How Nigeria flipped the script on Trump
2 Feb 2026 12:56 PM
EXPERT COMMENT
The Nigerian government has skilfully managed to maintain good relations with Washington despite Trump’s threats and US air strikes on northern Nigeria.
On Christmas Day 2025, President Donald Trump triumphantly announced that he had followed through on an earlier threat to bomb Nigeria, a country where he says Islamists have committed ‘mass slaughter’ of Christians.
Nigeria has been suffering from a long-standing security crisis in its northern regions, where armed groups including the Islamic State in the Sahel, a regional terrorist group, are operating. However, the Nigerian government has disputed Trump’s claim that Christians have been specifically persecuted and said that ‘terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology - Muslims, Christians and those of no faith alike’. Trump has indeed presented an overly simplistic view of Nigeria’s complex security situation, ignoring how insecurity is fuelled by other factors including resource disputes, misgovernance, policing failures and interethnic tensions.
The US attack was also more symbolic than strategic. Using intelligence provided by Nigeria, the US fired cruise missiles at multiple sites in northern Nigeria. But expert analysis informed by field research casts doubt on Washington’s claim to have targeted and hit ‘ISIS terrorist scum’.
Instead, the strike appears to have targeted the Lakurawa group – a small band of Islamist militants primarily focused on intimidating and shaking down locals in remote parts of northwestern Nigeria. US officials have not provided details on how many Lakurawa militants were killed or whether the missiles even hit their intended target.
Usually fiercely protective of their national sovereignty, Nigerian leaders showed great agency and strategic savvy in shaping Trump’s actions. By leaning into his unwelcome focus on Nigeria and helping to select his targets, they influenced the scope, scale and domestic consequences of his unprecedented actions. Moreover, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu – a Muslim – deftly used them to secure more military aid, intelligence support and political capital in Washington, instead of allowing himself to be cast as a villain in Christian nationalist narratives about Nigeria.
Click here to continue reading the full version of this Expert Comment on the Chatham House website.