Deborah Akinyosoye
Incoming reports say that ISWAP insurgents conducted several fresh attacks on Ja Jibiri and Ladu villages in Yobe State, two days after the US conducted airstrikes on ISWAP enclaves in Sokoto State.
According to the reports, the armed-to-the-teeth terrorists injured a village head, abducting a driver, and looting a health facility.
Insurgents expert and reporter, Zagazola Makama, gathered that the attacks occurred at about 12:20 a.m. on Dec. 27, 2025, with village head of Ja Jibiri, Lawan Hassan, 45, shot on the left shoulder during the raid.
The sources said the assailants proceeded to Ladu village, where they abducted Madu Kura, a 40-year-old driver of a Toyota Hilux, and broke into the Primary Health Care Medical Centre, looting medical consumables and other valuables.
They also carted away a Golf motor car. Hassan was rushed to Geidam Hospital for medical attention. Security personnel in the area remain on high alert, while monitoring and efforts to track the insurgents continue.
Recalled that the United States, on Christmas Day, carried out an air strike against ISIL (ISIS) fighters in northwest Nigeria, with Sokoto and Kwara States as main targets.
Trump said on Friday that a US military strike targeting Islamic State militants in Nigeria was originally supposed to take place on Wednesday, but he ordered that it be delayed by a day.
“They were going to do it earlier,” Trump told Politico in an interview. “And I said, ‘nope, let’s give a Christmas present.’ They didn’t think that was coming, but we hit them hard. Every camp got decimated.”
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, said on Friday that the US strikes, which came after Trump had locked the countries in a diplomatic dispute when he accused Nigeria’s government of failing to stop Christians being killed in the country, were “part of joint ongoing operations”.
“We have been working closely with the Americans,” Tuggar said. “This is what we’ve always been hoping for, to work with the Americans, to work with other countries, to combat terrorism, to stop the death of innocent Nigerians.
‘It’s a collaborative effort.” The US military’s Africa Command said the strikes in Sokoto state had been carried out in coordination with Nigerian authorities. An earlier statement posted on X and then removed said they had been conducted at the request of Nigerian authorities.