Beyond consent: The United States’ Christmas Day 2025 airstrikes in Nigeria and the reconfiguration of African security authority

This article examines the United States' Christmas Day 2025 airstrikes against Islamic State-affiliated militants in northwest Nigeria to analyse evolving patterns of external counterterrorism engagement and the exercise of security authority in African states. It argues that the strikes are not exceptional but suggests a broader pattern in how external kinetic force is embedded within domestic security governance through cooperative security relationships. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of official statements and authoritative media reporting, the article shows how episodic external strikes, undertaken with host-state cooperation, reconfigure how authority over the use of force is exercised, justified, and normalised. This dynamic is conceptualized as Reconfigured Security Authority, understood as an emerging configuration in which authority is operationalised through cooperation, coordination, and partnership rather than explicit juridical articulation of consent or formal legal mandate. Legitimacy is therefore constructed through cooperation-centred discourse and routinised practice, even where public articulation of consent remains limited. While such arrangements may enhance short-term counterterrorism capacity, they also generate governance challenges, including the diffusion of responsibility, reduced visibility of oversight, and the privileging of militarised responses over preventive and governance-centred approaches. By shifting analytical attention from whether consent exists to how authority is exercised and legitimised in practice.