That U.S. Christmas airstrikes in the North

By Abudul Hassan

On December 25, 2025, the United States military under President Donald Trump, executed ‘’powerful and deadly’’ strikes against ISIS-linked terrorists camps in Sokoto state, near the Niger border with Nigerian authorities coordination.

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) confirmed the operation aimed to disrupt violent extremist organizations. The 16 missiles US and Nigerian officials said were fired on Christmas night came from a Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea. Military experts at the US Naval Institute said that if four missiles did not explode, as evidence suggests, that would place the failure rate at 25 percent – a surprisingly elevated figure for a missile that reported a 90 percent success rate more than two decades ago.

In the immediate aftermath of the strike, images began circulating on the social media claiming to show unexploded American weaponry. Hany Farid, a digital forensic professor at the University of California at Berkeley, reviewed photos of the four unexploded Tomahawk warheads at the request of the Washington Post newspaper, and said he did not see ‘’any evidence of manipulation or AI-generation.’’

The locations of photos showing damaged residential buildings and the warhead in Offa, Kwara State, were confirmed by the newspaper, while the presence of another unexploded warhead in the onion field in Jabo was corroborated by a villager.

Adetoun Ejire- Adeyemi, the spokeswoman for the Kwara state police, told the Post that a third warhead had been recovered on December 26, 2025 from a field in Oro, about 13 miles from Offa. The final unexploded munition was discovered shortly by locals in the remote community of Zugurma, between Offa and Jabo, according to Wasiu Abiodun, a spokesman for the Niger state police.

The remnants appear to be warheads from ‘’Tomahawk missiles, according to X posts from Trevor Ball, a former explosive ordinance disposal technician for the U.S. Army. Ball’s findings were independently confirmed to the Post by researchers from the Armament Research Services (ARES), a munitions research and analysis consultancy, and by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), a US – based monitoring group.

The unexploded warhead that reportedly caused the most damage landed in the courtyard of the Solid Worth Hotel in Offa. The Washington Post found, around three – tenths of a mile from another site where apparent ammunitions debris were strewn amid the ruins of residential buildings. Mr. N.R. Jenzen – Jones, Director of ARES and arms historian, told the Post that the damage to the buildings was ‘’consistent with the impact of a munition which failed to detonate.’’

The debris field suggested that the missiles came apart, the technical intelligence specialist added, with the denser warhead probably passing through the residential buildings and landing in the hotel, while liter components were scattered around the area of impact. But the Post could not confirm why the missile could not detonate.

Several factors could have played a role, including mechanical failures or other issues known only to those involved in the attack, experts said. They noted that Tomahawks are preprogrammed with a target location and use sophisticated guidance systems to get there, including data of the terrain they will travel through and the Global Positioning System (GPS) for course correction. The missile also does not arm until later in its flight.

The US – owned, space – based radio – navigation system provide 24, /7, all weather, worldwide positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services. Operated by the space force, the GPS uses a constellation of at least 24 satellites to determine precise user location, speed, and altitude via triangulation, serving both military and civilian applications for free.

‘’The US labelling the strikes as targeting ISIS shows either a lack of understanding of regional dynamics or a deliberate attempt to fit its Christian genocide narrative for the American public,’’ independent Nigerian governance researcher, Malik Samuel said on the social media.

For many years, most terrorist attacks in Nigeria have occurred in the country’s Northeastern Region, where the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram has long operated, rather than in northwestern regions, such as Sokoto.

Ray Cummings, Director of Africa – focused risk management consultancy, Signal Risk, said the US missile attacks might produce some short-term successes but would make it easier for Islamist groups to recruit and radicalize Nigerians in the longer term. The strikes could ‘’further deepen the fault lines between Christians and Muslims in the country, and Nigerians who are opposed to the US intervention.

In the shadow of September 11, 2001, when 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four US commercial airplanes, killing nearly 3,000 people in coordinated suicide attacks, the United States rushed troops and military aid to a swath of West Africa to help French forces stop the spread of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. More than a decade later, and with hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance spent, that regional counter terrorist effort has largely failed.

Today, groups that have pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are on the march, and reportedly occupying more than 500,000 square kilometers in the Sahel region, and are mining minerals said to worth more than 550 million US dollars. The growing terrorist threat is now pushing the African Union to activate its own anti-terrorist mechanism.

Come to think of it, Nigeria has all the necessary tools to ensure its own security from the threat of terrorism.

Abdulkaeim Hassan writes from Sokoto