It was late evening on Christmas Day when residents of Jabo, a predominantly Muslim village in Sokoto state in northwestern Nigeria, said they saw an object resembling a small plane flying overhead.
“Shortly after, we heard a loud explosion and saw a huge ball of fire,” a resident said. told local media. “Everyone was frightened. People came out of their homes with their families and started running in different directions.”
The scene was repeated in at least two other settlements in Sokoto state, which borders Nigeria’s neighboring Niger, in what US President Donald Trump called “a powerful and deadly strike against the ISIS terrorist scam in northwestern Nigeria.”
The US military said in its initial assessment that “several” ISIS members have been killed in attacks on extremist “camps”. In an interview with Politico Trump claimed that the camps were “destroyed”.
However, residents of Jabo expressed surprise at the attacks, saying that the shells had fallen into empty fields, causing no casualties, and that Jabo was relatively spared from the violence. He said the last attack by terrorists took place two years ago. Video footage on Nigerian television showed charred pieces of metal covering what appeared to be farmland.
One man told local television station Arise News: “Praise be to God, there was no loss of life.”
The Nigerian Army’s Director of Defense Information, Major General Samaila Uba, appeared to confirm Abuja’s close involvement. He said the country’s armed forces, “in coordination with the US”, had carried out the attack based on “credible intelligence and careful operational planning”. Said,
Yuba further said that “precision strike operations against identified foreign ISIS-linked elements” had received approval from federal government officials. The operation, he said, underlined Nigeria’s resolve, along with strategic partners, to “combat international terrorism and prevent foreign fighters from gaining a foothold or expanding within Nigeria’s borders”.
The government later issued a statement saying that 16 GPS-guided precision munitions had been fired from platforms in the Gulf of Guinea. It said the targets were “terrorist hideouts located in Bauni forest area of Tangaza local government area” in Sokoto State.
The government said the strikes, which followed the “explicit approval” of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, had neutralized ISIS elements trying to cross into Nigeria from neighboring countries in the Sahel.
“Intelligence has confirmed that these locations were being used as assembly and staging grounds by foreign ISIS elements seeking to infiltrate into Nigeria,” the statement said. Along with Jabo, debris also fell on Offa, a town in Kwara state, but no casualties were reported, it said.
Yet some Nigerian analysts questioned the official version of events and said the selection of Sokoto State as a target was strange because its inhabitants were almost entirely Muslim. He said other states, including Niger and Kebbi in the northwest and Borno in the northeast, where Boko Haram has historically been active, have suffered far more violence.
Nigeria has been facing overlapping security crises for at least a decade due to a mix of banditry, kidnappings, clashes between herders and farmers, and Islamic extremism. Nearly 9,500 people were killed in political violence last year AkledA non-profit organization that monitors global conflict. Along with Muslims, Christians have also become victims of this.
Trump said the US action was in response to terrorist activity directed against Christians – a longtime preoccupation of his White House.
This strike happened a day later bomb attack At least five people have been reported killed and dozens injured in an attack on a mosque in Maiduguri, north-east Nigeria. In November, gunmen abducted at least 200 children from a Catholic school in Niger state.
Security analyst Mustapha Gembu said Sokoto’s choice was “highly questionable”. Sokoto, he said, was more a victim of banditry than terrorists targeting Christians, who were almost non-existent in the state. It was not what he called one of the country’s “terrorist hotspots”, but rather it was a “predominantly Muslim enclave and the historic seat of the Sokoto Caliphate, the spiritual center of Islam in Nigeria”.
The Nigerian government has been under pressure from Washington to take action against the violence, since Trump in November threatened to deploy the US military “guns blazing” in response to attacks on our “dear Christians”. Tinubu sent senior security officials to the US capital to discuss the situation and replaced his defense minister with a former general.
But despite public claims of coordination on Friday, Gembu said he doubted whether the Nigerian Armed Forces were closely involved in the planning of the attacks.
Omar Ardo, an opposition politician, also said he did not agree that Nigeria was actively involved. “The targeting of Sokoto State without any prior established ISIS presence raises questions about whether Nigerian military officials exercise meaningful control over the operation or whether they themselves remain mere spectators.”
Ardo said Tinubu “must give the country a full and detailed account of the legal basis, authorization process and strategic rationale for the alleged US air strikes in Sokoto”.
Other branches of the Nigerian government were slower than the Ministry of Defense in claiming full responsibility for coordinating the operation.
Earlier in the day, a senior government official, speaking on background, said he was still trying to establish the facts, including when Abuja was informed of the time and location of the attacks.
Nigeria has been involved in joint intelligence-gathering operations with the United States in recent weeks, he said, but acknowledged that Sokoto was not the most obvious choice for a target.
The Trump administration’s military focus in Africa so far has been primarily in Somalia, where it has conducted more than 100 strikes since February against alleged Islamist militants. In May, US Admiral James Kilby said that Washington had launched “the largest air strike in the history of the world – one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds from a single aircraft carrier – in Somalia”.
