The incidence of air strikes hitting civilian populations by accident, killing and maiming victims, has become too recurrent for comfort.
The sheer magnitude of such incautious accidents and the resultant number of civilian casualties stick out like a sore thumb against the professional image of the air component of our otherwise gallant Armed Forces whose officers and men have been making a lot of sacrifices to safeguard the territorial integrity of the nation.
Our troops have been commendably and tenaciously holding the ground against the violent militants that have for years held many parts of the country by the balls. But something must be done quickly to put paid to this inglorious side of our anti-terror war to at least minimize the needless civilian carnage.
The latest in what has almost become a tailspin occurred penultimate Sunday in Kurigi village, Kontokoro District of Mariah Local Government Area of Niger State, where an air operation carried out by the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) allegedly killed at least six civilians by accident.
According to a statement issued on Wednesday by NAF’s Director of Public Relations and Information, Ehimen Ejodame, the authorities have already ordered an immediate investigation into the allegations, which he described as “grave and deserving of urgent attention.”
Ejodame said in response to the reported incident in Kurigi, the Air Force has activated a Civilian Harm Accident and Investigation (CHAI) team to conduct a comprehensive and independent assessment of the circumstances surrounding the operation.
The investigation, the Air Force assured, will be guided by the principles of accountability, responsibility, and transparency, with findings expected to inform corrective actions where necessary.
The statement added that “The Nigerian Air Force remains unwavering in its resolve to take responsibility where required, implement necessary improvements, and safeguard innocent lives, while continuing to defend the nation with professionalism, restraint, and respect for the trust placed in it by the Nigerian people”.
The NAF has always fessed up to its missteps and it is understood that in a bid to stop, or at least mitigate civilian casualties in its air strikes, it put in place some years back a Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP), a framework designed to integrate civilian protection measures into every stage of its air operations.
The NAF spokesman alluded to this, saying that the Air Force has over the past year intensified the implementation of its CHMR-AP to minimize civilian casualties in its air strikes.
“The CHMR-AP has strengthened operational planning, training, and safeguards aimed at minimising civilian casualties during military engagements, particularly in areas affected by insurgency, banditry, and other security challenges”, he explained.
However, this safeguard does not appear to be working as effectively as it should be because accidental air strikes have continued to occur, claiming the lives of many innocent civilians and injuring others.
The nation’s military has been battling an Islamist insurgency for the past 16 years in the Northeast. Fighting in the region has resulted in the death of tens of thousands of people and the displacement of nearly two million others, leading to a humanitarian crisis in the states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.
Banditry joined the fray to exacerbate the security maelstrom since the second term of former President Mohammadu Buhari (now late), leading to massive kidnappings-for-ransom and mindless killings in the northwest and north central parts of the country.
The air component of the anti-terror war has seen a significant population of the insurgents and bandits neutralized. But many innocent civilians in the various theatres of war have also fallen to the hail of bombs that accidentally rained on wrong targets in those places.
The statistics are simply unnerving. For example, according to documented incidents, between 2010, when the anti-terror war started, and 2023, about 14 out of the 83 airstrikes carried out by the NAF have reportedly killed 399 civilians and injured 310.
Air strikes are said to be the second most injurious lethal weapon that has accidentally caused grievous harm to civilians in the country after improvised explosive devices, which have caused 89% (9,649) of civilian casualties within the period, across 439 incidents.
The most affected states by these accidents are believed to be Borno and Kaduna, with 376 civilians killed and injured in NAF air strikes in Borno, and 160 in Kaduna. Other states where civilians have been harmed in NAF strikes are Zamfara (82 civilian casualties), Adamawa (35), Yobe (32), Katsina (14), Niger (6), and Nasarawa (4).
The villages appear to account for the majority of NAF strikes, which have resulted in civilian harm, causing 242 civilian casualties across nine incidents (168 killed, 74 injured).
But a staggering 285 civilians were affected in just one accidental strike on an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in 2017 (115 killed, 170 injured). The tragedy occurred in January of that year when a jet accidentally struck the IDP camp, accommodating 40,000 people who had been displaced by insurgency in a Borno town near the Cameroonian border.
Specifically, nine persons were reported to have died and 23 others injured on September 16, 2021 after a NAF jet mistakenly fired on a village in Yobe State while targeting Boko Haram militants in the area.
A most horrendous accident also happened in the evening of Sunday, December 3, 2023 in Kaduna when at least 85 civilians were reportedly killed in an air strike during a Muslim religious celebration. More than 60 seriously injured victims were hospitalized.
The airstrike happened when villagers from Tundun Biri, Kaduna State, gathered
to celebrate Maulud, the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. A military drone on a routine counterterrorism operation was said to have mistaken their movement patterns for those of bandits, following which an airstrike was called in.
