The outcry over Jilli airstrike

ON April 11, the Nigerian Air Force conducted a strike in Jilli, near the Borno–Yobe axis, under Operation Hadin Kai. The military described it as a precision operation against a known insurgent logistics hub. Casualties followed, and among them were civilians. Nigeria is now doing what it always does in these moments: dividing before it understands. That is the pattern. Critics reach for condemnation within hours. Defenders retreat into deflection. Political figures issue statements calibrated more for positioning than for truth. The Federal Government responds in kind. And somewhere in the wreckage of that exchange, the questions that truly matter are left unasked.

Borno State governor, Babagana Zulum, has stated, with clarity, that the Jilli market was shut down approximately five years ago. The reason was not economic decline. It was insurgent capture; the slow, deliberate transformation of a civilian trading space into a logistics corridor for Boko Haram and affiliated groups. Military intelligence, consistent with broader operational assessments of the area, classified the zone as compromised and effectively a no-go area for civilians. This context is not a footnote; it is the frame within which the Jilli strike must be understood. In the kind of warfare Nigeria has fought for over a decade, terrain is never neutral. Insurgent groups do not operate from designated battlefields. They embed within communities, repurpose civilian infrastructure, and exploit the moral hesitation of forces that must distinguish between combatant and non-combatant in real time, under pressure, with imperfect information. To assess a strike without accounting for this reality is not objectivity; it is ignorance dressed as principle. None of this erases the grief of those who lost lives or loved ones on April 11. Civilian casualties in any conflict are a tragedy that demands acknowledgment, not management. But acknowledgment is not the same as verdict. And a verdict issued before the facts are fully established serves no one: least of all the dead.

This newspaper holds the position that no institution, least of all one bearing arms in the name of the state, is beyond scrutiny. The Armed Forces of Nigeria must be accountable to the citizens they serve. That accountability is not optional; it is constitutional and moral. But accountability requires a standard. And the standard being applied to the military in some quarters of public discourse is neither consistent nor fair. Unverified early reports are elevated as fact. Official statements are dismissed as propaganda. The result is a public conversation that mistakes noise for analysis. The military’s claim that this was an intelligence-led, targeted operation deserves to be examined rigorously and through proper institutional channels. What it does not deserve is reflexive dismissal from commentators who have no operational visibility into the theatre.

Equally, the Armed Forces must recognise what this moment demands of them. Silence, in the information environment of 2026, is not caution: it is abdication. When the military goes quiet after a contested incident, the vacuum fills immediately with speculation, misinformation, and narratives that are nearly impossible to correct. Timely, transparent, and factually grounded communication is not a concession to critics; it is a strategic necessity and a pillar of institutional legitimacy.

It would be dishonest to ignore the political current running beneath this debate. Some of the loudest voices criticising the Jilli operation are not primarily animated by concern for the people of Borno. They are animated by a broader dissatisfaction with the political environment, and the military has become, in those quarters, a convenient proxy for that dissatisfaction. This is dangerous. National security must not become collateral damage in elite political contestation. The men and women deployed to the North-East are operating in conditions of genuine danger against an enemy that has survived repeated predictions of its defeat. Instrumentalising their operations for political point-scoring is a disservice to them and a disservice to Nigeria.

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Elections produce governments. Governments come and go. The responsibility to defend the territorial integrity of this nation does not. Beyond the immediate incident, this moment should force a reckoning with structural failures that have allowed this conflict to persist. How do insurgent logistics networks remain this resilient after more than a decade of sustained military engagement? What does the continued viability of compromised spaces like the former Jilli market say about intelligence penetration and civil-military coordination at the local level? And why does the national conversation about state policing, a reform with direct implications for grassroots intelligence gathering, remain hostage to political calculation? These are not peripheral concerns; they sit at the heart of why this war has not ended.

The Jilli airstrike may have been a legitimate operation against a legitimate target in a genuinely compromised environment. It may also have involved failures of intelligence or execution that cost innocent lives. The honest answer, at this stage, is that the full picture is not yet established. What is established is this: Nigeria cannot afford to process every contested military incident through the lens of political allegiance. It cannot afford a media culture that prioritises narrative speed over factual accuracy. And it cannot afford an Armed Forces that responds to public scrutiny with stonewalling rather than engagement. We mourn those who died at Jilli. The greatest threat to Nigeria’s counter-insurgency effort is not only the enemy in the field. It is the failure of its own institutions to meet this moment with the integrity it demands.