by Mohammed Bello Doka
17 May, 2026.
"Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield," Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Friday night, announcing the killing of Abu-Bilal Al-Manuki, the second-in-command of ISIS globally.
Welcome to this week's edition of Sarcastic Sunday with Mohammed Bello Doka, where we study Nigeria's political gymnastics with a pinch of sarcasm because doing otherwise will chock us to death.
We are not here to discuss that Nigeria has effectively outsourced its national security to the United States in an era where sovereignty disappears faster than MTN data on a Lagos-Ibadan expressway. That conversation would require a therapist and several bottles of something strong. No, we are here to ask the difficult questions that polite analysts are too careful to voice—questions about a terrorist leader who has now been killed twice by two different governments, with two completely different explanations, separated by a two-year gap during which nobody thought to check whether the first kill was real.
Before we proceed, a brief word on the outsourcing of sovereignty. In February 2026, Nigeria authorised the deployment of a limited U.S. military team to support counter-terrorism operations, with approximately 100 US troops arriving to provide training, technical assistance and intelligence-sharing. The US also approved $413 million for counter-insurgency and security operations in Nigeria for the 2026 fiscal year, a substantial sum that would make any finance minister weep with gratitude. The US is providing military support to Nigeria at no cost, according to the Defence Headquarters, with assistance delivered through the United States Africa Command as part of Washington's global counterterrorism policy. But critics have warned that Africa is gradually outsourcing its security to external powers whose containment strategies may not align with the continent's long-term peace. The ADC has warned that allowing foreign troops to conduct military operations inside Nigeria is not sustainable and could damage the country's sovereignty and long-term strategic interests. As one analyst put it, expanded US military cooperation is neither historically prudent nor strategically aligned with Nigeria's long-term national interest. But we digress. Back to our regularly scheduled comedy of errors.
We have killed and killed and killed the same person so many times that death itself has started sending back rejection letters. Read receipt not delivered. Address unknown. Return to sender. Consider the case of Ibrahim Shekau, the former Boko Haram leader who holds the unofficial Guinness World Record for most times killed by a single military. The Nigerian military and regional forces have declared Shekau dead at least four times since 2009. A senior US State Department official once noted that "the Nigerians have announced several times that the head of Boko Haram was dead and every single time we find out that it is not true." Each time, Shekau would re-emerge in a video, sometimes looking slightly plumper in the face, as if death had given him time to enjoy a good meal. It took a rival faction of Boko Haram to finally put an end to the ordeal in 2021—not the Nigerian military's repeated announcements. One can only imagine the scene: Shekau appears in a video, Nigerian army announces his death, Shekau appears again, Nigerian army announces his death again, and somewhere in the Sambisa Forest, Shekau is doing the Macarena.
Then there is the case of bandit leader Bello Turji, a man whose death has been announced so many times that even the undertakers have stopped showing up. After the December 25, 2025, airstrikes by the United States in Sokoto State—which Trump described on Truth Social as "powerful and deadly strikes" against ISIS militants, calling it a "Christmas present" to the terrorist group—rumours swiftly spread that Turji had been neutralised. Nigerians celebrated. Champagne was uncorked. Prayers were offered. And then Turji resurfaced in January 2026, launching a series of coordinated attacks on several communities in Sokoto State, forcing residents to flee for their lives. According to a security expert who shared video footage online, Turji's armed terrorists stormed a community, firing indiscriminately before issuing a chilling 24-hour ultimatum: evacuate immediately or face further deadly consequences. The man had been killed, un-killed, killed again, and then resurrected so many times that Nigerians have started wondering if he has a secret pact with the underworld. Or perhaps he has simply learned the Nigerian political trick: when they announce your death, go underground, eat well, and re-emerge when the news cycle has moved on.
Which brings us to Abu-Bilal Al-Manuki, the ISIS second-in-command who has apparently achieved the impossible: he was killed in 2024, and then killed again in 2026. According to Nigerian military announcements from February 2024, Al-Manuki had been eliminated in an airstrike in Borno State. For over two years, the public was left with that claim—unchallenged, unretracted, apparently accepted as fact. Then came the joint US-Nigeria operation in May 2026. Trump announced on Truth Social that Al-Manuki would "no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans." President Bola Tinubu also confirmed the killing, describing it as a "daring joint operation" that dealt a heavy blow to the ranks of the Islamic State.
But then came the confusion. The Nigerian military, through Major-General Michael Onoja, Director of Defence Media Operations, immediately countered that "there were no foreign boots on the ground during this operation." Onoja insisted that what the US provided were "intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance support and other force enablers." So was it a joint operation or was it not? If Trump is right and the US played a direct combat role—he specifically wrote "brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed" the mission—then the Nigerian military is wrong. But if the Nigerian military is right and the US role was limited to intelligence support, then Trump is exaggerating—again—in the grand tradition of declaring mission accomplished while the mission is still very much in progress.
And then came the real twist. On May 16, 2026, the Nigerian government confirmed that the 2024 announcement was a case of mistaken identity. Presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga issued a statement acknowledging that "Al-Manuki's name had appeared among lists of suspected ISWAP/Boko Haram commanders reportedly killed in 2024 during operations around the Birnin Gwari forest axis in Kaduna State," but clarified that "security officials now clarify that the earlier listing was a case of mistaken identity or misattribution." The statement further explained that "intelligence now shows that Birnin Gwari was never within Al-Manuki's established operational sphere, which negates the accuracy of the earlier assessment." Onanuga maintained that security agencies were now "100 per cent certain" that the ISWAP commander had been neutralised.
For 26 months, Nigerians were told a terrorist was dead when, in fact, he was very much alive, plotting attacks, and waiting for the right moment to be killed again. If this were a movie, critics would call the plot unrealistic. But this is Nigeria, where reality has a sick sense of humour.
