The United States has pulled back many of its troops in Nigeria following the May operation that killed the second-in-command of ISIS, Abu-Bilal al-Minuki in the Lake Chad Basin.
Commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), Dagvin Anderson, announced the development on Thursday at a press briefing Luanda, Angola, after the conclusion of the 2026 African chiefs of defence conference.
He disclosed that the United States, would however, retain its intelligence partnership with Nigeria.
This is coming on the heels of a recent disclosure by the US Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council, Sebastian Gorka.
He claimed that American forces recovered the largest cache of terrorist electronic materials since the 11 September 2001 attacks during a recent counterterrorism operation against Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) in North-east, Nigeria.
This came to light in a video record of an interview with the chief executive officer (CEO) of PragerU, Marissa Streit. PraherU is an American nonprofit media organisation that produces conservative educational and opinion content.
While highlighting what he described as major successes in the Trump administration’s counterterrorism campaign, Gorka said, “I watched our operators kill 199 jihadis in one operation.
“That is the biggest neutralisation of enemy killed in action since September the 11th—199 jihadists who will not harm Americans again.”
The senior counterterrorism official said the intelligence recovered from the operation was even more significant, stressing that US intelligence experts were already examining the materials for valuable information.
“From that raid, 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,” Gorka said.
In the main, the AFRICOM commander, who spoke on the security challenges in Africa and the US approach to supporting partners without external interference, cited the operation that killed Al-Minuki as an example.
“One quick example of not having external interference is I think the partnership that we’ve shown recently with Nigeria, where Nigeria’s a very capable and large country – it’s got a strong economy; it’s got a large, educated population; it’s got a very capable military,” Anderson said.
“But there are things that we have learned in the counterterrorist fight over several years that we were able to assist and integrate with them to help them with their intelligence and help with the intelligence sharing that eventually led to a cooperative effort to where we were able to bring some unique capabilities that the US brings and be able to prosecute together the number two leader within the ISIS or Daesh organisation who is responsible for much of the – their global operations, their global media, and their recruiting.
“And so that operation in the Lake Chad Basin of Nigeria not only helped the countries in that immediate region; it also helps countries globally as that disrupts the ISIS network.
“And so, we have withdrawn much of our forces that were just there for that operation but are continuing the partnership that Nigeria has asked for to help continue with the intelligence sharing and the understanding that’s necessary to be able to prosecute these difficult tasks.”
Anderson said the operation significantly degraded ISIS’ leadership in Nigeria and globally.
He added that Nigeria has been “very active” since the May operation, working to eliminate terrorists’ self-sufficientcy.
