On Christmas Day, the US military launched multiple cruise missile strikes against targets in northwest Nigeria, which the White House claims killed several ISIS militants and were conducted at the request of the Nigerian government. Trump administration and Nigerian officials have publicly framed the operation as a joint counterterror mission.
News media reported that the operation included missiles launched from at least one US Navy vessel positioned in the Gulf of Guinea against targets in Sokoto State, in Nigeria’s northwest. A US military source told the New York Times that “over a dozen” Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired, striking two ISIS camps, while US Africa Command (AFRICOM) described “airstrikes” that killed “multiple ISIS terrorists.”
The US source stressed that the strikes were carried out with Tomahawk cruise missiles, ship-launched long-range precision weapons repeatedly used by US imperialism in its attacks on Iraq, Syria, Libya and other countries. Media and Pentagon accounts also refer more generally to “airstrikes,” implying the additional likely use of carrier- or land-based aircraft, though details remain classified.
US officials indicated that the strikes involved US Navy Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles launched from a surface vessel, almost certainly a Block IV/V “Tactical Tomahawk”-type weapon. These are long-range, subsonic, GPS-guided missiles designed for deep land-attack missions, capable of being retargeted in flight and delivering a 1,000-lb-class high-explosive unitary warhead with high accuracy against fixed ground targets, such as the camps hit in Sokoto State.
The Pentagon released video of at least one missile launching from a US Navy vessel after the Nigeria operation, and US defense officials told the press that the strike was conducted from a ship in the region, pointing to standard Tomahawk ship-launched profiles.
Details about the number of people killed in the strikes remain unknown at the time of this writing. AFRICOM’s initial assessment only says the operation “killed multiple ISIS militants/terrorists,” without further information.
A post by AFRICOM on X corroborated media reports, saying the targets were described as Islamic State or ISIL/ISIS militants in rural parts of Sokoto, an area where various armed groups operate amid the social crisis produced by decades of imperialist-imposed underdevelopment. President Trump boasted that the terrorists “really got hit hard,” declaring the strikes to be “numerous and deadly,” while refusing to provide basic details on targets or casualties.
Civilian casualty numbers remain contested as AFRICOM’s statement speaks only of killing “multiple ISIS terrorists,” while US broadcast reports note that the administration “did not offer additional details … like what was specifically targeted or the number of casualties.”
AFRICOM’s official communication stated that it had launched the strikes “at the request of Nigerian authorities” in Sokoto State, “killing multiple ISIS terrorists,” presenting the attack as a seamless exercise in joint counterterrorism. The command framed the mission as a success, while omitting any reference to civilian harm or the broader destabilizing impact of US militarization in the Sahel and West Africa.
The official US justification for the operation is that it is part of the “war on ISIS,” targeting militants allegedly responsible for attacks on Christians in northern Nigeria. Trump had spent weeks publicly accusing the Nigerian government of failing to protect Christians and, according to coverage by National Public Radio (NPR), portrayed the December 25 attack as a long-overdue response to an “existential threat” to Christianity in the country.
In a WABC radio interview, Trump hailed the attack, boasting that the ISIS terrorists “really got hit hard yesterday” and that they had received “a very bad Christmas present.”
On Truth Social, Trump wrote that “under my leadership, our country will not permit Radical Islamic Terrorism to thrive,” and that ISIS militants in northwest Nigeria had been “targeting and brutally murdering innocent Christians at unprecedented levels, not seen in many years, even centuries.”
Along with this declaration, Trump said that “there will be many more” dead terrorists “if their attacks on Christians persist,” effectively promising an open-ended campaign of US imperialist attacks on Nigeria and anyone else the fascist president designates.
The claim that a “Christian genocide” is unfolding in Nigeria is a hoax, no different in substance from Washington’s claims about “narco-terrorism” in Venezuela or “white genocide” in South Africa.
Data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), an independent and widely cited violence monitor, directly contradicts this narrative. ACLED records show that Islamist and other armed groups operating in northern Nigeria have attacked both churches and mosques, and have killed both Christians and Muslims. These attacks are not driven by religious hatred but by the brutal social crisis produced by decades of imperialist looting, state corruption, and militarization.
