On Christmas Day 2025, the United States – in coordination with the Nigerian government – launched a series of unprecedented airstrikes in northwestern Nigeria, ostensibly targeting fighters affiliated with ISIL (ISIS). President Donald Trump who downplayed Nigeria’s involvement in the operation, framed the operation as a response to an alleged Christian genocide, claiming “powerful and deadly strikes against ISIS terrorist scum who were killing innocent Christians.” Nigerian officials acknowledged consenting to the strikes under an intelligence-sharing framework, even as they vehemently denied any ongoing ‘Christian genocide’ in the country. The joint U.S.–Nigerian action marked the first direct American military intervention on Nigerian soil and immediately sparked controversy over its timing, targets, and potential consequences.

Misplaced Focus? The ‘Lakurawan Fulani’ and Questionable Targeting

In this essay, I point out a disturbing discrepancy between Washington’s stated rationale and the actual targets of the Christmas airstrikes. Arguably, the only terrorist group in Sokoto is the Lakurawa faction. The Lakurawa faction – sometimes referred to as the Lakurawan Fulani – is a recently emergent armed group in Sokoto State, linked to an ISIL offshoot. These fighters, largely drawn from Fulani pastoralist communities and foreign jihadists invited years ago to combat bandits, have since turned their guns on local communities and authorities. Notably, they operate in remote parts of Sokoto and neighboring states, but my findings reveal no strong Lakurawa presence in Jabo, the very town struck by U.S. missiles on Christmas night.

This raises the question: if counterterrorism was truly the objective, why weren’t the actual perpetrators of widespread violence against civilians in Sokoto – like the Lakurawan Fulani and other militias attacking farming villages in Nigeria’s Middle Belt – the focus of the strike?

The Middle Belt violence cited by U.S. officials involves predominantly Muslim Fulani herder militias raiding Christian farming communities over land and resources – a brutal conflict that has killed nearly 10,000 people since 2023 in states like Benue and Plateau. However, the U.S. strikes were nowhere near that epicenter. Instead, they targeted a mainly Muslim area in Sokoto – the historic heartland of the Sokoto Caliphate – where victims of banditry and jihadist incursions are often Muslim villagers.

This mismatch between rhetoric and target suggests the strikes were driven more by symbolism and politics than by on-the-ground threat analysis. Launching an assault on Christmas Day in Sokoto (a deeply symbolic region for Nigerian Islam) bolstered a narrative of America saving Nigerian Christians, but it also blurred distinct conflicts – conflating local herder-farmer clashes with global jihadism. The Lakurawa Fulani fighters who were, a few weeks ago, captured on video terrorizing communities were not the ones directly hit; instead, the operation homed in on an ISIS label that fit a U.S. counterterror script, even if the connection to protecting Christians on the ground was tenuous.

Besides Sokoto, attacks were also recorded in Offa, also a Muslim-dominated Yoruba town, with no link to either Lakurawan Fulani or Boko Haram.

History’s Warnings: Military Interventions and Their Aftermath

Having studied terrorism and counterterrorism for over two decades, I must state plainly that what occurred on December 25, 2025, represents a catastrophic strategic error. History offers little comfort here. The United States has rarely recorded enduring success in its foreign military interventions – the strategic outcomes are overwhelmingly bleak:

• Libya (2011) – NATO’s intervention toppled Muammar Gaddafi but left Libya in unintelligible chaos, spiraling into civil wars, factional conflict, and a haven for extremist groups. A decade later, Libya remains fractured, with cascading insecurity despite the victory of regime change.
• Syria (2010s) – U.S. support for rebels and efforts against ISIS yielded no decisive stability. Instead, Syria endured a prolonged war with half a million dead, millions displaced, and a patchwork of militias – a conflict still unresolved as outside powers play proxy battles. Tactical wins (like ISIS’s territorial defeat) did not translate into peace; jihadist ideology morphed and persisted in pockets.
• Somalia (1990s–present) – U.S. incursions (from the 1993 Black Hawk Down episode to ongoing drone strikes against Al-Shabab) have not pacified Somalia. Decades on, Al-Shabab insurgents remain potent, Somalia’s state is fragile, and U.S. tactics at times even galvanized local resentment and militant recruitment.
• Afghanistan (2001–2021) – After 20 years of war to destroy Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the U.S. withdrew and the Taliban surged back to power. Trillions of dollars and successful battles could not prevent a strategic failure: the very force the U.S. ousted in 2001 retook Kabul in 2021, illustrating how military victories were fleeting. America’s longest war ended with scenes eerily reminiscent of Saigon, as an emergency evacuation underscored the collapse of U.S. objectives.
• Latin America (Cold War era) – From Central America to the Caribbean, U.S. regime-change operations fueled cycles of instability. In places like Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Chile, interventions often sparked protracted civil wars, repression, or dictatorships, rather than the promised peace and democracy. These efforts frequently backfired, entangling the U.S. in lengthy nation-building quagmires or producing blowback in the form of anti-American hostility and human rights disasters.