The accidental drone strike caused the gorge to rise. It stirred a nationwide obloquy, as the military received a lot of public roasting for the accident.
The then Chief of Army Staff, Lt.Gen. Taoreed Lagbaja (now late) apologised profusely to the residents and paid a condolence visit to the village.
He expressed regret about “the unfortunate mishap”, describing it as “a very disheartening occurrence.”
Gen. Lagbaja, explaining the circumstances of the accident, said troops were carrying out aerial patrols when they observed a group of people and “wrongly analysed and misinterpreted their pattern of activities” to be similar to that of the bandits, before the drone strike.
The incident particularly caused serious emotional upset because the casualties were mostly children, women and the elderly.
An eyewitness said there were two attacks. He said a bomb was first dropped at the venue of the religious festival. “It destroyed and killed our people, including women and children,” he bemoaned.
He added: “The second bomb was dropped on some of us who went to bring the bodies of the victims of the first blast. We lost about 34 people in my family alone and we have 66 injured people in the hospital.”
Another eyewitness, who saw the aftermath of the bombing, recalled that dead bodies were strewn all over the place.
“Some women died holding their babies; some of the babies survived, while others died along with their mothers,” she said in an emotion-laden voice.
Again, in January, 2025, at least 16 civilians in Zamfara State were also mowed down in a military air strike, apparently after being mistaken for criminal gangs.
The victims, according to residents, were members of local vigilante groups and civilians defending themselves from notorious bandits, who have been terrorizing the communities, kidnapping people for ransom. The strikes targeted militant gangs in Zurmi and Maradun areas.
The military later acknowledged conducting air strikes, which it said had dealt “a decisive blow to bandits terrorising villages in the area”. The NAF said it was investigating “reports of vigilante losses”.
It said in a statement: “While the operation successfully eliminated several bandits and led to the recovery of some kidnap victims, the NAF views with grave concern reports of the loss of civilian lives in the course of the operation.”
A local told a news agency that the civilians were returning to their villages after chasing away bandits when they were bombed. The villagers, he said, “recovered 16 bodies from the attacks and took several other people with severe injuries to the hospital.”
Does the frequency of these troubling accidental airstrikes presuppose that enough Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) exercises are probably not being conducted before the strikes are launched?
According to experts, in military operational terms, ISR is the coordinated acquisition, processing, and provision of accurate, timely information to support commander decisions, enhance situational awareness, and facilitate battlefield success. It is a mission undertaken to obtain, by visual observation or other detection methods, information about the activities and resources of an enemy.
The ultimate aim of ISR in air operations is to achieve precision strikes with minimal errors or mistakes. So, it involves a lot of repeatedly espying the particular targets to ferret out adequate and relevant information about them. That is why airstrikes are usually not launched in a hurry.
Some of the operational challenges war pilots may face in combat, however, include when the need arises to urgently take down terror cells in response to emergency intells, leaving no luxury of a thorough ISR(as it happened in Tundun Biri village, Kaduna State, on December 3, 2023, as cited above) and situations where targets deliberately surround themselves with kidnap victims as human shields to stymie attacks against them.
We recognize some of these operational challenges in prosecuting the anti-terror war. However, in view of the virtual indispensability of air power to defeating terror, we urge the relevant authorities to strike a balance and conduct more thorough or painstaking ISR whenever time permits before launching out.
We cannot continue to dissipate innocent souls in the name of fighting terror. Let us bear in mind the time-tested dictum that it is better for a thousand criminals to escape than to waste an innocent soul.
Besides, the relevant authorities may have to review the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP), which is designed to safeguard civilians against accidental hits during air strikes, to make it more workable.
In the final analysis, however, achieving the desired precisions in airstrikes is more of technology. An apt lesson can be drawn from the recent airstrikes conducted by US in Nigeria. On the night of December 25, 2025, the US African Command (AFRICOM) hit two Islamic State (IS) sites in the Bauni forest in Tangaza, Sokoto State, with over a dozen Tomahawk missiles.
In addition, 16 munitions were fired by MQ-9 Reaper drones at fighters attempting to infiltrate Nigeria from the Sahel. The strikes hit targets and reportedly buried thousands of the militants alive in their sleep as they were caught completely off guard.
It is significant to note that apart from the debris of the munitions that mistakenly hit Ijagbo and Offa towns in Kwara State, destroying some buildings, no civilian casualties were recorded, in spite of the relatively massive weapons deployed in that operation.
The difference maker, as we said, is technology. This is why we encourage the Federal Government to continue to collaborate with the US and other technologically advanced nations to continue to acquire more modern war capabilities that will make our military more sophisticated technology-wise.
The immediate gain will be our capability to conduct more accurate ISR, strike targets with more precisions and record less civilian casualties.
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