The Presidency has addressed what it described as the “needless controversy” trailing the reported elimination of senior ISWAP commander Abu-Bilal Al-Manuki, insisting that the latest Nigerian-American joint operation was a validated, intelligence-driven success.
President Bola Tinubu’s spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, confirmed on Saturday that Al-Manuki, also known as Abu-Mainok or Abu-Bilal Al-Minuki—was killed in an overnight precision strike in the Lake Chad Basin.
Onanuga directly responded to sceptics who questioned the authenticity of the claim, stating that such reactions were “premature, unwarranted and not grounded in the full operational context.”
The Presidency acknowledged that Al-Manuki’s name had previously appeared on lists of commanders reportedly killed in 2024 during operations around the Birnin Gwari forest axis in Kaduna State.
Onanuga clarified that the earlier listing was “a case of mistaken identity or misattribution in the fog of sustained counterinsurgency operations,” adding that the Birnin Gwari theatre was “never within Al-Manuki’s established operational sphere.”
Drawing a sharp contrast between the earlier error and the latest operation, Onanuga said the strike was executed with “a significantly higher degree of precision, target validation, and multi-source intelligence confirmation.”
He further stated that “multiple layers of verification were applied before authorisation of the final kinetic action,” concluding that “this time, there is no ambiguity.”
Addressing critics who pointed to past cases where terrorist leaders like Abubakar Shekau were wrongly declared killed, Onanuga cautioned against using historical anomalies to dismiss every military operation.
He noted that even in the global campaign against ISIS, early reports of the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi were later proven incorrect, with his actual death confirmed four years later. He argued that such cases highlighted “not failure but rather the evolving, often imperfect nature of intelligence gathering in asymmetric warfare.”
Onanuga warned that undermining credible joint operations, particularly those involving Nigerian forces and international partners, risked weakening public confidence in ongoing counterterrorism efforts.
He stressed that verification processes were “deliberately stringent and multi-layered before public confirmation is made.”
While acknowledging that public scrutiny remained “an essential part of democratic accountability,” Onanuga noted that premature dismissal of military claims could “inadvertently undermine operational morale and strategic messaging.”
The Presidential spokesman concluded by reaffirming the military’s position, stating that the operation represented “a validated, intelligence-driven success” and that military authorities were now “100 per cent certain” that Al-Manuki had been eliminated.
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