Nigeria’s Quiet National Security Crisis: The Disinformation Threat

In a mobile-first country already battling insurgencies, political polarisation, and ethnic tensions, lies travel faster than truth. When information is weaponised, it becomes as dangerous as bullets.

Nigeria has become accustomed to measuring insecurity in familiar ways: the number of attacks, the death toll from insurgencies, the rise in kidnappings, or the latest reports of banditry. We instinctively look for physical evidence of conflict in ways such as burned villages, displaced communities, and military deployments. Yet one of the country's fastest-growing security threats rarely leaves behind visible destruction. It often begins with a message.

Picture this: a rumour appears on WhatsApp. Minutes later it is reposted on Facebook and X. Influencers repeat it on TikTok. Screenshots circulate through Telegram groups. By evening, radio presenters are discussing it, television stations are reacting to it, politicians are issuing statements, and security agencies are forced into public denials.

Whether the story is true becomes almost irrelevant. It has already achieved its objective by shaping behaviour. Markets close early, communities become suspicious of one another, protesters mobilise, panic buying begins and drives up prices, and fear grips an entire city. No gunman has appeared. No bullets are fired. No explosives are detonated. Yet the damage has already begun, all because of a carefully crafted narrative.

This is why disinformation is no longer simply a media/communication problem or an unfortunate by-product of social media. It is slowly becoming a national security issue.

Modern conflicts are increasingly fought not only with weapons but with narratives. The objective is not limited to capturing territory or destroying infrastructure, it is to influence perception, manipulate behaviour, erode public confidence in institutions, and exploit existing social fractures, which makes it one of the most accessible dangerous weapons in Nigeria today.

The information battlefield is no longer secondary to the physical one, it is often the decisive front.

This isn't hyperbole. Coordinated falsehoods have the capacity to undermine national stability and public confidence. Once amplified through digital networks, manipulated information can spread faster than official responses, allowing rumours to shape public understanding long before facts have an opportunity to catch up.

In today's information age, the first casualty is often not truth, but public trust. Nigeria is particularly vulnerable to this challenge. With one of Africa's largest digitally connected populations, millions of citizens receive news primarily through smartphones and social media rather than traditional media. This has democratised access to information, but it has also democratised the production and dissemination of false information. Political actors, extremist groups, foreign influence campaigns, commercial content creators, and ordinary citizens all participate, sometimes deliberately, sometimes unknowingly, in an information ecosystem where sensational narratives frequently outperform verified facts.

The consequence is that Nigeria is steadily losing an information war it rarely acknowledges. The country's response to disinformation remains largely reactive, institutions intervene only after misleading narratives have already spread, public opinion has already shifted, and social damage has already occurred. In an era where perception shapes political stability as much as physical force, responding after the fact is no longer sufficient.

The question, therefore, is not if disinformation poses a threat to national security, the evidence suggests that it already does. The more pressing question is whether Nigeria can develop the intelligence, institutions, and strategic foresight necessary to detect and disrupt harmful narratives before they evolve into political crises, communal violence, or security emergencies.

The New Battlefield: From Rumours to Weapons

Scale is the starting point. Nigeria is home to roughly 237 million people, about 1 in every 6.5 Africans, and 1 in every 35 people on Earth. Of these, some 165 million hold active mobile connections and 109 million are online, putting internet penetration at 45.5 percent, which is well below the 70.4 percent of the global population now connected to mobile internet. That gap is not a footnote; it is the argument. A population this large, this young, and this mobile-saturated, but without commensurate digital literacy, is not merely under-connected, but is unevenly connected, which is a more dangerous condition than being offline.

Nigeria's digital ecosystem is dominated by WhatsApp, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and X. Millions get their news primarily through these platforms, where the infrastructure for mass manipulation is already built. A single viral deepfake or false information campaign can do more damage in 48 hours than years of conventional propaganda, not because the technology is unprecedented, but because the audience is unprepared for it.

The pattern holds at every scale.

Globally, Romania's 2024 presidential election results were annulled after evidence emerged of AI-powered interference using manipulated video, a rare case where synthetic disinformation didn't just embarrass a candidate but voided a national election outcome. It demonstrated that information warfare can now produce constitutional consequences, not just reputational ones.

Regionally, the Sahel has become what researchers now call a live laboratory for this threat. Following the 2023 coup in Niger, Wagner-linked Telegram channels increased Niger-related content by 6,645 percent in a single month, spreading false claims of imminent ECOWAS invasion to cement the junta's legitimacy and inflame public mistrust of regional mediation. The campaign worked, but not because the claims were sophisticated, but because the platforms carrying them were already the primary news source for a population with limited means of independent verification.

Nationally, Nigeria saw this same mechanism turn fatal in June 2026. Amid the panic following a school kidnapping in Oyo State, a false claim spread on social media that bandits were invading Lagos. A 24-year-old motorcyclist was killed by a mob acting on the rumour; fifteen people have since been arrested.