Across these cases, a pattern emerges: tactical victories are announced – regimes fall, targets neutralized – but the strategic results tell a different story. Instead of stability, the aftermath is often prolonged instability, radicalization, state collapse, and recycled violence under new names and banners. A 2020 Cato Institute analysis notes that foreign regime-change missions rarely succeed as intended and often produce unintended consequences, such as humanitarian crises and weaker internal security in the targeted state. In short, U.S. military might can win battles, but has proven ill-suited to win peace.

Negotiation vs. Force: What the Record Shows

By contrast, the historical record on negotiation, political incorporation, and structured reintegration of armed groups is far more encouraging. Across regions and decades, non-kinetic approaches have yielded measurable success rates – often estimated well above 50% – whereas purely military solutions barely register in the single digits. Empirical research bears this out: an analysis of how terrorist groups end found that nearly 43% of groups since 1968 transitioned into the political process, and another 40% were neutralized through policing and intelligence efforts. Only 7% of terrorist organizations were eliminated primarily by military force. In other words, violence may kill fighters, but it rarely kills ideas; more often it sanctifies them. Extremist ideologies tend to survive martyrs and airstrikes, often fueled by the propaganda of persecution.

Historical examples illustrate the value of dialogue over endless offensives. In Northern Ireland, decades of bloodshed between the IRA and British forces gave way to a negotiated settlement that brought an imperfect but lasting peace – the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. In Colombia, the government’s decision to negotiate with the FARC guerrillas produced a landmark peace accord in 2016, ending one of the world’s longest insurgencies and integrating former rebels into politics. Even in Nigeria’s own past, amnesty and reintegration programs (such as the Niger Delta amnesty in 2009) dramatically reduced violence when pure military crackdowns had failed. While each conflict is unique, the lesson is consistent: talking to insurgents and addressing political grievances stands a far better chance of ending conflict than trying to bomb an ideology out of existence. Studies estimate over 60% of insurgencies that reach a sustainable resolution involve some negotiated settlement, power-sharing, or amnesty, whereas military victories against insurgencies are exceedingly rare. Nigeria’s allies should remember that you cannot shoot an idea; but you might co-opt it, transform it, or address its root causes.

From Local to Global: The Risk of Internationalizing Nigeria’s Conflict

What happened on December 25, 2025, risks something far more dangerous than a failed strike. It amounts to Nigeria, perhaps unintentionally, issuing a global invitation to jihadists and Islamic ultranationalists – a signal that the country has now been formally inserted into the theatre of spectacular, internationally-branded War on Terror showdowns. History shows what often follows such signaling. Once a local conflict is reframed on the global stage, the noise level rises and the violence becomes performative. In Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, the presence of U.S. forces drew legions of foreign fighters and gave local militants a transnational cause. Within a few years of intervention, suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and transnational terror networks became daily realities in places they had been previously unknown or limited. Local grievances mutated into sectarian and ideological crusades far harder to contain.

Nigerian Islamic scholar Sheikh Ahmad Gumi warned that inviting U.S. military involvement could “attract the real anti-US forces, making our land the theatre of war.” He described the Christmas strikes in Sokoto “as dangerously symbolic, a harbinger of a neo-Crusade war narrative.” In Gumi’s words, “terrorists don’t fight terrorists in truth; they may only kill innocent people and have ulterior motives behind the drama of fighting ‘terror’. His point is chilling: by allowing a foreign War on Terror optic to overlay Nigeria’s complex conflicts, the government may inadvertently inflame religious tensions and hand jihadist recruiters a perfect rallying cry. When a U.S. missile strike villages on Christmas Day in the heart of the old Sokoto Caliphate, militant propagandists can cynically cast it as proof of a Western crusade against Islam. This narrative could magnetize international jihadist attention on Nigeria in ways never seen before.

