Rather than launching opportunistic ambushes, the Boko Haram faction targets military bases in return for payment from Islamic State.
Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) pays fighters based on the weapons and military equipment they capture during attacks on Nigerian and regional military bases. A fixed price list set by the Islamic State, which funds the payments, assigns amounts to weapons, ammunition and military vehicles, new research from the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) shows.
The ISS has previously documented how ISWAP often raids military bases and loots military stockpiles - unlike rival Jama'tu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad (JAS), which primarily targets civilians. ISWAP was believed to be motivated by the need to gather weapons, reduce reliance on arms smugglers and consolidate territorial control across the Lake Chad Basin.
These explanations are still valid. But new information reveals a payment system that underpins and supplements the group's ideological foundation.
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Sources with direct knowledge of ISWAP's finances and operations, including ex-fighters, revealed to ISS how the finance department accounts for spoils, called ghanimah. The group retains one-third of the total, with the rest going to those who participate in the attack.
An AK-47 for example yields US$750, and a rocket-propelled grenade US$1 000. A box of ammunition brings in between US$500 and US$1 000 depending on the calibre. A pickup fitted with a heavy weapon, the kind that features in ISWAP's propaganda after major raids, is worth US$30 000. These sums are paid in naira to the fighters, and are not trivial amounts in the Lake Chad Basin economy.
Across the region's four countries (Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger), national monthly minimum wages range from US$53 to US$108, and gross domestic product per capita is between US$775 and US$1 972. In the border areas where Boko Haram operates, actual incomes fall well below those sums. Years of conflict and climate stress have left communities in the area economically marginalised.
The institutionalisation of financial incentives makes ISWAP's attack patterns distinct, and partly explains the ongoing targeting of specific military bases rather than opportunistic ambushes. JAS fighters, by contrast, earn an income primarily through direct predation and robbery of civilians. ISWAP forbids this among its own fighters.
Because ISWAP strictly regulates weapons and its members typically do not carry arms unless deployed, there is limited opportunity to rob civilians. JAS, which exercises no equivalent arms discipline, routinely does the opposite, including raiding camps for displaced people.
The income mechanism each Boko Haram faction has chosen determines how they relate to civilians in their areas of operation, and ultimately shapes which group is better able to sustain community cooperation.
The methods also show how the two factions have constructed income streams for their fighters, recognising the need for material incentives. In addition to ghanimah (spoils of war), ISWAP has been paying some fighters' salaries of ₦75 000 - little more than Nigeria's national minimum wage of ₦70 000, or US$53 - from its own internal revenues.
Ex-fighters told ISS that the ghanimah pricing system helped attract and keep members when faith and ideology alone were insufficient. Without it, they said, ISWAP would struggle to retain its newer generation of fighters, especially those recruited through coercion or economic incentives.
Interviewees also pointed out that requiring fighters to surrender weapons - and paying them - reduced the risk of internal group rupture and breakdown in command and control.
ISWAP's approach has direct implications for how responses are designed. The payout funds follow an identifiable geographic corridor. Islamic State transfers funds through Dubai to Kano in Northwest Nigeria or N'Djamena in Chad, using currency exchange networks. Local couriers then carry the cash to Lake Chad island hideouts, ex-fighters told ISS.
In June 2026, the United States (US) designated a Nigerian currency exchange operator, Mukhtar Adamu Muhammad, and three of his firms for providing material and financial assistance to ISWAP. In 2021, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) arrested and convicted six Nigerians for helping move funds from Dubai to Boko Haram in Nigeria. US sanctions followed in 2022.
All those convicted in the UAE and later sanctioned by the US had Kano addresses. Ex-fighters said Alhaji Surajo, who operated between Dubai and Kano, was a key facilitator. ISS could not however confirm whether this was Surajo Abubakar Mohammed, convicted and jailed in the UAE for transferring US$782 000 from Dubai to Boko Haram, and now reportedly unreachable by ISWAP.
Financial intelligence units are needed to monitor recurring transactions and suspicious currency exchange activity along the UAE-to-Kano and UAE-to-N'Djamena corridors to help disrupt the payment mechanism.
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By creating a finance department that maintains the group's operating infrastructure, ISWAP has built internal systems that can withstand leadership losses. When Bukar Mainok, an ISWAP leader, was killed in the May 2026 US-Nigeria strikes, operations continued. That reinforces the need to move beyond targeting individual leaders to identifying the networks that support ISWAP's resilience.
Strengthening military bases and enhancing response capabilities against ISWAP offensives are also required to weaken the financial incentives for attacks.
With Africa increasingly at the centre of global jihadi violence, the financing networks that sustain groups like ISWAP require better understanding and international attention.
For permission to re-publish ISS Today articles, please email us. In South Africa, News24 has exclusive rights to republish ISS Today articles. In Nigeria, Premium Times has exclusive rights to republish ISS Today articles.
Taiwo Adebayo, Researcher, Lake Chad Basin, ISS
