Washington Killed an ISIS Commander in Nigeria, but Has More to Do in West Africa

Nigeria’s Christians are among the most persecuted in the world. They face threats from Muslim Fulani herdsmen who have raided villages and killed hundreds of believers. They also face threats from terror groups known around the world for their brutality, such as Islamic State (ISIS), against which a significant victory was recently achieved. In a joint operation on May 16, U.S. and Nigerian forces killed Abu Musab al-Minuki, a key figure in ISIS and its affiliate, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). The Nigerian military described the raid as a “meticulously planned and highly complex precision air-land operation.” President Donald Trump called al-Minuki “the most active terrorist in the world,” and “second-in-command of ISIS globally.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put the matter in a different light: U.S. forces had hunted an ISIS leader “who was killing Christians.” Al-Minuki’s death represents a major achievement in Washington’s ongoing campaign to stem the growing tide of Christian persecution and instability in Nigeria. While ISWAP is neither the only nor the most pervasive threat facing Abuja’s Christian community, killing al-Minuki represents tangible progress. To capitalize on this success, Washington should attend to all threats making Nigeria unsafe for Christians and other citizens alike. Analysts dispute whether al-Minuki was truly ISIS’s global No. 2. What is not in doubt is that one of ISWAP’s most important commanders is dead. His network has helped make Nigeria one of the deadliest countries in the world for Christians. Nigerian reporting tied al-Minuki to the February 2018 Dapchi schoolgirls kidnapping, when ISWAP terrorists abducted more than 100 students from the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College in Yobe State. Leah Sharibu, a Christian girl who reportedly refused to renounce her faith, remains in captivity and has become a symbol of Nigeria’s persecution crisis. In December 2019, ISWAP released a video of its terrorists executing 11 blindfolded Christians in northeast Nigeria. The killers called the murders “a message to Christians all over the world.” The next year, ISWAP abducted and executed Ropvil Daciya Dalep, a Christian university student, declaring that Christians “must know that we will never forget their atrocities against us.” ISWAP also carried out the Pentecost Sunday massacre at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in 2022. Gunmen disguised as worshippers detonated explosives and opened fire during Mass, killing at least 40 people and wounding more than 100. In 2026 testimony before the Federal High Court in Abuja, a witness identified the attackers as members of an ISWAP-linked cell based in Kogi State, operating under the alias “Al-Shabaab,” and tied to the broader command network al-Minuki helped oversee. To describe all this merely as “insecurity” is to miss the point. Nigeria’s Christians are not the only victims of jihadist violence. Muslims in the northeast and northwest have also suffered grievously at the hands of Boko Haram, ISWAP, bandits, and other armed groups. While organized Islamic terrorists may make headlines, they are not the greatest threat to Christians in Nigeria. Instead, the greatest threats facing Nigerian Christians are from militant gangs of Fulani herdsmen. This is especially true in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, where armed Fulani militant networks have attacked Christian communities in Benue, Plateau, and surrounding states. The Fulani are an ethnic group of about 25-40 million in West Africa, historically defined by cattle-herding. While many of them no longer practice pastoralism as a way of life, their group identity is still strongly associated with raising livestock. Land, water, grazing routes, and criminality all contribute to the anti-Christian violence perpetrated by some Fulani militants, and yet these factors do not tell the whole story. Instead, as scholars of international religious liberty such as Baylor’s Paul Marshall have shown, there is a significant element of anti-Christian violence inexplicable by material explanations alone, something a commonly used phrase like “farmer-herder conflict” works to obscure. In the case of the Plateau State Massacre in 2023, Fulani gangs killed nearly 200 Christian men, women, and children on Christmas Eve while reportedly shouting, “Allahu Akbar, we will destroy all Christians.” Policymakers and journalists should not hide behind sociological euphemisms to explain away attacks that have clear religious motivations. The Nigerian government’s response has also often been a mix of incapacity and denial. Abuja resists the “Christian persecution” label even as it often fails to prevent attacks on communities and subsequently lies about the scale of and motivations behind massacres and kidnappings. Village communities complain that security forces arrive late or not at all. In the northeast, ISWAP survives because it exploits weak governance, borderland sanctuaries, and inconsistent intelligence coverage. The result is a state that can sometimes strike terrorists but often fails to protect Christians from slaughter. Increased cooperation between Washington and Abuja is a start, but Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s government must publicly and accurately diagnose the challenges facing its people. Killing al-Minuki wasn’t significant purely because he was an archterrorist. He also perpetrated atrocities, including the massacre of hundreds of Christians, though Abuja has yet to highlight this fact. Nigeria’s Christians need a government willing to name their persecutors, protect their villages, rescue their children, prosecute their attackers, and accept help when its own capabilities fall short. The United States cannot solve Nigeria’s religious violence for Nigeria. But it can make clear that anti-Christian persecution is not a peripheral humanitarian concern; it is central to Nigeria’s security crisis and to America’s counterterrorism interests. The United States should create a Nigeria religious-violence targeting cell inside the embassy in Abuja, linking State, Defense, Treasury, and intelligence officials working with trusted Nigerian civil society groups and church networks. Its job should be to map ISWAP, Boko Haram, Fulani militant, and bandit networks that attack religious communities. It can then identify commanders, financiers, arms suppliers, cattle-rustling facilitators, ransom brokers, and corrupt local officials, and feed that evidence into Treasury and State sanctions packages. The State Department should also make any major expansion of U.S.-Nigeria security cooperation contingent on Abuja producing a public, incident-level accounting of attacks on Christian communities, including listing the perpetrators, the religious identity of victims where relevant, security response times, arrests, prosecutions, and convictions. Al-Minuki’s death will not bring Leah Sharibu home or rebuild every burned church. But it proves the men who organize this violence can be found. The question is whether Washington and Abuja will treat that success as final—or as the beginning of a serious campaign to defend Nigeria’s most vulnerable communities.