Tuesday 14 April, 2026

The Nigerian Air Force killed over a hundred people on Saturday. It called them a military target.

On Saturday afternoon, four Nigerian Air Force jets flew over a weekly market along the Borno-Yobe border and opened fire.

The market at Jilli sits between Gubio in Borno and Geidam in Yobe. People were there to buy and sell animals. Traders. Farmers. Children with their parents. It was market day.

The jets were hunting Boko Haram.

When the strikes stopped, at least a hundred people were dead. Some accounts put the total closer to two hundred when the injured who died overnight are counted. Amnesty International confirmed the figure, saying they had photographs of the victims. "They include children," said Isa Sanusi, Amnesty's Nigeria director. At least twenty-three of the injured were taken to Geidam General Hospital. More went to Maiduguri.

The Nigerian Air Force put out its first statement. It said the operation hit a "terrorist enclave and logistics hub." It described a successful strike. It mentioned motorcycles in restricted areas. It said nothing about a market. It said nothing about bodies.

By Sunday, the Air Force had ordered a fact-finding team to "proceed to the location." By Monday, President Tinubu was meeting the country's security chiefs behind closed doors at the Presidential Villa.

Here is what you need to understand about this.

Nigeria's military has killed civilians in airstrike misfires at least six times since 2017. The Associated Press has counted over 500 civilian deaths in those incidents across nine years. The sequence is the same every time. An intelligence report identifies a target. The Air Force is briefed. The jets fly. Something goes wrong. Bad coordinates. A market where insurgents were rumoured to have gathered the previous week. People die. The military issues a statement describing a successful operation. Rights groups publish a counter-account. An investigation is announced. Nothing changes.

After the 2017 Rann camp bombing, which killed over 100 displaced civilians, the military investigated itself. Nobody was held responsible. After the 2021 Yobe airstrike that killed civilians, the military investigated itself. Nobody was held responsible.

At Jilli, the Borno State governor offered his own explanation. He said the market had been officially closed five years ago and had become a logistics base for insurgents. If that is true, the military had five years to establish what the market had become. They chose Saturday afternoon to act.

The Nigerian government's spokesperson told Bloomberg that the market was a "legitimate military target because it has been turned into a logistics and trading hub by Boko Haram." The statement did not address the hundred people who were there buying goats.

What this means for ordinary Nigerians is not abstract.

Nigeria's northeast has been the site of a 17-year insurgency. More than 40,000 people have been killed. About two million people remain displaced. Ordinary Nigerians in Borno and Yobe have spent years trapped between ISWAP's violence and the military operations designed to stop it. They are not safe from the insurgency. And on Saturday, they were not safe from the airstrike meant to end it.

The family whose relative was at Jilli market to buy livestock will not be comforted by coordinates. They will not be comforted by statements about logistics hubs. They buried someone who went to buy an animal on a Saturday and did not come home.

What makes the Jilli strike different from the previous ones is the current context. The US embassy in Abuja authorised voluntary departure of non-emergency staff on April 8, citing a deteriorating security situation. It placed twenty-three Nigerian states on Level 4 Do Not Travel. That was before Saturday. After Saturday, Nigeria is defending a confirmed mass casualty event to international media while running an emergency security meeting at the Presidential Villa.

There's an investigation underway. The Air Force says so. The pattern says the investigation will conclude that targeting protocols were followed, that the intelligence was credible, and that improvements will be made.

The pattern also says it will happen again.

The question every family in Borno and Yobe is sitting with right now is simple. If the military cannot tell the difference between a market and a terrorist enclave after seventeen years of operations in this same corridor, what are the conditions under which you are safe? Not safe from ISWAP. Safe from both.

Nobody in Abuja has answered that question. Nobody in Abuja is being asked.