Terrorism remains a critical security challenge in Nigeria, particularly driven by insurgent groups such as Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and bandit groups. Despite substantial government investments in kinetic counterterrorism (KCT) strategies (military offensives, threats, arrests, and neutralizations), terrorism persists, thus, undermining national security and socioeconomic development. This study addresses the pressing challenge of evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of KCT operations over nearly two decades (2007–2024) in Nigeria. It critically examines whether these predominantly kinetic approaches adequately suppress terrorism, and contribute to long-term governance stability. Employing a multidimensional analytical (MDA) framework, the study integrates terrorism incident metrics, operational effectiveness, cost-efficiency, and strategic governance indices, including the anarchical coefficient of terrorism (ACT), to holistically assess KCT performance. Data were sourced from official Nigerian security reports, international terrorism databases, and survey-based governance indicators. Advanced regularization regression techniques (ElasticNet) were applied to handle multicollinearity and identify significant predictors influencing terrorism intensity, KCT effectiveness, and governance stability. Key findings reveal that while KCT operations achieved tactical successes - marked by increased arrests, neutralizations, and territorial containment, challenges remain in governance and socioeconomic domains, which showed only modest improvement. The study identifies diminishing returns on KCT expenditure, rising operational costs, and persistent political and social instability as major challenge of KCT. Regression results indicate that terrorism intensity strongly drives political anarchy (ACT), with KCT effectiveness positively impacting governance but having minimal immediate effect on reducing anarchy. This highlights the complex interplay between KCT efforts and broader socio-political factors. Therefore, the study advocates for a paradigm shift from purely kinetic approaches to knowledge-based counterterrorism (KBCT) strategies, which emphasize proactive intelligence integration, governance reforms, community engagement, and socio-economic development alongside targeted kinetic actions. Policymakers are urged to adopt integrated, data-driven, and sustainable CT frameworks to enhance long-term peace, security, and resource efficiency in Nigeria