Now comes President Trump, inserting himself into the confusion with characteristic bombast. Consider the case of the Iranian navy. Trump has repeatedly declared that Iran's naval forces have been totally wiped out. He claimed that "Iran had 159 ships in their Navy. Every single ship is now resting at the bottom of the sea." Yet the Iranian navy remains active. According to reports, Iran has largely blocked shipping through the Strait of Hormuz since the outbreak of war with the United States and Israel on February 28, and Iranian forces have targeted commercial vessels in the strait repeatedly. The same navy that Trump claims to have obliterated is still blockading the strait, still threatening commercial shipping, still very much afloat. One can almost hear the Iranian admirals laughing from Tehran while Trump tweets victory. So when Trump says he obliterated the Iranian navy, either he is right and Iran is operating a ghost fleet staffed entirely by holograms, or he is not right. With Trump, both possibilities are equally plausible.
Then there is the Christmas Day 2025 bombing of Sokoto State. Trump ordered the airstrikes, calling them a "Christmas present" to ISIS and claiming the US forces had hit terrorist camps and eliminated "terrorist scum." The United States launched multiple airstrikes on ISIS terrorists in the north-western Nigerian state of Sokoto on Christmas night. Trump announced the strikes on Truth Social, describing them as "powerful and deadly" airstrikes against Islamic State militants. But according to a former director-general of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Ladan Salihu, who spoke directly with a Sokoto state assembly member who visited the site shortly after the strikes, the missiles landed in an empty plain field approximately 300 metres from a local hospital, resulting in no casualties or fatalities. To date, not a single terrorist leader has been confirmed killed in those strikes. Trump called it a deadly strike against ISIS scum. The rest of the world called it bombing farmlands on Christmas night. Either Trump is right and the terrorists were secretly hiding under yam plantations, or the whole operation was a spectacular piece of geopolitical theatre designed to project strength while achieving nothing measurable.
But let us not single out Trump, because President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is no stranger to the art of saying things that may or may not correspond with observable reality. Tinubu has repeatedly claimed that the naira is getting stronger. At the start of 2026, he declared the year as the take-off year for stronger growth, lower inflation, and a stronger naira. He projected that the naira would appreciate to around N1000 to the US dollar within weeks. And indeed, by March 2026, the naira had shown significant appreciation, with analysts describing it as undeniably on a tear. So perhaps Tinubu was right about that. He has described himself as the strongest politician ever produced in this country, fully in control of power without forcing anyone to do his bidding. If sarcasm is anything, he can be wrong or right or both at the same time. Because a man who claims to be the most successful politician in Nigerian history while presiding over a nation where terrorists are killed twice, bandit leaders resurrect on command, and the military cannot tell the difference between one militant and another—well, that man might be successful, or he might be living in a parallel universe where success is measured by the volume of press releases.
And so we arrive at the difficult questions that Sarcastic Sunday exists to ask. Did we really kill Al-Manuki this time, or are we mistaken again? Because the last time we were told he was dead, we were wrong for 26 months before anyone admitted it. What changed between 2024 and 2026? Did the intelligence community suddenly discover the difference between one militant and another? Did DNA testing finally arrive in Nigeria? Or did the joint operation with the US simply produce evidence that could not be ignored, forcing an admission that should have been made two years ago? If the 2024 announcement was a mistake, why was it never corrected until after Trump claimed credit for the real kill? Was the original announcement a genuine error, or was it a convenient fiction designed to claim a victory that had not actually been won? And if the military cannot tell the difference between one terrorist and another, how many other phantom kills are sitting in the official records, waiting to be exposed by future operations?
The Defence Headquarters has now clarified that terrorist commanders often adopt similar names and aliases as part of their indoctrination strategy to conceal their true identities, following public confusion over reports surrounding the killing of Abu-Bilal Al-Minuki. That explanation sounds plausible until you remember that identifying targets is supposed to be the entire job of military intelligence. If aliases are that easily confused, perhaps intelligence agencies should consider verifying identities before announcing deaths. Or perhaps they should simply stop announcing deaths altogether and let the terrorists surprise us by staying dead. Because at this point, Nigerians have heard so many premature death announcements that we have started treating them like weather forecasts: nice to hear, but we still carry umbrellas.
As for Trump, one must ask: if he directed the joint operation that finally killed Al-Manuki, why did the Nigerian military deny that any foreign boots were on the ground? Was it a joint operation or was it not? Onoja described the mission as a "carefully executed precision strike" and noted that "earlier reports about Al-Minuki's death in 2024 were based on mistaken identity." He also mentioned that wanted bandit leader Bello Turji remains under active surveillance, saying, "He cannot hide forever. It is only a matter of time." But Nigerians have heard that before too.
So here we are, Nigerians, caught between a US president who claims to have obliterated navies that are still sailing and bombed terrorists who never materialised, and our own president who claims to be the most successful politician in history while the nation struggles to keep track of which terrorists are actually deceased. Between them stands Abu-Bilal Al-Manuki, a man who has now been killed twice by two different governments, with two different explanations, and a two-year gap during which nobody thought to check whether the first kill was real. If this is the state of counterterrorism in 2026, one can only wonder how many other terrorist leaders are currently listed as dead in official records while sipping tea in hideouts across the Sahel.
Maybe Trump is right. Maybe Tinubu is right. Or maybe we are all being played for fools by a system where announcements are made not because they are true, but because they serve a purpose and keep the money flowing. The only thing certain in this uncertain world is that Sarcastic Sunday will be here next week if we're still breathing, ready to dissect the next chapter in Nigeria's endless political comedy. Because doing otherwise will chock us to death.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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