No insurgent group orchestrated this. A recycled claim, an algorithm, and an unverifying public did the work alone. That is what self-sabotage looks like in the information age, and is perpertuated by the citizens themselves.

Extremist groups in the Sahel and Northeast Nigeria have taken note. Why risk physical contact or exposure when you can radicalize and recruit someone from a smartphone anywhere in the world?

Low digital literacy, combined with high smartphone penetration and weak platform enforcement, turns every phone into a potential vector for manipulation and turns Nigeria's demographic weight, the 1-in-35 statistic that should be a source of strength, into a liability instead.

These cases illustrates the pattern: disinformation exploits existing grievances, reinforces existing beliefs and biases, and amplifies them into perceived existential threats. The deciding factor is rarely the sophistication of the lie but the literacy gap of the audience receiving it.

This pattern reflects a broader challenge confronting fragile information environments. Disinformation rarely succeeds because falsehoods are inherently convincing, it succeeds because official information often arrives too late or lacks sufficient credibility to fill the vacuum. When states fail to communicate proactively, conduct credible investigations, or deliver timely justice, information vacuums emerge. Those vacuums are quickly filled by speculation, conspiracy theories, and disinformation, while trauma inevitably shapes the perceptions and judgement of those most directly affected. In such circumstances, emotionally compelling narratives frequently gain greater traction than verified facts, allowing disinformation to become embedded in public consciousness before evidence has an opportunity to emerge.

How Extremists Have Leaned In

Boko Haram factions and ISWAP haven't stayed behind. Extremist organisations understand that modern warfare is fought as much through perception as through violence. For example, Boko Haram demonstrated this after the Chibok and Dapchi schoolgirl abductions in 2014 and 2018 respectively, by releasing carefully produced propaganda videos designed not only as proof-of-life recordings, but as psychological operations to intimidate the public, embarrass the government, and attract international attention. Years later, following the July 2022 attack on the Kuje Medium Security Custodial Centre, ISWAP quickly claimed responsibility through the Islamic State's A'maq media network and circulated footage of the operation online. The objective extended beyond celebrating a tactical success. By controlling the narrative before official government communication had fully emerged, the group projected operational strength, undermined public confidence in institutions that are supposed to protect the citizens, and demonstrated how modern terrorist organisations increasingly compete for dominance in both the physical and information domains.

The lesson is straightforward: groups that once relied on physical intimidation now weaponize narratives to recruit, fundraise, and erode state legitimacy from afar. In ungoverned information spaces, mobility and cohesion give non-state actors an edge. This connects directly to broader counterterrorism failures when intelligence and kinetic operations aren't matched by narrative control, insurgents maintain influence even when militarily pressured.

Why Emerging Democracies Are Especially Vulnerable

This narrative advantage doesn't emerge in a vacuum. It depends on the same structural fragility that separates emerging democracies from their Global North counterparts.

Global North democracies have, at least, imperfect guardrails: stronger institutions, established fact-checking ecosystems, and higher baseline media trust in key segments of the population. Many African democracies have not yet built the same buffers. In contexts like Nigeria, where decades of unaddressed governance challenges have bred deep scepticism toward both government and traditional media, citizens are primed to embrace alternative explanations, no matter how outlandish, not because they are credulous, but because those explanations align with grievances they already hold.

This creates a vicious cycle: disinformation weakens institutions further, which lowers trust even more.

The consequences extend beyond domestic politics. Large-scale disinformation campaigns can reshape the diplomatic framing of a country's security challenges, strain intelligence and security cooperation with international partners, discourage foreign investment, and undermine confidence in an already fragile economy. In an interconnected world, narratives increasingly influence not only how citizens perceive their governments but also how governments perceive one another.

Nigeria's experience with the "Christian genocide" narrative illustrates this dynamic. As allegations circulated through advocacy networks, diaspora organisations, political actors, and digital platforms, the country's complex security crisis increasingly came to be framed internationally as one of systematic religious persecution rather than the more nuanced interaction of insurgency, banditry, communal violence, and criminality. The resulting diplomatic pressure surrounding Nigeria's designation as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) demonstrated how information campaigns can influence foreign policy debates as much as they shape public opinion.

Economic pressures compound this. High youth unemployment and widespread grievances make people receptive to simple, emotionally charged narratives blaming "the system" or specific ethnic/religious groups. The Anambra 2025 governorship election offered a preview of what this looks like in practice. CDD-West Africa's election monitoring tracked over 200 election-related claims circulating online; of the 45 deemed fact-checkable, 54 percent were found to be outright false, including manufactured claims of security bias, religious exploitation, and insecurity narratives targeting candidates and institutions. The pattern eroded voter trust and deepened polarization well before a single vote was counted.

