Some Christmas presents come tucked under trees, others, according to President Trump, come in the form of “deadly airstrikes”. It was the latter that Nigerians received this Christmas, when between 12.12 and 01.30 on Friday, 26 December 2025, the US government, allegedly acting in close coordination with the federal government of Nigeria, carried out precision airstrikes on two Islamic State-linked enclaves in the Bauni Forest axis of Tangaza local government area, Sokoto state. Despite having no history of attacks by Islamic State insurgents, military intelligence in the country had identified certain sites prior to the strikes. These were considered staging grounds for foreign Isis operatives infiltrating from the Sahel region and working with local affiliates to plan large-scale attacks within Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation.
The strikes came after Trump designated Nigeria a “country of particular concern” in late October 2025 – a term used by the US State Department that allows for sanctions against countries “engaged in severe violations of religious freedom”. Announcing the operation on Truth Social, Trump described the targets as Isis “scum fighters” who were “viciously killing, primarily innocent Christians”, framing the intervention as a defence of Christianity.
Nigerian officials have repeatedly rejected this framing, emphasising that the insurgency – which has affected Muslim-majority states such as Zamfara and Borno – overwhelmingly targeted Muslims, and warning against reducing a complex security crisis to a sectarian narrative.
Trump’s incendiary claims – and the strikes themselves – represent a departure in how Nigeria’s complex security crisis is understood and addressed. Two competing narratives now dominate: one focuses on Islamist insurgency and deadly banditry in the northeast, northwest, and increasingly central regions of the country; the other emphasises Christian persecution and genocide. The first portrays insurgents and bandits as attacking Nigerians indiscriminately, while the second singles out a group for alleged genocidal intent.
Some commentators have argued that Trump’s remarks and his Christmas Day strikes were a PR stunt aimed at appealing to his Christian evangelical base at home. Yet for some Nigerian Christians, his framing – and the intervention – could not have come soon enough.
Christians have clung to Trump’s incendiary claims. Many Nigerians have lost faith in their government’s ability to resolve the complex security challenges that have made life untenable across so many states. Over two million people have been internally displaced in Nigeria and tens of thousands have been killed since the Islamist insurgency began decades ago. Reverend Sosthenes Eze told me the airstrikes were “very welcome” and said he was “absolutely certain” Nigeria is experiencing a Christian genocide. He went further, claiming that “God has used Trump to set America back on the right track”, likening the president to Cyrus in the Book of Isaiah – a pagan ruler chosen by God to liberate his people. For Eze, Trump embodies the kind of leader Nigerian Christians have “been crying out for”, one who might finally bring “liberation” after years of violence and abandonment.
While many Nigerians welcomed the airstrikes as a potential blow to the insurgents, reactions were far from uniform. After all, this is a country of more than 230 million people. Muslims living in the regions most affected by insurgent violence worry that Trump’s rhetoric recasts their suffering as collateral in a global religious war, fuelling resentment towards the US. Islamic cleric Ahmad Abubakar Gumi criticised the Nigerian government, saying: “Nigeria should halt all military cooperation with the USA immediately because of its imperial tendencies worldwide and seek the help of neutral countries.”
Although the differences between the bishop’s and the cleric’s statements might appear to reflect the inflammatory rhetoric emanating from the Oval Office, attributing the success of Trump’s genocide narrative solely to foreign actors overlooks how deeply it is rooted in Nigeria’s history of religious conflict. Many Nigerians recall events such as the Jimeta Riots in the late 1980s and the Miss World Riots of 2002, both of which claimed hundreds of lives.
The Jimeta Riots in Yola were part of a series of violent uprisings by the Maitatsine movement between 1980 and 1985. The sect was led by Muhammadu Marwa, a Cameroonian preacher who opposed the Nigerian state and condemned Western culture and education.
