A Forensic Investigation of Terrorism in Nigeria: An Apriori Algorithm Approach

Abstract

Investigations towards studying terrorist activities have recently attracted a great amount of research interest. In this paper, we investigate the use of the Apriori algorithm on the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) for forensic investigation purposes. Recently, the Apriori algorithm, which could be considered a forensic tool, has been used to study terrorist activities and patterns across the world. As such, our motivation is to utilise the Apriori algorithm approach on the GTD to study terrorist activities and the areas/states in Nigeria with high frequencies of terrorist activities. We observe that the most preferred method of terrorist attacks in Nigeria is through armed assault. Again, our experiment shows that attacks in Nigeria are mostly successful. Also, we observe from our investigations that most terrorists in Nigeria are not suicidal. The main application of this work can be used by forensic experts to assist law enforcement agencies in decision making when handling terrorist attacks in Nigeria.