What U.S. Airstrikes in Nigeria Tell Us About the Hollowness of American Security Thinking
President Donald Trump labelled Nigeria a disgraced country, publicly accusing it of allowing a “genocide” against Christians. More fundamentally, he threatened military action against the country if the actions did not stop. In later weeks, things escalated fast, and Nigeria was designated as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) on 31 October 2025 for severe religious freedom violations. This made him impose a visa ban on Nigerians, both Christians and Muslims, even though he had said the genocide was against Christians. In the weeks that followed, there were several high-level diplomatic exchanges between both governments. Nigerian officials visited the United States, while the US sent fact-finding missions to Nigeria. In what seemed like a positive move, the U.S and the Nigerian government agreed to work together.
However, in what many people did not expect, they woke up to news reports that the US government had carried out an airstrike in Sokoto State on 25 December 2025, later described as a collaborative operation between the US and Nigerian governments. Both governments have described the airstrike as successful. Yet beyond these official statements, there is little publicly available evidence to substantiate the claims of success.
Nigeria unquestionably needs international cooperation in addressing terrorism. No country can effectively confront transnational terrorist threats in isolation. From that perspective, reports of a U.S. airstrike targeting terrorist elements in northwest Nigeria may, on the surface, appear positive, but the episode more clearly reveals a deeper problem: the persistence of external interpretations of Nigeria’s insecurity that underestimate its complexity and overestimate the utility of imported military solutions.
Communication
Many Nigerians first encountered the news of the U.S airstrikes on various social media when Trump shared it on his Truth Platform. The news was then carried by foreign media. Indigenous media trailed behind these platforms, and a press release by the Nigerian government came even later when the whole news had already circulated. If the operation was indeed conducted in collaboration with the Nigerian government, it is diplomatically troubling that the announcement came first from U.S. sources and foreign media. In matters of national security, especially those involving foreign military action on sovereign territory, protocol and symbolism matter. Allowing Nigeria to announce the operation and acknowledge U.S. support would have demonstrated respect for Nigeria’s sovereignty and leadership.
This concern is amplified by the historical context of Trump. rhetoric toward Nigeria and Africa in general. During President Trump’s first term, African countries were publicly described as a “shithole” before he recently referred to Nigeria as a “disgraced” country.
Stoking a religious war?
Nigeria faces threats from armed groups linked to ISIS, notably the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and the Lakurawa group in the northwest that operates areas such as Tangaza, Gudu, and Silame in Sokoto state. However, much of the violence in Sokoto is driven by criminal banditry, local political economies, and competition over resources. Lakurawa have recorded no activities in Birikini, a rural settlement in Jabo that was hit by the U.S airstrikes, and all over Tambuwal Local Government Area in general.
However, there is something more dangerous in this action. Sokoto State is widely regarded as the spiritual and historical centre of Islam in Nigeria, owing to its significance as the seat of the Sokoto Caliphate. The Sultan of Sokoto, who leads the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), resides there and serves as the spiritual head of Nigerian Muslims. With the narrative already flying around, it is easy to frame this as a fight against Muslims. In an already polarised country like Nigeria, framing the conflict primarily as a campaign of Christian persecution risks inflaming tensions, reinforcing identity-based divisions, and undermining efforts at de-escalation and community-level peacebuilding.
Meanwhile, despite the framing as a Christian genocide, there is a clear dissonance between portraying Nigerian Christians as victims in need of protection while simultaneously imposing blanket visa restrictions on Nigerians, both Christians and Muslims. If the concern is genuinely humanitarian, it is difficult to justify policies that collectively penalise the same population being described as vulnerable.
The contrast with the U.S. response to Afrikaners in South Africa who were offered facilitated entry into the United States raises uncomfortable questions about selectivity and double standards. Such inconsistencies risk being interpreted, rightly or wrongly, through the lenses of racial bias and white supremacist thinking, thereby undermining U.S. credibility and moral authority in Nigeria and across Africa.
The Myth of External Military Precision
Public reactions to the strike also revealed a tendency to elevate the US military to an almost infallible status, assuming levels of precision and intelligence that eliminate uncertainty. This perception is misleading; the U.S. has had several failed military operations. In this case, even the current one in Nigeria, while the U.S has said it was successful and eliminated several terrorists. On the field, intelligence says it was a blanket shot that did not hit any targets.
This lack of evidence of any killing of terrorists is strange because this is not the first time airstrikes have been conducted in Nigeria. The Nigerian air force has been consistent with drone attacks, and they would usually give accounts of the number of those killed. The challenge has been that armed actors in northwest Nigeria are fluid, socially embedded, and highly adaptive. They do not operate from fixed, watertight camps. Many live within communities, move between criminal activity and civilian life, and deliberately use civilians as shields. Some are bandits at night and community members by day.
Superior Intelligence?
Again, key factors reveal the hollowness of U.S military intelligence prowess. The first is assuming that the conflict in Nigeria is getting worse. Available data like that on Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, reveal that terrorist fatalities have been declining in Nigeria. The challenge, however, has been that beyond the traditional hotspots of the northeast, the incidents and fatalities took a national spread, especially to the northwest, where new actors emerged styled as bandits. At the height of Nigeria’s insurgency, the death toll hit 11,389 in 2014, with smaller peaks in 2015 (11,119) and 2021 (10,969). Those years coincided with the U.S. reluctance to sell arms to Nigeria. Now, even as fatalities decline, Washington has launched missile strikes in Sokoto—a state the data show is far less affected than bandit-ravaged Zamfara, Katsina and Kaduna in the past 10 years.
Conclusion
More importantly, it reflects a deeper colonial residue in security thinking, one that assumes external actors possess superior knowledge of African conflicts. This logic marginalises local expertise, lived experience, and contextual understanding, while privileging distant assessments shaped by global counterterrorism priorities. The U.S. government has pursued a protectionist agenda, tightening policies against African migrants while dismantling USAID and other aid mechanisms that once supported local peacebuilding across Africa. Yet it now expresses concern about rising insecurity in Nigeria, despite the possibility that these same actions contributed to worsening security conditions. It raises serious questions about the depth and coherence of U.S. strategic security thinking. Many African countries are increasingly recognising that sustainable peacebuilding extends beyond purely kinetic approaches, encompassing social, economic, and community-based interventions. By contrast, the U.S. appears to remain heavily oriented toward kinetic solutions. This contrast underscores Africa’s growing sophistication and relative strength in peacebuilding and conflict-resolution practices compared with the United States.
No external country, regardless of capacity, understands Nigeria’s internal dynamics better than Nigerians themselves. Nigeria’s insecurity is rooted in governance failures, weak state presence, and deeply embedded local dynamics. Addressing it requires approaches grounded in Nigerian realities, not externally driven templates. A decolonial security perspective begins with humility, recognises the limits of force, and centres local knowledge as the foundation for any meaningful response.
Fundamentally, the Nigerian government needs to be transparent at this point. At what cost is this new U.S. benevolence? What exactly are we giving in return? It would be remarkable if the answer is nothing. However, the terms of this new counterterrorism arrangement need to be made public, so it does not become another opaque foreign agreement, similar to Nigeria’s undisclosed foreign loans.
Dengiyefa Angalapu is a Research Analyst at the Centre for Democracy and Development.