Terrorist organisations using social media platforms to recruit disciples, says minister

Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami has declared that terrorist organisations now use social media platforms to recruit followers.

Pantami disclosed this in Abuja, while delivering a lecture on Leadership in Counter-Terrorism and Counter-Violent Extremism in Nigeria.

According to the ministry’s Twitter handle @FMoCDENigeria, he 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.”

While the challenges persist, Pantami noted that an upgrade in skill and technology by Nigeria authorities could prevent counter-terrorism and extremism in the country.

He suggested that Nigeria’s security organisations should approach their fight against terrorism with adequate data through technologies like Big Data Analytical, Internet of Things (IoT), Robotics and Machine Learning, as well as Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Pantami explained that through the use of Big Data Analytical, the military and intelligence agencies analyse data gathered, “to understand background, motives, modus operandi and method of communication of persons or groups of interest.

“Increase in computing power and machine learning has made it possible to examine huge amounts of data related to crimes and terrorism to identify underlying correlations and causes.”

According to him, the advent of IoT presents the connection of devices to not only the Internet, but also to each other. The IoT enables increased convenience, efficiency and energy conservation.

He noted that IOT technology could be used for monitoring, identification, surveillance, access to the network and tracking down locations of persons and terrorist groups.

Pantami cited a project by the Qatar Computing Research Institute where big data was used to scrutinise and analyse social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter to locate the origins of supporters of ISIS.

Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, said, “Recall also that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) had called for deployment of technologies, especially emerging ones in the fight against terrorists in the country.”

He added that Nigeria could leverage emerging technologies and deploy telecommunications resources in the fight against insurgency and curb other rising emergencies in the country.

Danbatta affirmed the empirical knowledge of what information and communications technology (ICT) could do in tackling the numerous security challenges.

He explained the Commission’s insistence on stakeholders’ compliance to the guidelines on SIM registration and why the NCC had been upbeat in getting the Emergency Communication Centres (ECC) ready across the country as directed by the Federal Government.

Danbatta recalled the collaboration between NCC, security and other emergency response agencies, especially at the ECCs and suggested that most of the challenges could be addressed by scaling up the degree of deployment of electronic strategies.