he said.
The program in fact predates Tinubu, but its pace is new: officials say phases nine and 10 alone produced 865 convictions, more than in the previous nine years combined.
Idah’s measure still stands. For a widow in Benue or a displaced farmer in Plateau, a conviction register in Abuja means nothing until the gunmen stop coming.
President Trump designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for religious freedom violations in October 2025, and Washington kept that label after the second round of U.S.-Nigeria Joint Working Group talks on August 12.
Mike Odeh James is a conflict reporter for TruthNigeria.
