Dec. 26 (UPI) — Nigerian President Bola Tinubu gave the U.S. government the “go-ahead” to carry out airstrikes on ISIS targets, Nigeria’s foreign minister said Friday.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced the strikes Thursday, calling them retaliation against “ISIS terrorist scum” for violence on “primarily, innocent Christians.”
Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar told Al Jazeera the country cooperated with the U.S. Defense Department on the “fight against terrorism” in the northwestern region.
Citing local news sources, the news outlet said at least one missile landed in the village of Jabo in Sokoto state. Residents told Al Jazeera there were no casualties in the village.
“The bomb fell and burst into many pieces. There were two big pieces of debris. One of them was carried by two people,” resident Abdulrahman Mainasara said.
Resident Ismail Umar told the outlet the village hadn’t received any armed attacks from ISIS in more than two years.
Tuggar said the Nigerian government provided intelligence to the U.S. government, and he spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the phone twice before the strikes. He added that Tinubu was also involved in the decision-making process.
“Now that the U.S. is cooperating, we would do it jointly, and we would ensure, just as the [Nigerian] president emphasized yesterday before he gave the go-ahead, that it must be made clear that it is a joint operation, and is not targeting any religion nor simply in the name of one religion or the other,” Tuggar said in an appearance on Channels Television‘s Sunrise Daily program.
Tuggar and other officials, though, took issue with Trump’s rhetoric saying that ISIS violence targets only Christians in Nigeria.
“We are a multi-religious country, and we are working with partners like the U.S. to fight terrorism and safeguard the lives and properties of Nigerians,” Tuggar said.
Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, the director of the non-profit organization Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, said suggestions that ISIS is primarily targeting people based on religion could incite ethnic and religious tensions in Nigeria.
“Muslims are being killed and harassed every day by the same criminals,” Rafsanjani said, according to the local news outlet Leadership. “This conversation should be about human life, not religion or geography.”