Politically motivated actors add even more fuel to the disinformation fire. Ahead of 2027, we're already seeing deepfakes and impersonation campaigns designed to delegitimize opponents or incite religious tensions. The "liar's dividend" effect emerges when everything can be faked, genuine accountability suffers because people dismiss real scandals as "just more disinformation."

The Free Speech vs. Security Tension… and Why Balance Matters

Here's where it gets difficult, and I want to be honest about it.

Heavy-handed government regulation risks sliding into authoritarian control of information. Nigeria has seen governments use "anti-fake news" laws to silence critics and opposition voices. That path is dangerous. Blanket censorship or rushed cybercrime prosecutions often backfire, breeding more distrust.

But pretending platforms and markets will self-correct is naive and ignores reality. Algorithms reward outrage. Extremists and well-resourced actors operate with asymmetric advantages. Doing nothing cedes the information space to the most malicious players.

Practical, Detailed Solutions: Building Resilience Without Repression

Effective responses require layered, strategic long-term thinking.

First, media and digital literacy must be built into the system at scale. Source verification, basic deepfake detection, and critical consumption habits embedded into primary and secondary school curricula, and community programs, not treated as a one-off awareness campaign. Second, this work cannot be government-led alone, it demands a whole-of-society approach. Partnerships with credible civil society organizations are essential for delivering nationwide campaigns with the public trust that state institutions, in this context, often lack. The focus should stay practical: reverse image search, checking account histories for prior misinformation, and understanding how algorithmic amplification, not just bad actors, drives what people see first.

Third, independent fact-checking and rapid response capacity must be strengthened next. Non-partisan bodies like Dubawa and CDD-West Africa already do credible work but what they lack is better funding and tech tools proportionate to the scale of the problem. Platforms should be required to provide timely data access to verified fact-checkers during high-risk windows when the cost of a 48-hour verification lag is highest. Public dashboards tracking debunked trends in real time could help normalize verification as a civic habit, rather than a reactive afterthought.

Fourth, platform accountability with appropriate safeguards needs to move from voluntary commitment to enforceable requirement. This means mandatory labelling of AI-generated content, faster removal of coordinated inauthentic behaviour, and genuine transparency on content moderation decisions, particularly around high-risk topics like incitement to violence or ethno-religious sentiments.

Additionally, international pressure on Meta, ByteDance, and X should be calibrated to local context rather than applied uniformly. Not all social media apps work the same way, so rules for them shouldn't be identical. WhatsApp is built for private chats with strong encryption, which makes it hard to see what's being shared. Meanwhile, platforms like X (Twitter) or TikTok are open and public, so their challenges are different. That means governments and regulators need tailored solutions using smart technology and clear policies instead of blanket bans. If they just block an app, people will move their activity to other hidden places, and the problem won't really be solved.

For the intelligence and policy angle, disinformation must be treated as a core intelligence priority, not a side issue. At its core, strategic intelligence is not simply about knowing more than an adversary. It is about knowing early enough to act before disinformation become crises, falsehoods become accepted truths, and online narratives translate into real-world violence. Mapping of influence networks, early detection indicators of coordinated campaigns, understanding how online activity translates to offline violence, and improved inter-agency information sharing should be central to modern counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency strategies. Also, security agencies must communicate more transparently and proactively, because counter-narratives work best when rooted in verifiable facts, not spin.

Ultimately, countering disinformation is not simply about correcting falsehoods after they spread. It is about building a society that is resilient to manipulation in the first place.

This requires sustained investment in media and information literacy, trusted local voices, community-based resilience, and intelligence-led early warning systems capable of identifying harmful narratives before they evolve into security crises. It also requires addressing the structural conditions that allow disinformation to flourish. Societies characterised by economic uncertainty, political polarisation, and low public trust provide fertile ground for information manipulation. Conversely, strengthening governance, expanding economic opportunities, and restoring confidence in public institutions not only enhance national development but also reduce the effectiveness of disinformation campaigns by making societies less vulnerable to exploitation.

Above all, supporting an independent and credible information ecosystem remains one of the most durable defences against disinformation. This means protecting press freedom, developing sustainable funding models for independent journalism, strengthening professional fact-checking institutions, and insulating news organisations from political and commercial interferance. None of these measures offers an immediate solution, nor can any single institution solve the problem alone. Yet the alternative of ceding the information space to whoever shouts the loudest, manipulates the fastest, or fabricates the most convincing narrative is far more costly. The future of Nigeria's national security will be determined not only by the strength of its armed forces or intelligence agencies, but also by its ability to safeguard the integrity of its information environment.

This isn't about controlling narratives. It is about protecting the conditions that allow truth, trust and informed citizenship to thrive in a democratic society.

What's your take? Have you seen specific disinformation incidents hit close to home, maybe around recent security events or politics? Which countermeasures feel most realistic given Nigeria's realities: education, regulation, tech investment, or something else?

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