Can the U.S. End Nigeria’s Insurgency?
The United States has expanded its joint military operations with Nigeria to combat insurgency in the country's northeast. Despite recent successful strikes, experts doubt the campaign's long-term success due to the complex and decades-long nature of the insurgency. The crisis in Nigeria reflects a wider state failure to provide security and basic public services, with armed groups relying on child recruitment and operating with near impunity.
- ▪The US has eliminated a top leader of the Islamic State West Africa Province and killed 175 militants in Nigeria through joint airstrikes.
- ▪Nigeria's insurgency has metastasized into a ransom economy, with armed groups murdering and kidnapping citizens for profit.
- ▪Around 30,000 people have been killed in violence across Nigeria since President Bola Tinubu took office in 2023.
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Africa Brief Lagos-based Nosmot Gbadamosi reports from across Africa on what’s driving policy, economics, and culture in the world’s fastest-growing and youngest continent. Sign up for the latest news, expert analysis, and data insights. Delivered Wednesday. Can the U.S. End Nigeria’s Insurgency? Despite recent successful strikes, experts doubt the campaign’s long-term success. Gbadamosi-Nosmot-foreign-policy-columnist10 Nosmot Gbadamosi By Nosmot Gbadamosi, a multimedia journalist and the writer of Foreign Policy’s weekly Africa Brief. A motorcyclist and pedestrian are shown on a road amid rubble. People move past destroyed buildings in Offa, Nigeria, on Dec. 27. The damage was caused by debris from expended munitions that fell from U.S.
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