A STRIKE AND A CAMPAIGN

 PAT AKEM-VINGIR argues the need to pile relentless pressure on the insurgents

Nigeria should view the December 25, 2025, strikes as a turning point rather than just a headline. Strikes can cause disruption. They can create shock. They can buy time. But insurgencies are not defeated by brief moments. They are defeated by systems—consistent pressure, protected communities, and early intervention by governance. Unfortunately, Nigeria has numerous ungoverned spaces in the North. 

So, this is the point too many spectators overlook: a strike is an event; a campaign is a system.

The “Pinpricks” Line We Keep Forgetting.

There is a line President Barack Obama used in September 2013 that I always remember when people celebrate “one clean strike” as if it concludes anything: “Let me make something clear: The United States military doesn’t do pinpricks.” (whitehouse.gov)

He was not trying to sound tough. He was being strategic. Even a “limited” American strike carries weight, signal, and consequences that smaller militaries often struggle to project. The metaphor holds. A pinprick draws blood. It irritates. It can shock for a moment. But it rarely changes the outcome of a sustained fight.

Irregular warfare has a stubborn rule: the decisive effect is not the strike itself. The decisive effect is what follows—when the dust settles, and the enemy tries to re-form.

Insurgents do not need conventional victory to survive. They need time. They need space. They need the state to become episodic—showing up loudly, briefly, and then disappearing again.

They reconstitute, recruit, relocate, and wait for attention to drift.

December 25: An Event, Not a Campaign

That is why the Christmas Day strikes of December 25, 2025—U.S. action in coordination with Nigerian authorities, aimed at disrupting militant targets in the North-West—should be understood soberly: as an event, not a campaign. (The Guardian)

The aftermath also delivered a warning Nigerians should never take lightly: do not touch debris or pick up suspicious metal because unexploded ordnance can kill the curious and the desperate. Reports in the weeks after raised concerns about unexploded munitions, civilian exposure, and the kind of harm that can undo legitimacy faster than any press statement can rebuild it. (The Washington Post)

That warning is not “PR.” It is battlefield hygiene. Battlefield hygiene is part of civilian protection. Civilian protection underpins legitimacy. And legitimacy in COIN is not charity—it is combat power.

What Strikes Can Do—and What They Cannot

Yes, precision strikes can disrupt camps, unsettle command nodes, and interrupt supply rhythms. A strike can force movement, scramble communications, and create short-term confusion.

Even when executed precisely, pinprick strikes rarely defeat insurgents on their own. If a strike is not followed by a disciplined sequence, it becomes a pause the enemy can absorb — not a pivot the state can exploit.

The Boring Work That Breaks Insurgents

What must come next is not glamorous. It is not suitable for television. It is the relentless grind that suppresses insurgents: persistent pressure. Tight coordination. Credible intelligence. Visible protection for communities. Intense operations. Killing insurgents. It involves applying relentless pressure on insurgents. 

The aim is not to create drama. The aim is to deny sanctuary—to remove the conditions enabling armed actors to rest, train, tax, extort, indoctrinate, recalibrate and return.

Clear–Hold–Build: The Anatomy of Lasting Gains

This is where classic counterinsurgency logic must be stated without apology: Clear–Hold–Build is not a theory. It is the anatomy of lasting gains.

The U.S. Army/Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual (FM 3-24) made this logic widely accessible: security and legitimacy are inseparable, and durable gains require more than raids and strikes. (The International Criminal Court Forum)

CLEAR means more than hitting a target. It means breaking the armed presence and dismantling the local machinery of coercion—routes, recruiters, couriers, caches, extortion points—so that the enemy is not merely displaced but dislocated.

HOLD is where many campaigns fail because it demands persistence: presence that stays, response that communities can trust, and security that is not seasonal. Clear and withdraw, and you create a vacuum. Vacuums are invitations that insurgents accept more quickly than bureaucracy can respond.

BUILD is not “soft” work. It is strategic denial—justice that shows up, dispute resolution that works, protected markets, reopened routes, and credible consequences for criminality. When governance arrives late, extremists sell themselves as “order,” and that narrative becomes recruitment fuel long after the last crater cools. For example, in parts of Sokoto State, the Lakurawa operate as a shadow government, taxing villagers and enforcing rules on beards and dress codes.

