Soldiers have arrested foreign nationals linked to insecurity, says Bwala

The Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Media and Public Communications, Daniel Bwala has confirmed that Nigerian troops have arrested foreign nationals suspected of links to insecurity in parts of the country.

Bwala disclosed this while featuring on The Link Up Podcast, a panel discussion hosted by EchoRoom and published on Friday.

He said interference by foreign governments in Nigeria’s internal affairs was tied to national security and economic interests, including the country’s oil resources and past policy decisions by the Federal Government.

“If you remember, there was a decision the Federal Government of Nigeria made at that time, and immediately we started seeing people in Nigeria lifting Russian flags,” Bwala said, referencing demonstrations that broke out in parts of northern Nigeria, including Kano.

“Our soldiers have arrested foreign nationals in the middle of the country,” he said.

He added that the military had deliberately withheld the identities of foreign nationals arrested during operations to protect ongoing diplomatic engagements.

“For security reasons, the military refused to disclose their nationality, but the government of Nigeria related with those nationalities and countries.

“If you catch somebody like that, you keep them until that country has something also in it, so you do prisoner exchange,” he said.

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Bwala added that friendlier countries were instead asked to take corrective measures rather than face public disclosure, noting that nations rarely acknowledged intelligence operations, relying instead on what he called plausible deniability.

Asked whether the United States Central Intelligence Agency had a hand in funding terrorism in Nigeria, Bwala said he could not confirm the claim but recalled that a member of the United States Congress, Scott Perry, had questioned a CIA director on the matter during a congressional hearing.

“I’m not saying he’s right or he’s wrong, but an event like that has occurred, and as a country we cannot hear that and say you are a liar,” he said.

On the operations of Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province, Bwala said the groups had spread from the North-East to the North-West and were pushing towards the North-Central, a development he said the government was working to contain before it reached southern Nigeria.

He denied claims that the military shields terrorists during operations, describing such allegations as conjecture, though he acknowledged that infiltration by informants was not impossible, drawing comparisons to a senior police officer previously arrested alongside Chinese nationals and the case of American whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Bwala also faulted what he described as coordination failures between the Nigerian Army and the Air Force under the immediate past administration of Muhammadu Buhari, saying such lapses had since been addressed under the current administration.

He rated the performance of President Bola Tinubu highly, citing improvements in the country’s foreign reserves and revenue, and said Nigerians should decide for themselves whether the President deserved a second term.