Amina Usman
In the first 10 days of the US attack on Iran 20,000 non-military buildings were hit, among them almost 17,500 houses. On the first day, 150 girls were killed in a school in southern Iran that the American forces hit twice. This was against a country whose people Trump had promised to liberate.
The history of aerial bombing has demonstrated that it solves nothing. It simply drives those caught in the middle into the hands of terrorists. In Afghanistan, bombing of civilians by the United States and its allies drove them into the hands of the Taliban.
Carpet bombing by the Nixon administration in Cambodia so enraged the people that they sought refuge in the ranks of an obscure Maoist grouping called the Khmer Rouge. The bombing simply served as a recruiting sergeant for the Khmer Rouge and contributed to the tragic circumstances that befell Cambodia.
The bombing of Iran by US forces earlier this year allowed the theocratic government of Iran to mobilize the citizenry on the basis of nationalism. The regime came out of the war strengthened whereby prior to this, the mass of the people where in open revolt against the regime.
Similar dynamics are taking place in Nigeria hence the reason why it becomes difficult to defeat the insurgency.
In mid-May 2026, American bombers again attacked Nigeria. They claimed to have killed the ISIS leader, Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, who the Nigerian forces had previously claimed they had killed in early 2024. The next day the US held another bombing raid in Borno State. They say that 175 people were killed with few other details. So we do not know how many of these were innocent deaths.
At least four of the 16 cruise missiles used during the US bombing raid on Sokoto State last Christmas failed to reach their targets. Two landed in Kwara State, one in Niger State and one in a field near a village in Sokoto State.
The Nigerian Air Force is no more accurate than the Americans. Amnesty International says that more than 100 people were killed in an air attack on a market in Jilli village in Yobe State in mid-April, 2026. On 11th May a bombing raid may have killed a dozen civilians in Shiroro district of Niger State. Villages were bombed as fleeing insurgent passed through settlements in the early morning.
Since 2017, at least 17 incidents of accidental airstrikes have been documented by Dataphyte across seven northern states. These incidents resulted in over 300 reported civilian deaths.
All the evidence suggests that ariel bombardments are not accurate and result in high civilian casualties. As we said five years ago: “If the Government is reduced to bombing its own country it has really lost control and the risk of further civilian deaths is too great.”
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We need to demand that the US and Nigerian air attacks against Nigeria stop. We also need to demand that the Government addresses the underlying socio-economic causes of insecurity. History shows that military approaches can, at best, only be part of the solution.