After US Action, FG Orders Asset Freeze On Terror Financiers
The Federal Government has directed banks and other regulated businesses to freeze the assets of suspected terrorism financiers, throwing Nigeria’s weight behind fresh United States sanctions on a Lagos-based ISIS facilitator and three bureaux de change.
The Nigerian Sanctions Committee issued the directive on Tuesday, instructing financial institutions and designated non-financial businesses and professions “to comply fully with all sanctions obligations, including asset-freezing requirements, the filing of Suspicious Transaction Reports and the reporting of relevant matches to the appropriate authorities.”
The order followed action by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). OFAC designated three individuals and six entities across Europe, the Middle East and West Africa for facilitating financial transactions on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. President Donald Trump’s administration announced the designations on Monday, naming Nigeria-based Mukhtar Adamu Muhammad and three bureaux de change.
The firms, all allegedly owned or controlled by Muhammad, are Generation Currency Bureau De Change and Nine to Nine Exchange Bureau De Change, both in Lagos, and Manhattan Bureau De Change in Kano. OFAC described Muhammad, 35, of an Agege address in Lagos, as a conduit for ISIS financing through the bureaux operating in Lagos and Kano. The action was taken under Executive Order 13224.
The committee said the US move reinforced sanctions Nigeria had already imposed. The designations followed the inclusion of Muhammad and his companies in a broader update to the Nigeria Sanctions List approved and published on June 18, 2026. That list named six persons, including Ibrahim Yakubu Ogirima, Adamu Chiroma, Ibrahim Abubakar, Abdullahi Umar Usman and Babangida Muhammed Adamu Hammajam, alongside three entities.
According to the committee, the listings followed “extensive intelligence gathering, financial investigations and inter-agency assessments” establishing reasonable grounds to believe the affected parties had supported the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a breakaway faction of Boko Haram responsible for years of deadly attacks across the North East and the Lake Chad region.
The sanctions form part of a wider crackdown. Since 2022, the US has sanctioned 10 Nigerians over terrorism financing, beginning with six in March 2022 for raising funds in the United Arab Emirates for Boko Haram, and eight more in February 2026 linked to Boko Haram, ISIS and cybercrime. The latest network spans France, Türkiye, Syria and Nigeria, with OFAC citing a France-based facilitator accused of supplying explosives information and a Syria-based operator who moved funds using cryptocurrency.
The crackdown comes weeks after a major battlefield development. Washington pointed to the May 16, 2026 killing of Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, described as the second-highest ranking ISIS official, in an operation involving Nigerian and US forces.
In a related development, the Chief of Defence Intelligence, Lt. Gen. Emmanuel Undiandeye, said the military, working with the US, UK and France, had broken the backbone of terrorist groups. Speaking at the Second Quarter Operations Briefing for Foreign Defence Advisers and Attachés in Abuja, he said sustained operations had crippled the leadership structures of ISIS and Boko Haram.
The committee said Nigeria “remains resolute” in ensuring that “terrorists and their financiers find no safe haven” within the country’s financial system, pledging continued cooperation with domestic and international partners. With the designations now active, attention is likely to shift to enforcement by the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, and to whether prosecutions follow the asset freezes.