The question is not whether Trump wants to fight terrorism in Nigeria. He has demonstrated that he does. The question is whether the men giving him his target list are letting him fight the right terrorists. Right now, the pattern says no.
Is the U.S. Being Used as a Hired Gun in a Caliphate Internal Cleanup?
A pattern is hiding in plain sight.
Trump’s Christmas Day 2025 strikes hit ISWAP and Boko Haram targets in Nigeria’s Northeast. The May 16, 2026 Tomahawk strike took out ISWAP commander Abu-Bilal al-Minuki. Every U.S. kinetic action in Nigeria over the past six months has landed on the same kind of target: ISWAP. Islamic State West Africa Province. The faction that pledges allegiance to the global Islamic State, not to the Sultan of Sokoto
Meanwhile, the Fulani militias — the network responsible for the bulk of the documented Christian deaths in Nigeria since 2014 — have not been touched. Not one strike. Not one named commander. Not one targeted operation. While 1,402 Christians were being killed across Nigeria in the first 96 days of 2026, the U.S. was bombing the wrong killers.
Why?
Start with who is on the U.S. target list.
The U.S. can only strike formally designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Boko Haram and ISWAP have been on that list since 2013 and 2018. The Fulani militias, MACBAN, and Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore have never been designated. They are not on the list. They cannot be struck.
HR 7457 — the Smith-Moore bill currently before Congress — is the legal vehicle to fix that.
The bill names them by name and directs the Secretary of State to evaluate them for FTO designation. Until that designation happens, the entire militia network that kills the most Christians in Nigeria is legally untouchable by the U.S. military.
Now look at who provides the targeting intelligence.
The U.S. has its own satellites and signals intelligence, but the human intelligence — who is where, in which compound, with which commander present — comes from the host country. In Nigeria, that means the Office of the National Security Adviser. Which means Nuhu Ribadu.
Ribadu is the man at the top of the pipeline that selects which target packages get handed to the Americans.
Now look at who Ribadu is.
Ribadu is Fulani. The Sultan of Sokoto is Fulani. The political-religious apparatus that has run the Caliphate’s project since 1804 is Fulani-led. The same Ribadu whose office was caught by his own Kwara State Government coordinating armed Miyetti Allah members with AK-47s in a state vehicle in December 2025.
The same Ribadu who paid DCI Group $9 million in federal funds to whitewash the killings in Washington. The same Ribadu who is widely reported in Nigerian commentary to have referred to Fulani militants in the bush as his “brothers” — a characterization his office has not, to my knowledge, denied.
Now look at the difference between ISWAP and the Fulani militias.
ISWAP is foreign-loyal. It reports up the chain to global ISIS Central. Its commanders are appointed by Syria-Iraq leadership. Its theological framework — Raqqa-era Salafi-jihadism — rejects the Sokoto Caliphate’s authority entirely. ISWAP would replace the Sultan’s spiritual sovereignty over 108 million West African Muslims with a global ISIS caliphate if it could. ISWAP is a threat to the Sultan’s monopoly on Sunni religious-political authority in West Africa.
The Fulani militias are nothing like ISWAP. They are Fulani. They are Sunni Maliki — the dominant school in the Caliphate. They are ethnically, theologically, and operationally tied to the Caliphate’s ruling apparatus. They are not a competing project. They are aligned with the same project. They have been running raids against non-Muslim communities since Usman dan Fodio declared jihad in 1804. The villages they burn today are the same villages the Caliphate raided two centuries ago.
Now look at the pattern that emerges.
ISWAP threatens the Sultan’s authority. So does Ribadu’s office feed ISWAP target packages to the Americans? It would explain why Trump’s drones eliminate the Caliphate’s theological rival while the Caliphate gets a Sunni house-cleaning paid for by U.S. precision munitions.
Washington scores counterterrorism points. Ribadu collects credit for “cooperation.” DCI files press releases praising the “U.S.-Nigeria security partnership.” Everybody walks out happy.
Except the Christians of the Middle Belt. They keep dying. Because the network actually killing them — the Fulani militias serving the Caliphate’s two-hundred-year clearance project — never appears on the target list Ribadu hands the Americans.
This is the question Trump’s people need to ask.
Is the United States being played as a hired gun in a Caliphate internal cleanup?
The pattern fits. The strikes hit the only jihadi network not loyal to the Sultan. The killers most loyal to the Sultan continue to operate untouched. The man at the top of the targeting intelligence pipeline has documented ties to a militia coordinated under his own office. The lobbyists he pays in Washington are filing material at the U.S. Department of Justice praising the same “hybrid security” model that put AK-47s in Miyetti Allah hands.
This does not prove deliberate sabotage. It does prove a pattern that demands explanation. And it raises the question every defense planner, every congressional oversight committee, and every U.S. intelligence officer working the Nigeria file should be asking right now.
If the answer turns out to be yes — that the United States is being used to clean up a Caliphate internal turf war while the real killers operate untouched — American Tomahawks are being spent eliminating the Sultan’s competitors while the Sultan’s allies slaughter Christian villagers two hundred miles south of every strike.
Three things have to happen, fast.
One. HR 7457 has to pass. The Smith-Moore bill must move out of committee and onto the floor. MACBAN, Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, and the Fulani ethnic militias must be designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Until they are designated, they are untouchable. Once they are designated, the targeting math changes overnight.
Two. The U.S. has to stop relying exclusively on Ribadu’s intelligence pipeline. Frank Garcia, the newly confirmed Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs — sworn in on June 1, 2026 — must demand independent target validation. The U.S. has its own satellites. It has its own SIGINT. It has its own networks of Christian and Middle Belt sources who can provide alternative intelligence. The single-source pipeline through Ribadu’s office is a strategic vulnerability and a moral disaster.
Three. The Senior Advisor for Africa, Massad Boulos, must be sidelined from Nigeria policy entirely. Boulos has business ties through SCOA Nigeria to the Chagoury Group, which holds more than $12 billion in NO BID Nigerian federal contracts. Boulos has been publicly soft on the Christian killings — including his October 2025 claim on Nigerian state television, parroting Isa Pantami verbatim— that Boko Haram and ISIS are “killing more Muslims than Christians,” which Trump’s own CPC designation contradicted weeks later.
He cannot be the architect of America’s Nigeria strategy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s office must be.
The question is not whether Trump wants to fight terrorism in Nigeria. He has demonstrated that he does. The question is whether the men giving him his target list are letting him fight the right terrorists. Right now, the pattern says no.
The pattern does not yet prove deliberate sabotage. But the pattern is the question. And the question deserves an answer before another American munition lands on the wrong target while the real killers walk free.
