Mahmud Usman and Mahmud al-Nigeri: Ansaru Leaders Captured in Nigeria

Executive Summary:

• The arrests of Mahmud Usman and Mahmoud al-Nigeri in August represent a significant leadership disruption for Ansaru. Still, they are unlikely to halt jihadist activity in northwestern Nigeria, as the group has historically demonstrated resilience to leadership losses and operates within a broader al-Qaeda–aligned ecosystem that includes Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM).
• Ansaru’s continued integration with regional jihadist networks—particularly through veteran operatives with long-standing ties to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM)—suggests that Nigerian counterterrorism gains against individual leaders must be matched with sustained pressure on cross-border training, financing, and coordination nodes to prevent the group from regenerating and expanding.

Nigerian security services arrested two major Ansaru leaders in August (The National Counter Terrorism Centre [Nigeria], August 18). Despite the significance of this to Nigerian security, combined with the deteriorating security situation in Ansaru’s heartland in Nigeria’s northwest, the news of the arrests went largely under-reported. This may be because nearly a decade has passed since the arrest of Ansaru’s first key leader, Khalid al-Barnawi (Arabic: خالد البرناوي) in 2016. Al-Barnawi’s arrest at the time dented Ansaru operations, but did not halt the broader jihadist insurgency in Nigeria. As such, there is plenty of reason for skepticism about whether the two Ansaru leaders’ arrests will stem the tide of collaboration between Ansaru and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (Arabic: جماعة نصرة الإسلام والمسلمين, JNIM) collaboration in northwestern Nigeria (Punch, April 2, 2016).

The two arrested Ansaru leaders were Mahmud Usman, alias Abu Bara’ (Arabic: محمود عثمان, “أبو براء”), and Mahmud al-Nigeri (محمود النيجيري), also called Mahmuda. Usman was described by Nigeria’s National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, as Ansaru’s emir (Arabic: أمير, ruler) who “coordinated the group’s sleeper cells across Nigeria and masterminded several kidnappings and terrorist financing operations” (Premium Times, August 31). Al-Nigeri, for his part, headed the eponymous “Mahmudawa” faction (based on his alias) of Ansaru around Kainji National Park. The faction’s members trained in Libya under jihadist instructors from Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria during the height of Islamic State (IS) rule, and presumably remained in secret hideouts in Libya after IS faltered in the country in 2016 (Al Arabiya, February 9, 2016). He also “specialized in weapons handling and IED fabrication” and was responsible for naming Usman as the group’s emir.

Usman is also notable for his long career in the Nigerian jihadist movement. He was a commander under the movement’s original leader, Muhammed Yusuf (Arabic: محمد يوسف), who was killed extrajudicially in 2009 by Nigerian security forces (SARI Global, August 18). Yusuf’s successor, Abubakar Shekau, was exceedingly maniacal and ruthless towards other Muslims, even by typical jihadist standards. As a result, many of Shekau’s followers who had trained under al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) broke away from Shekau to form the more “moderate” Ansaru (al-Andalus, January 10, 2017). Usman, an Ebira from Kogi State, was among the original leaders of Ansaru and was particularly active in recruiting young anti-Sufi Salafis to jihad while also conducting operations against the Nigerian army.

Usman was perhaps best known for his involvement in drafting an anonymous article that cited Ansaru’s reasons for breaking with Shekau. The article was published in a 2017 edition of the al-Qaeda publication al-Risalah (Arabic: الرسالة, “The Message”) (al-Risalah, January 10, 2017). While the ideological overview in the article was familiar to analysts at that time, the insider perspective from Usman about the origins of the group before Muhammed Yusuf took power,, was novel. Usman revealed how a jihadist named Muhammad Ali returned from Saudi Arabia to Borno State and then received money from other Nigerians living in Saudi Arabia to found the jihadist group.. Abu Muhammed al-Yemeni (Arabic: أبو محمد اليمني), a Yemeni al-Qaeda operative, mediated the process. Yusuf later joined the nascent Nigerian jihadist movement (The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, March 3, 2022). 

The history of Ansaru is still being written. JNIM’s first claimed attack in Kwara State, Nigeria in November is merely a culmination of the now more than three decades of al-Qaeda operations in Nigeria. It is believed the first operatives arrived from Afghanistan in the mid-1990s (az-Zallaqa, November 25).  There is little doubt that with or without Usman and al-Nigeri, JNIM and Ansaru will conduct future attacks in Nigeria, and likely at a larger scale than the previous attack.