Kodili Henry Chukwuma, Nigeria’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy: Constructions of Threat, Response and Identity – Edinburgh University Press, August 2025, print and open access

Offers a critical examination of Nigeria’s counter-terrorism policy as a political activity of identity construction

• Draws upon archival material to offer a discursive analysis of Nigeria’s counter-terrorism strategy
• Considers the construction of terrorist threat and identity considering specific colonial and post-colonial histories, realities and agency
• Explores the official discourse on counter-terrorism as produced by Nigeria’s federal executive
• Examines the productivity and effects of the official discourse

This book critically engages with Nigeria’s counter-terrorism strategy as a means of identity construction. Drawing on a wealth of archival materials, Kodili Chukwuma analyses how the federal government articulates and justifies its counter-terrorism policy against specific ‘terrorist’ groups such as Boko Haram in order to construct Nigeria’s identity. He argues that the designation of particular terrorist threats as a new form of terrorism in Nigeria – and beyond – enables state counter-terrorism interventions. Revealing the complexities of Nigeria’s counter-terrorist strategy, this book sheds new light on critical terrorism and critical security studies in a key postcolonial context.