[IRF] Why Did the Pentagon Strike the Sokoto State, Symbolic Seat of an Ancient and Largest Islamic Kingdom in Africa and Why on Christmas Day?
Muziru
Osman Softić || 5 January 2026
The US president Donald Trump specifically chose Christmas Day to launch cruise missiles on alleged “ISIS terrorist targets” in Northwest Nigeria. It appears that the central government of Nigeria agreed and even coordinated with the US in this operation but did not play a major role. Choosing Christmas to launch missiles on Sokoto state, the region named after the ancient Muslim Caliphate in West Africa, was both symbolic and politically calculated to attract global attention. It was presented as a firm response to an alleged “genocide of Christians” in Nigeria to appeal to Trump’s domestic evangelical Christian constituency at home which has long demanded the US government take action to punish those responsible for the “slaughter of Christians in Nigeria”.
Although the US ground invasion is unlikely at this stage (excluding special forces or intelligence personnel to help coordinate the campaign in Northern Nigeria), analysts predict more similar attacks to follow. This first US strikes on Nigerian soil in history reflects the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) concerning Africa which outlined that: “we must remain wary of resurgent Islamist terrorist activity in parts of Africa while avoiding any long-term American presence or commitment”.
The US military, in its initial assessment, announced that “multiple” ISIS members had been killed in precision strikes on extremist “camps”. In his interview with Politico, Trump claimed the camps “got decimated”. However, local residents were dismayed that projectiles had allegedly landed in empty fields. In addition, the targeted region had been almost free from any terrorist violence for years. The Nigerian government confirmed that missiles had been fired from US ships in the Gulf of Guinea and that its target had been “terrorist enclaves located in forested areas” in the Sokoto state.
The Muslim enclave
The strikes conducted after an “explicit approval” of Nigeria’s president Bola Tinubu had neutralized ISIS elements seeking to penetrate Nigeria from neighboring countries in the Sahel region. Why has the US chosen to launch cruise missiles on a predominantly Muslim-populated Sokoto province in the northwest close to the border with the uranium-rich Niger? Some Nigerian analysts questioned the official version of events, saying the choice of Sokoto state as a target was strange given that its residents were almost entirely Muslim. Other states, such as Niger in the north-west and Borno in the north-east, where Boko Haram has historically been active, had been the victims of much more violence but were not targeted.
One security analyst was surprised with the choice of Sokoto, which he described as “highly questionable” given “Sokoto was a victim of banditry rather than of terrorists targeting Christians who were almost non-existent in the state”. Sokoto was not one of “terrorist hotspots”. Rather, it is a “predominantly Muslim enclave”. Furthermore, American missiles targeted the major historical seat of the Sokoto Caliphate (spiritual center of Islam in Nigeria).
Omar Ardo, an opposition politician, commented that “the targeting of Sokoto state with no known established ISIS presence, raises serious questions as to whether Nigerian military authorities exercised any control over the operation or they were mere bystanders.” He called on president Tinubu to provide the nation a “full and detailed explanation of the legal basis, authorization process and strategic rationale for the reported US air strikes in Sokoto”.
The lure of rare-earth minerals and oil
In exchange for helping Nigeria defeat the terrorist threats, which Nigerian security and armed forces have been either reluctant or incapable of neutralizing for various reasons, the transactional Trump 2 might demand special privilege and preferential role, such as getting access to Nigerian lucrative mining of rare earths and minerals, uranium, and a major stake in extraction of Nigeria’s oil and related industries for US corporations, in order to undermine China’s energy access to Nigerian oil resources.
In November, 2025 Donald Trump designated Nigeria as a “country of special concern” (CSC), a designation used to discipline countries in order to change their behavior to align their policies closer to US foreign policy goals. Trump instructed the Department of War (formerly Department of Defense) to prepare for the possibility of rapid military intervention in Nigeria. Analysts rightly predicted that Trump’s first military intervention would occur in Africa (against Nigeria) although the US focus has been largely on Venezuela.
They were right. Why did Trump threaten Nigeria and what did that country do to warrant the US president to send such a threatening message to this “African giant”, the most populous country in Africa, at this particular point in time.
Besides Zionists, the Trump administration is filled with Christian evangelicals. Some of them argue that Washington should no longer intervene militarily overseas to engineer regime changes under the banner of spreading liberalism as both sides of American politics had done for decades. However, they do not share the same position when it comes to intervention to “protect the Christian population” and their religious freedom.
Thus, the ideological motives and justifications used by liberal internationalists and neoconservatives in the past have changed but the pattern for intervention has remained the same. Dorothy Shea, the deputy permanent representative of the United States to the UN said in her statement to the Security Council recently that her country will no longer engage in state-building or regime-change operations.
Venezuela: Oil or Democracy?
