EFF STATEMENT ON U.S. AIRSTRIKES IN NIGERIA
Friday, 26 December 2025.
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) condemns the United States of America’s airstrikes carried out on Nigerian soil on 25 December 2025, which were publicly announced and celebrated by President Donald Trump as “powerful and deadly” attacks against what he termed “ISIL Islamic State” targets in northwest Nigeria. These airstrikes, conducted under the guise of counter-terrorism, represent a dangerous escalation of American military imperialism on the African continent and a reckless disregard for African sovereignty.
What occurred is clear: the United States launched airstrikes in the northwest of Nigeria, particularly in Sokoto State, claiming to target militants linked to the Islamic State. Trump framed the attack using highly inflammatory and religiously charged language, alleging that Christians were being “viciously killed” and positioning the United States as a self-appointed saviour.
This narrative did not emerge in a vacuum. For weeks leading up to these strikes, Western political figures and media outlets have deliberately overhyped and distorted reports of violence in northern Nigeria, reducing a complex crisis rooted in poverty, state failure, land dispossession, and decades of instability into a simplistic and dangerous story of “Christian killings by Muslims.”
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This framing is dishonest and it is deeply reckless. Violence in northern Nigeria has affected Christians, Muslims, and traditional communities alike, and has been driven by banditry, criminal networks, insurgent factions, and socio-economic collapse. By selectively amplifying a religious narrative, the United States manufactured moral justification for military intervention, turning Nigerian suffering into propaganda for imperial violence. This mirrors a familiar pattern: the deliberate isolation and branding of enemies as Muslim terrorists in order to strip entire regions of context, dehumanise local populations, and legitimise foreign bombs.
The invocation of “ISIL Islamic State” is particularly cynical, even the Western news reports and are rarely referring to Nigeria and deliberately so. The United States has repeatedly used this label across the Middle East and Africa to justify its own terrorism leaving behind destroyed states, mass civilian casualties, and permanent instability. Now, that same script is being deployed in West Africa. Once a territory is branded “ISIL-linked,” it becomes open season for American missiles, drones, and airstrikes, with no meaningful accountability and no regard for long-term consequences.
Equally alarming is the response of the Nigerian state. Instead of asserting sovereignty and challenging this dangerous precedent, Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a submissive press release praising “security cooperation” with the United States and describing the airstrikes as lawful and precise. This response does not reflect a confident or independent state but reflects a form of capitulation. It endorses the narrative imposed by the United States and signals to the world that African governments can be pressured, persuaded, or politically cornered into legitimising foreign military action on their own soil.
The EFF takes this opportunity to caution the government of Nigeria, which has either through desperation or ignorance allowed the United States to conduct military