The Miss World Riots occurred in Kaduna from 20–23 November 2002. Nigeria had been chosen to host Miss World 2002 because the previous winner, Agbani Darego, was Nigerian. The pageant was already controversial, having been initially scheduled during Ramadan. Then, on 16 November, journalist Isioma Daniel wrote in ThisDay newspaper that Prophet Muhammad would probably have approved of Miss World and might have chosen a wife from among the contestants. Some Muslims were outraged. Over three days, Muslim and Christian groups clashed violently in Kaduna, resulting in around 250 deaths.
Such incidents have left deep scars on both Christian and Muslim communities, entrenching divisions that predate Trump’s strike. The battle lines were drawn long before his intervention.
The Nigerian government’s response, in rejecting Trump’s framing as divisive, overlooks this history. The intensified divisions the government warns of are already present, exacerbated by the state’s inability to eliminate insurgent and bandit violence nationwide. As Nigerians continue to fear for their safety and lose hope that attacks will cease, sectarian narratives are likely to gain traction. When citizens do not trust the state to protect them, and see the government as having failed in its primary duty to safeguard lives and property, they retreat further into their tribal, religious, and ethnic enclaves.
Cheta Nwanze, an analyst at SBM Intelligence, a Nigerian geopolitical intelligence firm, argues that, because the Nigerian government has failed to deliver equal justice, people have retreated into silos – ethnic, religious, or whichever framework offers a perceived sense of fairness. He describes the current moment as “the end result of state failure”.
Nwanze also highlights the underexamined role of class, noting that poorer Nigerians are more likely to seek redress outside the courts. Many turn instead to “the ordinary president”, Ahmed Isah – a human rights activist and media personality best known for his radio and television programme Brekete Family. Brekete Family is a non-profit reality programme focused on human rights, airing on Human Rights Radio 101.1 in Abuja. Founded by Isah in 2009, it is often described as a “voice for the voiceless”. The programme has become hugely popular across Nigeria, with an estimated global daily audience of 20 million as of 2014. Conducted in Pidgin English, it addresses real-life human rights cases and helps ordinary Nigerians pursue justice and redress for various grievances.
Acting as a populist arbiter, Isah provides a platform for the marginalised to seek justice where the state has failed – after all, in Nigeria, the average court case can take upwards of four years.
Some observers see the polarisation of Nigerian society as a distraction from more pressing issues. Control Risks senior analyst Joachim MacEbong argues that framing Nigeria’s security crisis as a Christian-versus-Muslim conflict obscures a more fundamental problem. “My assessment is that what is going on is worse than Christian persecution”, he said. “The Nigerian state as it stands today is not really able to secure anybody but the elite.” He added that “the state’s inability to enforce law and order within its borders” was illustrated in November 2025, when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared a state of emergency over the security crisis.
One of the mandated steps involved redeploying police officers assigned to VIP duties for politicians and businessmen to areas affected by insecurity. The Inspector General of Police reported that 11,000 officers had been removed from VIP protection duties. This is striking when set against the current police strength – approximately 371,800 officers. Roughly 3 per cent of the entire force had been guarding fewer than 5,000 VIPs in a country of over 200 million people.
MacEbong describes this as “a stunning problem in the allocation of resources, which shows you where the priorities of the state lie”. In his view, “the priority of the state is to secure the elite first and foremost”.
Viewed from this perspective, Nigeria faces far more pressing problems than Trump’s inflammatory tweets. The country grapples with a protracted security crisis and a crisis of state legitimacy – two challenges that feed into each other. As the Nigerian government deepens its security collaboration with the United States, with US Africa Command (Africom) delivering military supplies to Abuja and Trump warning of further strikes, questions about the erosion of national sovereignty arise. But how can a state that has lost legitimacy in the eyes of many of its citizens retain its sovereignty?
The solution, MacEbong suggests, is for the Nigerian government to demonstrate what he calls a “sincerity of purpose” in ensuring the safety of its people. Without civilian security, state legitimacy and sovereignty are unworkable. Whether that security will be achieved through US collaboration remains uncertain. As Nwanze asks: “Can you name one country since the Marshall Plan where America intervened militarily and conditions improved?”
[Further reading: Why a military strike on Iran could spark a civil war]
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