However, this does not always apply. For example, the American attitude towards Venezuela, whose file Trump has delegated to his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, seems to be a continuation of American Cold War interventionist policies against alleged “communist or leftist threats”, but the apparent reason for intervention is regime change and imposition of “democracy” to suit Washington’s interests.
Theoretical basis used by advocates for US intervention is a revival of the 19th century Monroe Doctrine instituted in 1823, dubbed by some as (Donroe Doctrine) announcing American regional hegemony in the western hemisphere. The war on drugs, a characteristic of the former Reagan administration used frequently in the 1980s, is also used as justification to intervene against Venezuela.
The US State Department has threatened to suspend all aid to Nigeria if the Nigerian government does not “stop the killing of Christians”. “I am ordering our Department of War to prepare for possible action”, Trump declared in November 2025. “If we decide to attack, it will be fast, merciless and fierce, just as terrorist thugs are attacking our Christian brothers”. Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs earlier rejected Trump’s accusations, saying that Nigeria, like the United States, prides itself with tolerance, pluralism and religious diversity as major strengths of this large West African country of over 230 million people.
Nigeria has the largest proven oil reserves in Africa. The Nigerian government also claimed to respect the values of inclusion and commitment to “rules-based international order”. Nigerian president Bola Ahmed Tinubu categorically rejected Trump’s characterization of his nation. “Religious freedom and tolerance are fundamental principles of our collective identity and always will be,” the Nigerian leader said, adding that his government opposes any form of religious persecution and has never condoned or encouraged it.
A multi-religious country
Nigeria is a federal republic made up of 36 states. Its population consists of Christians and Muslims, and a smaller percentage of traditional animistic beliefs. The majority of Muslims are Sunnis and are of the two major ethnic groups (Hausa and Fulani). There are also several million minority Shiites, including an immigrant community originally from Lebanon. It is estimated that Muslims make up 53 percent while Christians make up 46 percent, most of whom are ethnically Yoruba and Zigbo and belong to different Protestant churches and a smaller number (about 10 percent) are Catholics.
The influence of evangelical Christians, especially Pentecostals, has recently become enormously noticeable and is rapidly spreading across the African continent, mostly under the influence of the proselytism of American evangelicals, who as of recently enjoyed the support of segments of the American state, which according to the constitution should be secular. Evangelical Christianity is a specific religious phenomenon in Africa whose theology is based on the glorification of wealth, money, fame and power, as “signs of God’s blessing”, Its message for the Nigerian poor (over 80 million of whom live below the poverty line), is that they should pray more so that they too can become rich and famous, and thus more powerful.
The cult of money, prestige and power has become an epidemiological problem in Nigeria ravaged by corruption, nepotism, lawlessness and extremism.
Muslims are predominantly concentrated in the north of Nigeria in less developed regions while Christians are majority in the southern and more affluent and economically developed provinces. Christians have had a higher level of education due to missionary influence during British colonialism in southern and coastal regions. Nigeria’s oil fields are also predominantly concentrated in the southeast, around the Niger River Delta. These factors further complicate the socio-economically complex situation in this large African country and contribute to the deterioration of interreligious, interethnic and class relations.
Boko Haram and ISIS
Relatively harmonious relations between Muslims and Christians are further complicated by other factors. One of them is armed extremist groups that claim to be Islamic. The most active and well known is Boko Haram (contempt for western education and westernization), and more recently, the branch of ISIS in Africa, the so-called Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP).
The problem of attacks on Christians, although it should not be ignored as it is not invented but real, is oversimplified and portrayed as a “fanatical war of Muslims against Christians”. Christians are therefore presented as sole victims while ignoring the fact that most victims of terrorist attacks are Muslims themselves, who refuse to accept the extremist ideology and domination imposed by the terrorists. Most terrorist attacks are recorded in the northeast of Nigeria, where Muslims are in the majority.
A seasoned American expert on armed extremist movements in the Arab world with years of experience in the Pentagon, the US Army and academic community, confirmed to me in our correspondence that in the north of Nigeria “jihadists” are attacking both Muslims as well as Christians. “Nobody really needs to manipulate Boko Haram because they do it themselves. They exploit the local population. Fulani herders (Muslims) have often clashed with farmers (Christians) but it is not a religious factor that fuels the conflict as it is an economic one as a major driving force. Also, criminal groups from among Christians in the southeast (the Igbo territories) are attacking Christians. Nigerian oil is in the southeast and I see no advantage for oil companies to destabilize the country.
Senior officials in the Nigerian army told me a few years ago that they were frustrated by the fact that the French control the armed forces of neighboring countries in the region. Therefore, they need approval from Paris before taking any serious measures against extremists. This often leads to paralysis of joint operations against “jihadists”. I assume that the former Russian Wagner Group is also contributing to the confusion, creating space for itself to operate,” this seasoned and well-informed American expert told us.
