The Nigeria government says President Bola Tinubu gave the go-ahead for the US strikes against terrorists in the country’s North-Western region.
Foreign Affairs Minister, Yusuf Tuggar, said this on Friday, hours after the US Department of War and President Donald Trump announced the North American nation had conducted strikes against the terrorists.
“Now that the US is cooperating, we would do it jointly, and we would ensure, just as the President emphasised yesterday before he gave the go-ahead, that it must be made clear that it is a joint operation, and it is not targeting any religion nor simply in the name of one religion or the other,” the minister said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.
“We are a multi-religious country, and we are working with partners like the US to fight terrorism and safeguard the lives and properties of Nigerians,” the minister said.
Some have viewed the strikes as a violation of the country’s territorial integrity, but Tuggar says the Federal Government would not take any actions that would violate the country’s sovereignty.
“It is a collaboration, it is what we have been calling for,” Tuggar said on the breakfast show.
On Thursday, the Department of Defense said “multiple ISIS terrorists” were killed in the strikes conducted at the behest of the Nigerian government.
Although the details of the attack were not stated, the US Department of War later published a short video clip showing an airstrike in Nigeria.
“The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing. Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“May God bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”
The US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, and the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) said Thursday’s strikes in Sokoto were in “coordination with Nigerian authorities.”
“The @DeptofWar is always ready, so ISIS found out tonight — on Christmas. More to come… Grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation,” Hegseth wrote on X.
Thursday’s strikes come several weeks after the Republican president said Christians in Nigeria faced an “existential threat” that amounted to “genocide”.
Trump placed Nigeria back on the list of “Countries of Particular Concern,” threatened military action in the West African nation if the issue is not addressed. He later imposed visa restrictions on Nigerians.
But the Nigerian authorities rejected the framing of the violence in the country as religious, saying people of diverse faiths are targeted in killings in the nation.