Because an arms shipment was stopped last week, a market is open somewhere in Nigeria today. Because a bandit kingpin is in court, the village is quieter. This Monday morning, a child in the Southeast went to school for the first time in years without being scared. These things didn’t happen by chance; they happened because of choices made, information gathered, and actions taken by an agency that most Nigerians don’t think about very often, unless they have a reason to.
The Department of State Services doesn’t hold press conferences to show off its successes. When a terrorist cell is broken up or a truck with 164,000 rounds of live ammunition is stopped before it gets to its destination, it doesn’t get a lot of attention on social media. Its agents don’t take bows when a fugitive is finally caught after 13 years of running away. Or when a financier who paid for mass killings from the comfort of his UAE business has his accounts frozen. That’s just how the job is. The best security is invisible; you only notice it when it breaks.
But being invisible has a price. Nigerians can’t fairly judge it if they don’t see the results. And when all you hear about are the controversies, the arrests, the political cases, and the headlines that make people suspicious, you miss the whole story. This piece is an attempt to put that picture back together. The DSS has been following a plan for the past 18 months that is slowly but surely making Nigeria safer. Anyone who wants to can see the evidence.
The DSS’s plan makes perfect sense: get rid of the commanders, and the hierarchy will fall apart. In the North, where a number of high-profile arrests have taken down some of Nigeria’s most dangerous terror networks, this has been shown in the most dramatic way.
In August 2025, operatives caught Mahmud Muhammad Usman, the self-proclaimed Emir of Ansaru, and Mahmud al-Nigeri, who was his Chief of Staff and one of Nigeria’s most wanted terrorists.
Around the same time, DSS agents arrested Abubakar Abba, the head of the Mahmuda group, a Boko Haram group that terrorized communities in Kwara and Kogi states and forced thousands of people to leave their homes. The US Embassy said that these operations were a big step forward in the fight against terrorism. Usman has been sentenced to 15 years for just one of the many crimes he committed. The prosecution is still going on for other crimes. Three months later, after a 13-year manhunt, Ansaru commander Abdulazeez Obadaki was found and arrested again. He was accused of planning the 2012 massacre of worshippers at the Deeper Life Bible Church in Okene, Kogi State.
The secret police have also shown that they can be creative and use intelligence to solve problems. In May 2025, two kidnapping leaders who were behind violent attacks along the Sokoto-Zamfara axis were tracked down and arrested at Abuja and Sokoto Hajj camps while pilgrims were being screened before they left. In Kaduna State, joint operations by the DSS and the Army in a single quarter resulted in 34 successes, the arrest of 54 suspects, the recovery of weapons ranging from RPGs to heavy machine guns, and the rescue of 79 kidnapped victims. In September 2025, a joint operation in the FCT took out bandit leader Abdullahi Umar, also known as “Duna.” His gang had kidnapped a senior civil servant and demanded a ransom of ₦150 million. A 90-day undercover surveillance operation in Osun State broke up an ISWAP cell that was in the middle of training to make explosives.
The Yelwata killings in Benue State and the Angwa Rukuba killings in Plateau State were two of the most brutal massacres in Nigeria’s recent history. They put the government’s promise to bring those responsible for mass violence to justice to the test. The DSS helped the government pass that test in both cases.
Gunmen attacked the Yelwata community in Guma LGA of Benue State on June 13, 2025, killing at least 150 people and hurting 107 others. The attacks were condemned around the world. President Bola Tinubu went to Benue State to personally offer his condolences and told security agencies to find the people responsible. The DSS acted quickly, as they should have. The Inspector-General of Police said that 26 people had been arrested within 11 days. The DSS had filed six separate terrorism charges against nine suspects in front of the Federal High Court in Abuja by August 2025. Two other people were charged with attacks that were said to be revenge. The prosecution, which is being led by the Director of Public Prosecution of the Federation, is still going on. Courts are still hearing evidence, and eight government witnesses are ready to testify.
The Angwa Rukuba case was similar in that the President promised to do something and the DSS did it. On Palm Sunday, March 29, 2026, gunmen killed more than 30 people, including children, in Jos North LGA of Plateau State. This made people angry all over the world. President Tinubu went to Jos and told the people there in person that those who were responsible for the killings would be punished. The suspects were arrested between April 3 and April 10, 2026, right after the President gave the order. The Plateau State Government then charged five people who were arrested by the DSS with criminal conspiracy to commit terrorism, culpable homicide, illegal possession of firearms, and illegal dealing in arms and ammunition. As the case began, courts had already ordered their detention in DSS custody.
The two cases mentioned above are important for more than just the individual prosecutions. They show that the DSS listens and acts when the President talks. It means that the people who attacked these communities will have to face the law, even though words alone can’t make up for the terrible losses they’ve suffered. This is a big step forward for the Criminal Justice System in a country where mass killings have long gone unpunished.
Gunmen attacked St. Francis Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State, on June 5, 2022. They killed more than 50 churchgoers and hurt many more. The DSS is currently prosecuting Idris Omeiza, Al Qasim Idris, Jamiu Abdulmalik, Abdulhaleem Idris, and Momoh Otuho Abubakar in the Federal High Court in Abuja for their supposed connections to the attack.