Nigeria’s population of roughly 220 million is nearly evenly divided between Christians and Muslims, with Muslims forming a majority in the north. While ACLED data indicates that attacks on churches have increased over the last six years, it also shows that mosques were attacked more frequently than churches in 2015 and 2017. The victims of armed violence in Nigeria are not a single religious group, but working people of all faiths and ethnicities.
The current hoax gained momentum in September when pro-Democrat television host Bill Maher described what was happening in northern Nigeria as a “genocide,” as a way of justifying the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. Referring to the Islamist Boko Haram group, he said “they have killed over 100,000 since 2009, they’ve burned 18,000 churches.” He added, “This is so much more of a genocide attempt than what is going on in Gaza. They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country.”
This narrative was rapidly seized by the Republican party, with Texas Senator Ted Cruz claiming on X that “over 50,000 Christians” had been massacred.
The essential purpose of this campaign is to assert the White House’s claimed right to fire cruise missiles into any country on the basis of fabricated humanitarian pretexts, and to prepare the expansion of US military operations globally. The assault on Nigeria is part of the Trump administration’s drive to reassert US imperialist dominance over Africa, a continent that holds roughly 30 percent of the world’s proven critical mineral reserves and vast untapped rare earth deposits.
Nigeria’s importance to Washington lies not primarily in immediate energy dependence, but in its geopolitical weight. With approximately 37 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, Nigeria remains Africa’s largest oil producer and a central arena in the intensifying struggle between the United States, China, and other powers for influence on the continent. US energy giants such as Chevron and ExxonMobil retain major investments, even as overall US imports of Nigerian crude have declined.
Domestically, the strikes also serve Trump’s reactionary political needs. By invoking the specter of a “Christian genocide,” Trump seeks to shore up support among his right-wing evangelical base severely eroded amid the Epstein crisis.
The Christmas Day missile strikes must be understood within the broader context of an accelerating US drive to militarily dominate Africa. Within days, Washington launched major attacks on Islamic State targets in Syria and opened a direct military front in West Africa, confirming that the so-called “war on terror” is a permanent global framework for imperialist violence.
The operation also followed Nigeria’s rapid intervention in early December, acting as a proxy for US and French imperialism, to foil an attempted coup in Benin on December 7, 2025. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have expelled French and US forces and developed closer relations with Russia, prompting Washington and Paris to rely increasingly on Nigeria to defend their strategic interests in the region.
Reports indicate that French intelligence provided real-time surveillance during the Benin operation, while Washington supplied strategic intelligence support.
This imperialist interference is deeply unpopular among workers across Nigeria and the wider region and is unfolding amid a mounting wave of class struggle. Throughout 2025, Nigeria has been shaken by strikes and mass protests involving hundreds of thousands of workers, expressing growing resistance to the IMF austerity program of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that have slashed fuel subsidies, driven up food and transport prices, and intensified mass impoverishment.
A nationwide oil workers’ strike at the end of September, involving an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 workers, threatened fuel supplies. This was followed in November by an indefinite nationwide strike by health workers, drawing in well over 200,000 healthcare workers, paralyzing public hospitals across the country. In early December, the Nigeria Labour Congress organized nationwide protests and threatened a general strike, mobilizing tens of thousands in the streets and claiming the backing of millions of unionized workers across multiple sectors.
Under these conditions of intensifying class struggle, the Nigerian national bourgeoisie is increasingly relying on its partnership with Washington to strengthen its repressive apparatus. By publicly insisting that the US missile strikes were a joint operation that fully respected Nigerian sovereignty, the government is deepening the country’s dependence on foreign military power and inviting further interventions under the pretext of counterterrorism.
From the standpoint of the international working class, the military strikes on Nigeria are a serious warning. They demonstrate that the crisis-ridden American ruling class, led by the corrupt and criminal elements within the Trump administration, is prepared to expand and multiply wars across the globe, fusing religious demagogy, lies about “human rights” and the fight against “terrorism” with the ruthless pursuit of strategic and economic interests.