The move follows a surprise series of US air strikes on Christmas Day targeting Islamic State-linked militants in north-western Nigeria, and comes amid rising concern in Washington over the spread of jihadist networks from the Sahel into coastal West African states.
Lieutenant General John Brennan, a senior Pentagon official, said the US was intensifying its partnership with Nigeria while maintaining limited security engagement with junta-led governments in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.
“We’ve gotten a lot more aggressive and are working with partners to target, kinetically, the threats, mainly ISIS,” Brennan said during an interview on the sidelines of the inaugural US-Nigeria Joint Working Group meeting held in Abuja last week.
He described the jihadist threat across Africa as interconnected, stretching from the Horn of Africa to West Africa.
“From Somalia to Nigeria, the problem set is connected. So we’re trying to take it apart and then provide partners with the information they need,” he said.
The renewed cooperation comes after months of diplomatic pressure from Washington over escalating violence in Nigeria, particularly in the north and north-west.
Trump’s interest in Nigeria
President Donald Trump has repeatedly framed the crisis as the mass killing of Christians, a characterisation rejected by Nigerian authorities and many independent analysts, who argue the country’s conflicts are driven by a complex mix of insurgency, banditry, criminality, and local grievances.
That tension was evident at the Abuja meeting, where senior US State Department official Allison Hooker urged Nigerian authorities to protect Christian communities in a speech that did not reference Muslim victims of armed groups.
Nigeria is roughly evenly split between a predominantly Muslim north and a largely Christian south, with religious identity remaining politically sensitive.
Brennan sought to play down fears of religious bias, saying US intelligence support would not be limited to any single group. He added that Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP, remained the most concerning jihadist organisation operating in Nigeria, particularly in the north-east, where an insurgency led by Boko Haram and its splinter factions has persisted since 2009.
Following the Christmas Day strikes in Sokoto State, US assistance will focus on intelligence sharing to support Nigerian air operations, both in the north-west and in the north-east, Brennan said.
The strikes themselves targeted militants linked to Islamic State Sahel Province, a group traditionally active in Niger but increasingly feared to be pushing southwards into Nigeria and other coastal West African countries.
However, their immediate impact remains unclear as journalists have been unable to independently verify casualties, and Nigeria’s information minister, Mohammed Idris, described the operation last week as “still a work in progress.”
Beyond Nigeria, Brennan confirmed that the US continues to share intelligence with military authorities in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, despite the collapse of formal security partnerships following a wave of coups between 2020 and 2023.
“We have actually shared information with some of them to attack key terrorist targets,” he said, adding that communication with Sahelian militaries continues even without official agreements.
Brennan also ruled out the establishment of new US military bases in West Africa, following the closure of American drone operations in Niger after the ruling junta ordered US forces to leave.
“We’re not in the market to create a drone base anywhere. We are much more focused on getting capability to the right place at the right time and then leaving,” he said.
For Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and a key regional power, the deepening partnership underscores its growing strategic importance in Washington’s recalibrated Africa security strategy, as Islamic State-linked groups adapt and expand across the continent.