The Christian Evangelicals
The Trump administration’s policy toward Nigeria has been heavily influenced by American evangelicals and right-wing Republican politicians such as Rafael Edward Cruz (Ted Cruz), the Cuban-American senator from Texas. The influence of private ultraconservative think tanks on the administration such as the Hudson Institute should also not be underestimated. The institute’s director of religious freedom, Nina Shea, who ran a similar program at Freedom House, which she co-founded, recently appealed to President Trump regarding Nigeria. Trump responded immediately.
She argued that there have been recent “violent attacks on rural Christians in the country’s religiously mixed middle belt. “The government in Abuja is barely responding to it, let alone protecting them.” Shea accused the Nigerian government of “directly violating religious freedom by enforcing Islamic blasphemy laws,” which impose death penalty or harsh prison sentences on citizens of different religions. The government is also “tolerating aggression against Christian farming families by militant Muslim herders – ethnic Fulani.” Shea accused this group in Nigeria of “planning to violently Islamize” Nigeria’s less homogeneous central agricultural belt.
Chris Smith, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, introduced a new legislation that commends President Donald Trump’s recent designation of Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) outlining a course of action that the U.S. State Department should take in response to the Nigerian government’s complicity in the religious persecution of Christians.
He led numerous delegations on human rights trips to Nigeria. “President Trump’s designation of Nigeria as a ‘CPC’ is a critical first step toward achieving lasting peace, stability, and religious freedom in Nigeria,” added this internationally acclaimed human rights lawmaker. “It is high time that the United States began holding the Nigerian government accountable for its inability or unwillingness to fully confront and combat the rampant and widespread religious persecution occurring within its borders,” Smith concluded.
The hypocrisy
American administrations had never shown similar concern for the fate of Christians in Palestine who, along with Muslims are still victims of genocide, persecution, and Israeli repression. The US administrations had not shown adequate concern for the violation of the religious rights of Muslims nor Christians in India either, especially in Kashmir where the Hindu majority government in Delhi (despite the protection provided by the Indian constitution) subjected them to persecution and discrimination.
Nicholas Grossman, political science professor at the University of Illinois described it quite succinctly when he recently wrote that “Trump’s professed concern for persecuted Christians looks absurd in the context of his administration’s policies. For example, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently announced the end of Temporary Protected Status for nearly 4,000 people from Myanmar, many of them persecuted Christians. Starting in January 2026, the U.S. government will deport them back to a country run by a military junta that has been bombing churches and treats Christians as one of its domestic enemies. Meanwhile, at Trump’s direction, ICE and the Border Patrol have harassed, imprisoned and deported numerous Latino Christians in the U.S., often without due process.
In other words, when American geopolitical and domestic political interests dictate, concerns for protection of Christians become the backbone of American policy. Otherwise, the issue is completely ignored (the cases of India and Palestine are not the only ones). This indicates a serious hypocrisy and double standards when it comes to upholding the principle of freedom of religious practice.
The complexity of the Nigerian conflict between nomadic pastoralists (ethnic Fulanis) Muslims and other rural groups, especially farmers, many of whom are Christians who claim ownership of land, is viewed in America in a simplified fashion through a binary lens of the bitter conflict between Muslims and Christians. The socio-economic aspects of the dispute over the ownership and control of rural land are presented as a coordinated action by “extreme Muslims” to eliminate Christians, seize land, and forcefully Islamize them.
More radical Christian agitators calling for the punishment of Nigeria condemn previous US administrations for their alleged Marxian interpretation of the situation in Nigeria. According to them, conflicts between the two socio-economic groups are caused by climate change, which makes the struggle for control of scarce resources, especially fertile land, water, and pasture, more certain, predictable and extreme.
Some of these lobbyists who are pressuring the Trump administration to intervene in Nigeria want to radicalize American responses and, instead of imposing sanctions, they want to force a quick and harsh military intervention against Nigeria. Other interests are also hidden behind the advocacy favoring military intervention. Concerns for the Christian population, although not invented, are often exploited as the most common excuse, given that earlier justifications based on the principles of liberal hegemony, protection of human rights and democracy were discredited and rejected by the ultra-conservative Trump administration.
The story of Islam in Nigeria
Islam began to spread in Nigeria as early as the 11th century. Muslim scholars (ulama), merchants, and mystics made the greatest contribution to the spread of Islam. This process lasted until the famous Fulani Jihad of 1804, a pre-colonial war (military rebellion) against the ruling aristocratic class led by Usman Don Fodio, an Islamic reformer (mujaddid). The British used the administrative structures of Islam to implement a policy of indirect rule after recognizing Islam as the state religion wherever Muslims were in the majority. Usman Don Fodio established the Sokoto Caliphate, the largest Muslim state in Africa at the time. Don Fodio was an Islamic reformer who operated in what is now northern Nigeria.
