The Nigeria Police Force (NPF) has confirmed it has intelligence on the recent United States airstrikes against terrorist targets in Sokoto State but has declined to disclose any details to the public.
The Force Public Relations Officer, CSP Benjamin Hundeyin, made this known during an interview on a flagship political and current affairs programme hosted by Seun Okinbaloye.
“We engage a lot in intelligence gathering, not just intelligence sharing. As the Police Force, we know certain things about the strikes, but we don’t want to talk about them. We decline to talk about that particular operation,” Hundeyin said.
He added that the operation involved security cooperation but stressed that the matter should be addressed by defence authorities.
“There was a cooperation, but we would rather leave it as a defence matter that the defence would talk about,” the police spokesman stated.
Last year the United States carried out airstrikes against terrorist locations in Sokoto State, following a request from the Nigerian government.
The US Department of Defense said the operation killed “multiple ISIS terrorists.”
Former US President Donald Trump also announced the strikes on his Truth Social platform, describing them as a decisive action against terrorism.
“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.
Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, confirmed that the operation was a joint security effort approved by President Bola Tinubu.
Speaking on the Boxing Day edition of Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, Tuggar said the mission was not targeted at any religion.
“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,” he said.
Tuggar also highlighted Nigeria’s commitment to protecting all citizens regardless of religious beliefs.
“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 added.
The airstrikes came after Trump’s public comments on the killing of Christians in Nigeria, which led him to designate the country as a “Country of Particular Concern.”
The former US president claimed that Christians in Nigeria were facing an “existential threat” amounting to “genocide.”
However, the Federal Government of Nigeria has rejected the allegations, insisting that security challenges in the country are not religiously motivated but linked to broader issues of terrorism and criminality.