For almost four years, the sixth suspect, Sani Yusuf, was able to avoid arrest, making him one of Nigeria’s most wanted criminals. But in February, the DSS caught him in the Iguosa community along Powerline in the Ovia North LGA of Edo State.
The DSS is also working hard to bring Khalid Al Barnawi and four other people suspected of bombing the United Nations building in Abuja on August 26, 2011, to justice in the Federal High Court in Abuja.
More than 20 people from different countries died in the attack, and more than 70 others were hurt. People think that Al-Barnawi was one of the first members of Jama’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid Da’wah Wa’l-Jihad, the terrorist group Boko Haram. Mohammed Bashir Saleh, Umar Mohammed Bello (also known as Datti), Mohammed Salisu, and Yakubu Nuhu (also known as Bello Maishayi) are also charged with Al-Barnawi.
In addition, to show how serious the Service was about the terrorism trial, the DSS, through its lawyer Alex Iziyon, SAN, asked for an accelerated trial because the Service was ready for it to end quickly.
It’s true that armed groups don’t just rely on their beliefs to stay alive; they also need guns, ammo, and supply chains. The DSS has been going after those pipelines on purpose, and recent arrests show how well-organized those networks are.
In January 2026, Zamfara police stopped Abubakar Umar (Dangada), a well-known arms smuggler, who was carrying a large cache of weapons from Niger Republic. A joint operation on the Asaba-Onitsha expressway stopped a truck in May 2026 that was said to be carrying more than 164,000 live cartridges that were going to IPOB/ESN networks. These hauls, which include motor parks, border routes, and highways, show that the DSS is getting into every part of the supply chain.
In April 2026, operatives caught 25-year-old Nafisa Usman at a motor park in Kano. She was allegedly moving 200 rounds of ammunition from Lafia in Nasarawa State to Kankara in Katsina, which is a known bandit corridor. Security sources said that she had helped with deals worth more than ₦5 million, using the Unguwa Uku motor park as a stop for shipments going to the Kankara forest. She was stopped before the package could get to its destination. In a similar case that went to court, Halima Haliru Umar admitted to illegally having 302 rounds of live ammunition that she had sent to a bandit leader. After that, a Chief Magistrate Court in Taraba sentenced three other arms traffickers who had been arrested by the DSS to ten years in prison with no chance of paying a fine.
The prosecution of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the banned Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), has caused a lot of trouble in Nigeria in the past few years. The Federal High Court in Abuja found him guilty of terrorism in November 2025 and gave him a life sentence. Several well-known Igbo leaders have been suing for a political solution.
It is important to note that security has gotten much better in the Southeast states since Kanu was found guilty. The Monday sit-at-home orders, which have been violently enforced since 2021 and closed banks, schools, markets, and gas stations every Monday, came to an end for good in February 2026. Kanu himself, from behind the walls of his prison in Sokoto, gave the order.
SBM Intelligence, Nigeria’s top geopolitical research firm, found that those weekly closures between 2021 and early 2025 cost the country more than ₦7.6 trillion. This wealth was taken away from one of Nigeria’s most commercially active areas for no good reason. Every day of the week, markets in Onitsha, Aba, Nnewi, and other major commercial towns in the Southeast are open. Schools are now open on Mondays. The Nigerian Army has officially said that the arrest of both Kanu and Simon Ekpa, an IPOB member who was convicted in Finland, has led to measurable improvements in security. They say that the criminal activities and operational capabilities of groups linked to the ESN have dropped significantly.
A region that lost more than ₦7 trillion in business because of forced shutdowns is now on the road to a slow but steady recovery.
To break up terrorist groups, you need to do more than just arrest the foot soldiers. It means taking away the money that keeps them alive. The Nigeria Sanctions Committee, led by the Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, released an updated list of 48 people and 12 businesses that were identified as terrorism financiers in April 2026. He then ordered that all related accounts and assets be frozen right away.
The list includes people from ISWAP, Boko Haram, Ansaru, and IPOB, who are all part of Nigeria’s security problems. The ways of getting money that were shown are shocking: cryptocurrency and online fraud, handling ransom from the 2022 Abuja-Kaduna train attack, buying property in several states, and sending money through businesses in the UAE. One suspect recorded ₦61.4 billion in account inflows before sending tens of millions to terrorists who had already been found guilty. By freezing and designating these networks, we can stop the problem at its source by cutting off the money before it ever reaches the field.
Over the past few months, the picture that has been coming together of Nigeria’s security situation is that the country is starting to seriously punish everyone who chooses violence. Terrorists who were once thought to be untouchable are now in courtrooms. People are now stopping arms supply chains that used to help criminals without punishment. People who paid for mass killings in secret are having their bank accounts frozen. People in communities that saw their loved ones buried without justice are now watching suspects face the law.
If this strategic momentum keeps going and getting stronger, and the DSS keeps building its intelligence capabilities, speeding up prosecutions, and improving coordination with the military, other security agencies, the judiciary, and international partners, then the path points to something that Nigerians have wanted for a long time but haven’t been able to get.
For decades, Nigeria had to deal with insecurity. But the DSS’s current plan makes it seem like it is possible to get rid of insecurity. That there is a future that is worth working toward. The results of the last few months under Oluwatosin Adeola Ajayi show one thing: together, we can make Nigeria safe again!