He criticized the corrupt and alleged un-Islamic practices of the Hausa elites for their perceived deviation from Islamic principles. In 1804, he declared jihad against the Hausa kingdom. It was a serious social and political revolution. He mobilized the nomadic population (Fulani) who were marginalized by the ruling Hausa but he also gained support and mobilized other groups who were dissatisfied with the existing political order.
After a successful revolution, Don Fodio devoted himself to consolidating a new state based on Islamic principles. The Kingdom of Sokoto stretched from present-day Burkina Faso in the west to Cameroon in the east. Sokoto was also one of the most powerful states with a large army and a successful economy.
After Nigeria had gained independence in 1960, a new impetus was given to the spread of Islam by Ahmadu Bello, the leading ideologue of independent Nigeria and Prime Minister of the Northern Region. The process of democratization in Nigeria was slowed by a military coup and his assassination in 1966 by the military in a coup led by a Christian officer of the Nigerian armed forces. From that moment on, the military began to play an increasingly important role in Nigerian politics.
The military dictatorship of Sani Abacha (1993-98) marked a more aggressive struggle for control of Nigeria’s oil and in turn produced enormous corruption. The New York Times estimated that since independence, Nigerian politicians and the military have illegally transferred up to $400 billion US dollars belonging to the country’s citizens to foreign banks in the West through corrupt methods.
The US’ thirst for oil
However, there is a widespread belief that some forces in the West, including the Trump administration, may be motivated to establish a foothold if not outright control over the oil and other resources of this largest southern African power and over its market. The simplified excuse of protecting Christians who are allegedly being victimized by Muslims, which resonates well within Trump’s Christian evangelical base, may well be exploited as a convenient justification for the return of US military power to West Africa via Nigeria.
The Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) carried out a large number of attacks on military bases and infrastructure across northeastern Nigeria in recent years. The terrorist group has refined its operations beyond military conduct to include ransom and tax collection. It has transformed parts of northeastern Nigeria into a new kind of conflict-based economy, combining taxation, extortion, smuggling, and ideological indoctrination. It goes without saying that Nigeria is one of the fastest-growing cryptocurrency markets in the world.
ISWAP and other terrorist groups, including Boko Haram, exploit these instruments to finance their operations. Much of the money goes to central treasury where it is redistributed for operational and administrative needs such as purchasing weapons, paying monthly salaries to fighters and bonuses during military campaigns, providing aid to widows of fighters and scholarships to the orphans of fallen fighters, financing health clinics, and providing community-based social services. These services often represent the only form of social assistance to the population in areas where government assistance is not available.
On the other hand, some Nigerian analysts believe that nefarious and powerful foreign interests have been sponsoring violence to consolidate external control over Nigeria’s vast oil wealth. In addition to crude oil Nigeria has the largest reserves of natural gas of all the sub-Saharan countries. Attempts to balkanize the country into a northern and southern entity have already weakened the central government in Abuja which admits that it does not have the capacity to successfully resist extremists in the north on its own.
Under the pretense of fighting ISIS terrorism and avenging killings of Nigerian Christians, the US real objective may well be an aggressive attempt to wrestle the West African giant away from China and the BRICS by subtly threatening its fragmentation, while placating Trump’s evangelical Christian constituency.
After the French had suffered defeat in West African Francophone region and a newly emerging “Sahel alliance” or “confederation” of sort has been taking shape under the influence of Russia, it is reasonable to assume that the US want to prop up Nigeria as a natural regional leader and the US major regional enforcer, under the guise of regional leadership, while Washington continues to lead from behind.
The Multipolar World
According to some well-informed Africa analysts, the US is not comfortable with the Russian-supported Sahelian anti-western Alliance of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, as they appear to have a plan for seriously tackling terrorist threats in the region, but evermore so because they offer a different pathway for regional integration under the model of multipolarity rather than western status quo ante.
In other words, Trump’s missile attack on Nigeria could well be the warning to Nigerian authorities that unless Nigeria reasserts its role and promotes western influence over the Sahel, on the behest of Washington, it could face chaos, turmoil and even disintegration, along the line of Sudan.
Some analysts even predict that the US may ask Abuja to invade Niger to destabilize the West African anti-western troika that have emerged over the recent years. Striking so closely to the border with Niger could be an exercise in softening the border between Nigeria and Niger, for any future Nigerian invasion should Nigeria agree to take the mantle of a more aggressive and obedient US client and regional enforcer.
Osman Softić is a Research Fellow at the Islamic Renaissance Front. He holds a BA degree in Islamic Studies from the Faculty of Islamic Studies of the University of Sarajevo and has a Master degree in International Relations from the University of New South Wales (UNSW). He contributed commentaries on Middle Eastern and Islamic Affairs for the web portal Al Jazeera Balkans, Online Opinion, Engage and Open Democracy. Osman holds dual Bosnian and Australian citizenship.