On 25 December 2025, and in what the Nigerian government later confirmed was a joint operation, the United States (US) bombed terrorist encampments in the forests of the Tangaza and Tambuwal Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Sokoto State in the northwest, following weeks of reported sightings of surveillance aircraft over northern Nigeria. While some debris from the missiles fell in some communities causing panic, there were no confirmed civilian deaths.
The US airstrikes targeted the terrorist group Lakurawa, which re-emerged in late 2024 (having been defeated in 2022) and is affiliated with the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), which operates primarily in Burkina Faso, Mali and the Republic of Niger. The US Africa Command (AFRICOM) reported that ‘multiple ISIS terrorists’ were killed, while the government of Niger tracked terrorists fleeing the area, and joined Nigeria and Chad in patrolling of borders to prevent them from retreating to safe havens abroad. The US president described the airstrikes as retaliation for an ongoing Christian genocide; however, while violence in northwestern states affects both Christians and Hausa Muslim communities, in central Nigeria Christian communities, clergy and individuals are the sole targets of mass killings and forced displacement.
Prior to this military action, concerns had been raised in some quarters that the redesignation by the US of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) in November 2025 would worsen the situation for Christian communities, concerns based largely on a misunderstanding of what CPC designation is meant to entail. Moreover, these communities have been subjected to attacks since 2010 which have expanded relentlessly in scope and scale over time, and which were set to continue regardless of redesignation.
In reality, what has to an extent worsened the situation and led to misunderstanding and concern was not the redesignation itself, but the US president’s ‘guns-a-blazing’ rhetoric, which was a departure from normal protocol, and which several terrorist factions openly mocked and vowed to challenge. This rhetoric had galvanised terrorist attacks on Christian communities in Benue, Plateau and Kaduna States in particular, prior to the aerial bombardment, and all indications are that terrorist factions were preparing to launch unprecedented violence over the festive season in multiple states.
While the temporary disarray caused by the airstrikes may account for a lower than anticipated number of attacks over the festive season, a rash of violent attacks that may have been scheduled for that time as defiance to the president’s statement are being rolled out in late December 2025 and into the new year. However, there is also speculation that these attacks are occurring with such intensity and in diverse places to draw attention away from Sokoto State, because the key terrorist base is located there.