by Mohammed Bello Doka
Two nations stood before the same Western power and made opposite choices. One chose resistance and paid the price with sanctions but preserved its agency. The other chose convenience, surrendered narrative control, and mistook validation for victory. In Venezuela, sovereignty—however imperfect—was defended as a principle. In Nigeria, sovereignty was treated as a negotiable asset, traded for applause, distraction, and fleeting approval. The difference was not strength or intelligence; it was leadership. One said no. The other nodded.
The so-called Sokoto strike revealed a brutal truth about Nigeria’s posture in the world. There were no names. No group was identified. No casualty figures were released. No camps were disclosed. No commanders were declared neutralised. What Nigerians received was noise without substance, theatre without outcome. In serious counter-terrorism, silence follows action; here, silence was the action.
This episode cannot be understood outside the global context of Donald Trump’s mounting foreign-policy frustrations. In Ukraine, he promised quick resolution and delivered stalemate. Against China, the trade war failed to produce capitulation or decisive leverage. In Venezuela, pressure did not yield regime collapse. In Iran, decades of sanctions and threats have not translated into compliance. These are hard theatres—states that resist, raise costs, and refuse optics without substance. Nigeria, tragically, offered something else: a compliant stage for symbolism, a distant battlefield with minimal scrutiny, and a narrative crafted to please a Judeo-Christian base at home and pro-Israel constituencies abroad.
Why Sokoto? Not because it is Nigeria’s most consequential terror command hub—any honest security map shows otherwise—but because symbolism travels faster than strategy. A strike announced on Christmas, framed as protection of Christians, required neither proof nor post-strike accounting to score domestic points. Optics mattered more than outcomes.
If Nigeria truly directed this operation, it would look different. Nigerians know their terror geography. Communities know the forests. Intelligence briefings know aliases and corridors. Real operations name names. They specify targets. They publish assessments. None of that happened. Washington spoke first. Abuja echoed later. That is not partnership; it is permission.
Any serious counter-terrorism operation in Nigeria would logically have targeted well-known, repeatedly named figures who dominate the country’s security briefings and public discourse—bandit kingpins such as Bello Turji in Zamfara, Dogo Gide along the Kaduna–Niger axis, commanders embedded in the Sambisa–Lake Chad terror ecosystem under Albarnawee and the likes, or leaders operating openly across Zamfara, Katsina, Niger, and Kebbi—men whose camps, routes, and aliases are known not only to villagers but to Nigerian security agencies themselves; yet none of these figures was named, targeted, or confirmed neutralised after the Sokoto strike, no faction was identified, and no casualty figures were released, reinforcing the conclusion that the operation was never designed to dismantle Nigeria’s terror architecture but to generate optics, headlines, and leverage—another validation that this was a political instrument of control by Donald Trump, not a war-winning strike, a performance meant to please a foreign domestic audience while Nigeria’s most lethal actors remained untouched, unthreatened, and fully operational.
Here lies the deeper indictment of Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s leadership. Under acute domestic pressure—economic hardship, inflationary pain, persistent insecurity—Western validation became a political crutch. Appear close to Washington. Be seen as “cooperating.” Borrow credibility abroad to cushion legitimacy at home. But sovereignty is not borrowed; it is exercised. And when it is not exercised, dependence grows.
That dependence carries consequences far beyond one strike. It invites leverage. It invites pressure. It invites blackmail.
There is an unspoken undercurrent that makes Nigeria’s acquiescence especially dangerous: the shadow of long-standing, publicly reported drug-related allegations and court records in the United States concerning Tinubu. Whether adjudicated decades ago or politically dormant, such records do not need to be reopened to be powerful. They only need to exist. In international politics, vulnerability is leverage. A leader who appears eager to please, reluctant to confront, and desperate for Western approval signals that leverage is available. Today it is silence over a strike. Tomorrow it is compliance on policy. This is how sovereign choices are quietly mortgaged.
Contrast this with Venezuela—and even Iran. Both have paid heavy prices, but both raised the cost of interference by refusing symbolic concessions. Resistance forced Washington to negotiate, recalibrate, or stalemate. Nigeria chose the opposite lesson: lower the price of interference, and it will be paid again.
Who benefited from Sokoto? Trump did—he banked a headline, fed a base, and paid no strategic cost. Tinubu did—briefly—he gained distraction and validation. Who did not? Nigerians. Terror networks were neither named nor dismantled. Communities gained no verifiable security dividend. The ledger of violence did not change.
This is why the questions that collapse the entire charade must be asked—plainly and publicly:
If this was counter-terrorism, who was targeted, which group was hit, where exactly did it operate, and how many were neutralised?
If Nigeria provided intelligence, why did none of its intelligence vocabulary—names, aliases, camps—appear in the outcome?
If sovereignty was intact, why did Nigeria not brief its citizens first, frame the operation itself, and publish a post-strike assessment?
If religion was not the driver, why was religious language central to the announcement?
If this was success, why does it read like absence—of facts, figures, and consequences?
To the United States: is counter-terrorism now a messaging exercise in Africa, or will the same disclosure standards applied elsewhere apply here?
To Nigeria: when does convenience become capitulation, and validation become vulnerability?
Beyond this strike lies a more dangerous legacy: precedent. This government has set yet another first—ceding narrative control of a military operation on Nigerian soil; allowing external framing without domestic briefing; normalising opacity where accountability is owed. Precedents harden into habits. Habits become policy. Policy becomes weakness.
Nigeria now faces a lost-lost reality. If the strike was symbolic, nothing changed on the ground. If it was operational, secrecy hollowed out its legitimacy. Either way, sovereignty was diminished. Convenience is not strategy. Validation is not security. And a country that cannot insist on clarity in war has already surrendered control of peace.
By Mohammed Bello Doka
Contact: [email protected]
Abuja Network News
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