The Root Causes of Domestic Terrorism in Nigeria: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

Terrorism is the premeditated use or threat to use violence by individuals or sub-national groups against non-combatants in order to obtain a political or social objective through the intimidation of a large audience beyond that of the immediate victims. Nigeria as a developing country is having its own share of act of terrorism. With its multifaceted problems of mass unemployment, illiteracy, poor health, low infrastructure and poverty, Nigeria’s inability to secure her citizens has become more glaring than ever. However, the root causes of terrorism in the country have yet to be examined. In this paper, the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) technique was explored to estimate the behavioural equation for the period 1970 to 2015. Following a detailed time series analysis, the findings reveal that economic, political and environmental factors are prevalent regarding the root causes of terrorism in Nigeria, confirming the need for a redoubling of public policy efforts towards mitigating the associated risk. Government should continue to ensure that capital expenditure and recurrent expenditure are properly managed in a manner that it will raise the nation’s production capacity and accelerate economic growth. Likewise, intelligence capabilities should be enhanced with emphasis on the combination of technology with human intelligence gathering.