The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, has said Nigeria provided the intelligence that led to the United States’ airstrike on terrorist targets in the country and formally approved the operation before it was carried out. According to the minister, the operation was the outcome of ongoing security cooperation between Nigeria and the United States and was not motivated by religious considerations. I was on the phone yesterday for 19 minutes with Secretary of State Marco Rubio of the United States. “We spoke for 19 minutes before the strike, and then we spoke again for another five minutes before it went on,” he said. The US President, Donald Trump, on Thursday confirmed the US carried out an airstrike targeting suspected terrorist elements in Nigeria.

Source: Punch December 26, 2025 09:32 UTC