The Presidency has hit back at former Vice President Atiku Abubakar for condemning last weekend's air raid on Jilli, insisting the site is no longer a market but a terrorist logistics hub.
Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Media and Public Communication, Sunday Dare, said on Monday that the Nigerian Air Force strike was "targeted, intelligence-led" and accused Atiku of twisting facts for political gain. Atiku had earlier described the bombing as a "devastating failure" that killed traders and demanded national outrage. Dare countered that insurgents now control the area once known as Jilli Market and use it to move arms and plan attacks. "For Atiku Abubakar to ignore this context and frame a legitimate military action as an attack on civilians is not only misleading, it is reckless," the presidential aide stated.
Dare further accused the former vice-president of double standards, noting that Atiku regularly faults the government for not doing enough on insecurity yet objects when troops act on intelligence. "What remains difficult to reconcile is the contradiction. He consistently criticizes the government for failing to curb insecurity, yet when decisive, intelligence-driven action is taken, he is quick to condemn it. That is not principled opposition, it is opportunism," Dare said. The air raid took place on Saturday along the Borno-Yobe border and the military has yet to release its own casualty assessment.
The spat exposes the awkward space Nigerian politicians occupy when war meets the campaign trail: Atiku wants to appear as the humane protector of civilians, yet the same electorate he courts will punish any candidate who looks soft on jihadists. By seizing on the word "market," he gambled that the public memory of Jilli as a trading centre would outweigh the reality that insurgents now tax and arm themselves there.
Globally, this is the latest episode in a decade-long pattern across the Sahel: air power keeps armies from losing ground, but every civilian casualty—or claim of one—feeds the insurgent propaganda mill and strains democratic consent for the war. Western drones, Nigerian jets, French helicopters and now Russian mercenaries all face the same asymmetry: a single errant bomb can erase the perceived gains of a hundred successful sorties.
For Abuja, the stakes are higher than optics. Each allegation of dead civilians pushes donor nations to demand stricter rules of engagement and complicates the already cash-strapped procurement of replacement aircraft and precision munitions. If the military cannot prove the strike hit fighters alone, the ensuing backlash could stall the $1 billion foreign credit line approved last year for surveillance planes and rockets.
Watch whether the Chief of Defence Staff orders the release of drone footage or radar logs. A quick dump of imagery could silence critics, but hesitation will signal that the footage either does not exist or shows something messier than the Presidency is willing to admit.
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