If Nigerian history is anything to go by, local insurgents may, as a consequence of December 25 attack, escalate their tactics in response to the new international spotlight. Boko Haram and its ISIL-aligned offshoot (ISWAP) have terrorized Nigeria’s northeast for over a decade, but their violence – though brutal – remained largely domestic. By contrast, globally-branded jihadist franchises thrive on spectacle. If Nigeria is seen as a new front of the U.S.-led counterterror crusade, one fears the conflict could evolve beyond local grievances into something far harder to contain, with militants adopting more extremist techniques and seeking foreign support. This is how local security challenges transform into globalized insurgencies: not by necessity, but by miscalculation. December 25 is clearly a misstep in strategy or messaging that can inject adrenaline into an ailing extremist movement, turning ragtag bandits into self-styled mujahideen with international backing. Violence that was once localized (however horrific) can become performative jihad – calibrated to send a message on the world stage. For Nigeria, a nation of over 230 million people split almost evenly between Christians and Muslims, the stakes of such an escalation are enormous. It could shred the country’s social fabric and undermine its sovereignty, as foreign fighters, funds, and ideologies pour fuel on what were once solvable domestic fires.

Nigerian Perspectives: Support, Skepticism, and Sovereignty

Reaction within Nigeria to the Christmas Day strikes has been mixed, reflecting a balance of relief at action against insurgents and alarm at the implications of foreign interference. President Bola Tinubu’s government defended the operation, with Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar emphasizing that Nigeria initiated the intelligence and gave formal authorization for the U.S. strikes, consistent with international law and respect for sovereignty. Officials stressed that the joint action was not influenced by religious considerations but rather a logical extension of counterterror cooperation. Indeed, some Nigerians, especially in hard-hit northern communities, welcomed the raid: The best Christmas gift, one local commentator called it, hoping it signaled a more robust effort to eliminate terrorists. Former Kaduna State Senator Shehu Sani described the strikes as a conscionable action – so long as Nigeria doesn’t become over-reliant on foreign powers. Sani, a Muslim from Nigeria’s north, pointed out that terrorist groups in Nigeria victimize Muslims and Christians alike, debunking the narrative that only Christians are targeted. His cautious approval captures a common sentiment: support any effective action against terrorists, but on our terms.

On the other side, many voices have expressed profound concern. Human rights activist and former presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore lambasted the government for allowing a violation of sovereignty, arguing that Trump neither understands nor genuinely cares about Nigeria or Nigerians. Opposition politicians, including the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), criticized Tinubu for essentially outsourcing Nigeria’s security to Washington, warning it sets a dangerous precedent.

Perhaps most striking was the reaction of local community members in Sokoto: residents reported shock as drones buzzed over rural towns on Christmas night. It shook the whole town, one resident recounted, with confusion and fear spreading as people wondered why bombs were falling from the sky. The symbolism of an American strike in Sokoto – a deeply historic Islamic region – on a Christian holy day was not lost on Nigerians. It prompted leading northern figures like Sheikh Gumi to warn that framing counterterrorism in religious terms will ultimately polarize our nation and infringe on our sovereignty. His appeal was for Nigeria to seek help from neutral nations or rely on its own forces, rather than get caught in a U.S.-led drama of fighting terror with ulterior motives. In sum, Nigerian public opinion is split: welcoming relief from relentless violence, but deeply wary of the costs of inviting a superpower’s war onto Nigerian soil.

Conclusion: Avoiding a Strategic Error

December 25, 2025 may come to be remembered with a sense of foreboding – a day Nigeria made a fateful choice that history could judge harshly. By turning to American missiles on Christmas, Nigeria might have secured a momentary tactical victory or a bold headline, but it also opened Pandora’s box. The historical triangulation is clear: military-first interventions – whether by Nigeria or by foreign partners – have a dismal record of solving insurgencies. They often empower the very forces they seek to destroy, whether by spawning new grievances, attracting foreign fighters, or sanctifying extremist ideologies. In contrast, approaches that blend force with political strategy – addressing the local drivers of conflict, offering insurgents a way back into society, protecting all communities impartially – have a far better chance of securing a durable peace.

Nigeria stands at a crossroads after the Christmas strikes. It can double down on a purely militarized path – effectively internationalizing its conflicts and likely seeing them mutate and intensify – or it can pivot to a more holistic strategy that learns from global lessons. The country’s leaders would do well to remember that this is how local security challenges become global insurgencies: through miscalculation, not necessity. The airstrike of December 25 may have been meant as a show of strength, but if history is any guide, it was a strategic misstep that could invite exactly the sort of long-term crisis Nigeria most desperately seeks to avoid. The wiser course, however belated, is to heed history’s lessons – to treat this moment not as an entree into a War on Terror but as a sobering opportunity to change tack. In the end, bombs may kill terrorists, but they cannot kill terrorism. Nigeria’s fight against extremism will be won by addressing root causes, uniting its people, and refusing to let external narratives turn its home into the next battleground of a never-ending war.