Nigeria’s foreign policy since independence has rested on one irreducible pillar: sovereignty. Everything else, non-alignment, African leadership, strategic autonomy, flowed from that core principle. That is why the recent reports and acknowledgements of United States military strikes on Nigerian soil, no matter how they are framed or justified, represent more than a tactical security decision. They amount to a profound misdirection of Nigeria’s foreign policy under President Tinubu.
Much of the current debate is distracted by surface issues: whether the intelligence was accurate, whether the targets were terrorists, whether civilians were harmed, or whether the strikes were “jointly coordinated.” These questions matter, but they miss the essential point. The real issue is not operational efficiency. It is the desecration of Nigeria’s sovereignty and the abandonment of a foreign policy tradition painstakingly built since 1960.
From the very beginning, Nigeria’s leaders understood that political independence without military and strategic independence was a fraud. That understanding informed some of the most consequential decisions in our history. Why did Nigeria abrogate the Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact with Britain shortly after independence? It was not because Britain lacked military sophistication, but because the pact subordinated Nigeria’s security decisions to a former colonial power. The political cost was high, but the principle was clear. Nigeria would not outsource its sovereignty.
The same logic guided General Yakubu Gowon during the civil war. Despite intense pressure and offers of “assistance,” Gowon insisted that the war must be fought and concluded by Nigerian forces. When Western powers imposed arms embargoes, he did not capitulate. Instead, he went to the Soviet Union to procure the weapons necessary to prosecute the war. This was not ideological romance with Moscow. It was strategic realism. Nigeria’s unity and sovereignty could not be negotiated through foreign militaries.
It is also impossible to discuss this tradition without recalling General Murtala Muhammed. His foreign policy posture, assertive, unapologetic, fiercely independent, redefined Nigeria’s global standing, especially in Africa. Murtala challenged Western dominance, confronted apartheid regimes, and insisted that Nigeria would speak and act for itself. His assassination remains one of the darkest moments in our history, not least because it marked a turning point away from that radical commitment to sovereignty.
Nigerian leaders from 1960 to 2023, with all their flaws, shared the conviction that Nigeria must remain independent in decision-making and sovereign in security matters. That conviction is what is now being eroded.
Against this historical backdrop, one must ask the most basic and uncomfortable question about the US strikes. Who did the attacks actually kill? Nigerians have been told that these operations are meant to fight terrorism, protect Christians, or stabilize volatile regions. Yet there has been no transparent accounting of casualties, no verifiable disclosure of targets neutralized, and no independent assessment of outcomes. Precision warfare without public accountability is not precision. It is a bloody propaganda.
History offers no comfort here. The United States has never stabilized a country it has militarily intervened in. Afghanistan is in ruins after two decades of occupation. Iraq remains fractured, violent, and politically fragile. Somalia is a permanent theatre of insecurity. Libya, once a functioning state, whatever one thought of its leadership, was destroyed under the pretext of humanitarian intervention and has never recovered. Even Pakistan, which entered into a long and intimate security romance with the US, is hardly a model of stability today. These are not anomalies but patterns of US interventions around the world. To imagine that Nigeria will be the exception is either naive or dishonest.
Indeed, the consequences of US strikes on Nigerian soil are predictable. The first complication is the near certainty of a permanent or semi-permanent US military presence, bases, forward operating locations, or so-called logistics hubs, that will be established under the guise of counterterrorism cooperation. These will not be funded by American altruism. They will be sustained, directly or indirectly, by Nigerian resources including rare earths, underground water, precious metals, oil, and the future manipulation of tax regimes that will milk poor Nigerians even more for this purpose.
The second, and more troubling, complication is tactical adaptation by armed groups. In my opinion, and based on global patterns, the United States does not eliminate terrorism. It manages it. Whether through direct sponsorship, indirect creation, or strategic tolerance, these terrorists mutate rather than disappear under US intervention. Tactics change. Narratives evolve. Enemies are rebranded. But the violence persists. This persistence then becomes the justification for continued foreign presence. Meanwhile, ordinary Nigerians continue to suffer. Farmers will still abandon their farms. Communities will still be bombed, raided, and terrorized, sometimes by terrorists, sometimes “by mistake” by those claiming to fight them.
This brings us to the most disturbing aspect of this policy misdirection: the Nigerian government’s willingness to hand over its independence without public debate or constitutional clarity. Why would a government do this? Is it because of the president’s personal profile and long-standing entanglements with US law enforcement agencies? Is it because foreign military involvement conveniently serves a domestic political agenda? Or is it part of a sectional or regional grand design that sees certain parts of Nigeria as expendable in a larger geopolitical game?
On a lighter note, one is tempted to ask the president to tell us how much of Northern Nigeria has been sold to the United States for recolonization. But beyond this sarcasm lies a serious demand for answers. Why are there discrepancies between US statements and Nigerian government narratives about what are supposedly coordinated, joint operations? Who is actually in charge? Who defines the targets? Who bears responsibility when things go wrong?
More fundamentally, what President Tinubu has done, granting a foreign power the authority to conduct military operations on Nigerian soil, is unconstitutional. No provision of the 1999 Constitution grants the president such sweeping powers. Section 19(c), cited as justification, speaks of cooperation for universal peace. It does not authorize foreign bombardment. In fact, it stands in direct contradiction to President Trump’s own definition of the strikes as actions “to protect Christians.” This framing is, therefore, not universal peace. It is sectarian justification for violence, and it is dangerously destabilizing in a plural society like Nigeria.
Nigeria’s insecurity is real, and armed groups deserve no sympathy. But surrendering sovereignty is not security. It is strategic suicide. The tragedy is not only that Nigeria is being misdirected, but that this misdirection is being presented as inevitability. Nigeria has confronted existential threats before without handing over its soul. It can do so again, if it remembers who it is, and what independence was meant to mean.
