By Kingsley Omonobi
The Defence Headquarters, DHQ, on Monday said the recent disclosure by the United States on the killing of 199 jihadists and the recovery of a massive cache of ISIS arms, ammunition and electronic equipment was not a fresh operation but the declassification of a successful joint Nigeria-US counter-terrorism mission carried out in May 2026.
Director of Defence Information, Major General Samaila Uba, told Vanguard that the operation had already been announced by the Nigerian military, adding that the latest details released by the US were previously classified.
“This is not a new operation. We have previously communicated our highly successful joint operations in May. What you are hearing are some declassified information concerning our previous operation being given out now. However, Nigeria-US joint operations and collaboration are very much on course,” he said.
The clarification followed comments by the US Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, who described the mission as one of the most successful counter-terrorism operations undertaken by the current US administration.
Gorka added that the operation yielded the largest cache of enemy electronic equipment recovered since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
“We needed an extra plane to bring home all the electronic material that we captured in those camps. The haul was three times bigger than any enemy electronics haul since 9-11. That is priceless because now our experts are taking apart all of that information, looking at how ISIS is communicating with each other,” he stated.
He said the intelligence recovered would strengthen efforts to dismantle ISIS networks, stressing that the administration had adopted a more aggressive counter-terrorism strategy. “We are not watching and waiting. We are dealing death to bad people,” he said, adding that extremist groups continued to exploit ungoverned spaces in Africa to regroup.
The renewed Nigeria-US security partnership followed a high-level visit to Washington by the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, in November 2025, leading to the establishment of a Joint Working Group on Security and subsequent joint operations against terrorist enclaves in the North-East. Gorka maintained that sustained cooperation remained critical, saying, “Terrorists need ungoverned space. They need somewhere where they can hang out and rebuild. Africa has a lot of ungoverned space. That’s why I focus a lot of my attention on that region of the world where ISIS is trying to reconstitute a caliphate.”