So the real question after December 25 is not whether the strike was loud. The question is whether Nigeria implements a hard handover architecture that sustains pressure, without outsourcing sovereignty, legitimacy, or the responsibility for protecting Nigerians.

Nigeria may welcome external support, but it cannot surrender ownership of its security problem—or its strategy. The recent U.S. involvement has underscored the sensitivity of sovereignty, legitimacy, and the quality of intelligence in such cooperation. And we should not be ashamed to seek help when needed, after all, the US supports Israel, which has more equipped armed forces than Nigeria. 

Measure what citizens can feel

That architecture is measurable. Not by body counts alone—because body counts can flatter and still fail—but by outcomes ordinary citizens can feel:

Route freedom: Can people travel without paying the terror tax?

Market activity: Are trade corridors functioning, or hostage to fear?

Community safety: Are kidnappings falling, no-go areas shrinking, farms reopening?

Trust signals: Do communities report threats early, or remain silent because they expect abandonment?

Nigeria must be brutally honest: aerial disruption without sustained ground security and governance follow-through is not a strategy. It is punctuation. It inserts a loud comma into a narrative that the enemy is still writing.

Tempo: Consistency Beats Spectacle

I have seen what manpower strain looks like. I have watched units stretch thin across too many tasks. I have observed good officers and soldiers burn out because demands were constant while the systems that should support them—equipment readiness, intelligence fusion, mobility, rapid response, welfare—lagged behind.

Any serious “Hold” phase must be resourced, not merely announced. It requires trained personnel, functional technology, operational logistics, and real-world coordination, not merely formal documentation.

In irregular war, tempo matters. If pressure is intermittent, insurgents adapt. If pressure is sustained, insurgents fracture. If pressure is sustained and paired with protection and justice, insurgents lose the oxygen that keeps them alive: fear, silence, and community captivity.

This is also why civilian protection is not a human-rights add-on; it is a strategic necessity. When civilians are harmed—by stray munitions, unexploded ordnance, retaliation, or indiscriminate force—insurgent propaganda writes itself.

Recent reports on the December 2025 strikes highlighted these legitimacy risks: uncertainty about targeting, unexploded munitions, and civilian impact that can deepen resentment and expand recruitment.

What Nigerians Should Demand Now

First, sustained pressure—not episodic punishment. Not “we struck once, therefore we are winning,” but “we are denying sanctuary week after week.”

Second, real jointness. Air, land, intelligence, police, local structures, and civil governance must operate as a single campaign—because insurgency is not a single-domain problem.

Third, legitimacy as combat power. Protect civilians, control debris hazards, communicate clearly, compensate fairly when harm occurs, and enforce discipline. The state must look like a guardian, not a visitor.

Fourth, Hold and Build that arrive early, not as afterthoughts. Security without governance is fragile. Governance without security is a fantasy. The two must move together.

Finally, metrics that matter: fewer kidnappings, fewer safe havens, more open roads, more normal life. That is what victory looks like in a citizen’s eyes.

A Pivot, Or Just Another Loud Moment?

Let me end where I began. Obama’s “pinpricks” line was not a celebration of violence; it was an argument about strategy and consequence. (whitehouse.gov) A strike can be necessary. A strike can be justified. A strike can even be brilliantly executed.

But a strike is still only a strike.

If Christmas Day 2025 becomes a standalone episode, it will fade into the long Nigerian archive of loud moments followed by quiet drift. If it becomes a pivot—followed by a Nigerian-owned campaign of sustained pressure, protection of communities, denial of sanctuary, and governance that shows up early—then it can mark a turning point. And we need that turning point urgently.

In irregular war, the victor is rarely the side that makes the loudest noise. The true victor is the side that keeps showing up tomorrow—again—and again—and stays. This, we must do; Nigeria must win. 

Major General Akem-Vingir(rtd), PhD, is a Nigeria-based security analyst and former senior military officer with experience spanning command, logistics, investigations, and counterinsurgency operations.