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ABSTRACT
The ferocious performances of kidnapping and terrorism have pervaded the world. Law abiding citizens live in constant fear of the security of their lives and legitimate possession day and night. Terrorism in Nigeria started with the bombings of oil installations and kidnapping of expatriates, which aggravated into a general bombing business empire known as kidnapping for ransom. All of this culminated into the popular terrorist’s organization known as Boko Haram. Despite their activities, there was no provision for any legal solution to help address the situation. Although the increase in kidnapping led to the urgent need of states in the various state Houses of Assembly to make provision for laws that helped checkmate the crimes of kidnapping and its related offences, terrorism inclusive. Terrorism is believed to be a modern-day crime that required modern day warfare approach through the instrumentality of the law. The need to understand the impact of counter-terrorism laws, policies and practices is critical, as counter-terrorism measures may be counterproductive, especially if they fail to protect human rights, discriminate, increase repression, or stigmatize and alienate certain groups. While the enactment of the counterterrorism laws is being celebrated, the writer believed that the Act was fraught with some lacuna some of which included non-unification of terrorism laws and its related offences, ambiguous nature of the term ‘terrorism’, method of investigation and prosecution etc. This paper work is purely doctrinal in that it carefully examined the extant laws and identified some of their loopholes. Having established a background analysis of the history of terrorism, its impact, the problem of prosecution viz a viz the Nigerian Legal system, possible ways for the effective prosecution of terrorism and other measures of eradication has been proffered by the writer some of which includes a unification of the counterterrorism laws, a precise definition of the term ‘terrorism’, a clear separation of the judicial and executive functions of the Attorney General amongst others.
