TENSIONS are escalating rapidly between Nigeria and the United States over allegations of Christian genocide in Africa’s most populous country. A day after redesignating Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern”, US President Donald Trump threatened to intervene militarily against Islamist insurgents operating in Nigeria if the killings did not stop. It is a bad omen.
Trump’s threat has triggered shock, alarm and indignation amongst Nigerians. It has reignited a debate about the limits and consequences of foreign involvement in the country’s mounting security crisis.
On this subject, there are other ways the American president can help Nigeria and should let Nigeria be, warts and all.
Earlier during his first term, Trump had designated Nigeria as a CPC. His successor, Joe Biden, expunged Nigeria from the repugnant list in 2021. On the list are Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Russia, China and Pakistan.
In truth, it is evident that Nigeria has not decisively defeated Islamic terrorism as the government claims.
Instead, new terror groups are springing up, from Lakurawa in Sokoto State to Mahmuda in Kwara State.
For Nigeria, Trump’s threat is an uncharted territory. For decades, it has been beset by persistent insurgency, rampant banditry, rabid kidnapping, and widespread criminality. Yet, successive governments largely fail in the critical responsibility of protecting citizens, both Christians and Muslims alike, from the impact of wanton violence.
The Vice-President, Kashim Shettima, estimated 100,000 Nigerian deaths from the Boko Haram jihad.
This failure of the Nigerian state to effectively confront these multifaceted security challenges has created a vacuum that external operators, such as the US, now threaten to fill.
While UN conventions impose a Responsibility to Protect obligation on member states, Trump’s tirade about sending troops with “guns blazing” to deal with Islamic terrorists, especially from a perspective that ignores the full picture, also raises complex questions about sovereignty, diplomacy, and religious harmony.
For 16 years, the Boko Haram insurgency and its offshoots have wrought havoc primarily in the North-East, while bandits in the North-West and other criminal networks have extended the cycle of violence into new regions, leaving millions displaced and thousands of others dead.
Despite numerous military operations and policy initiatives, the Nigerian government’s inability to decisively quell these threats exposes both gaps in capacity and lapses in governance. It is the ordinary citizens, irrespective of faith, who bear the brunt of this insecurity.
The shared suffering across religious lines underscores the urgency for a cohesive national strategy to deal with the crisis and Trump’s threats, which cannot be taken lightly, and must serve as a final wake-up call.
However, Nigeria’s diplomatic disconnect with major global players, including the US, has not helped matters.
Trump is incensed by the killing of 3,100 Christians in Nigeria out of the global figure of 4,476 as a basis for his potential intervention in Nigeria. This is a huge figure. During the Christmas period in 2023, Fulani herders massacred over 150 people in four Plateau State LGAs. It is a bloody pattern that refuses to abate.
The excuse is that the herders are looking for pasture for their animals. In a modern world, that excuse is puerile. The solution is to adopt ranching, the global best practice.
President Bola Tinubu should act quickly. Trump has intervened militarily against Venezuela, bombing its vessels in the Caribbean. In May 2011, the US killed Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, in Abbottabad, Pakistan. In October 2020, US Navy SEALs rescued an American hostage in Sokoto State, killing six of the seven captors.
The absence of active diplomatic representation in key countries at critical junctures stifles dialogue, limits cooperation, and weakens Nigeria’s ability to manage its image and interests abroad.
However, the spectre of a direct US military intervention threatens to exacerbate Nigeria’s fragile religious and ethnic fault lines. It risks transforming a domestic security issue into an international crisis, possibly igniting sectarian tensions and undermining national unity.
If the US sincerely wants to help, it should not be by conducting airstrikes or sending troops, but by providing modern arms and deploying its vast capacity in surveillance and intelligence to help pinpoint insurgents so that Nigerian troops can destroy them.
Before Tinubu assumed the reins of power in 2023, Nigeria had already descended into a pattern of unchecked Islamist attacks that drew international scrutiny. In December 1994, Gideon Akaluka, an Igbo trader, was beheaded in Kano on baseless accusations of blasphemy.
In June 2016, 74-year-old Bridget Agbahime, another trader, was beaten to death in the same city for similar allegations.
In July 2016, Muslim fanatics killed a Christian preacher, Eunice Olawole, 42, in Kubwa, Abuja, while Oluwatoyin Olusesi, a teacher, suffered the same fate at the hands of her pupils in Gombe State.
In May 2022, Deborah Yakubu, a college student, was stoned and burned alive by a mob in Sokoto for blasphemy against Islam.
In each case, the perpetrators faced no meaningful consequences, underscoring a systemic failure in justice and security.
Under Tinubu, Christian-majority states such as Benue, Plateau, and Taraba have endured relentless assaults, resulting in thousands of deaths.
The international community has documented these horrors, imposing on the Tinubu government an urgent obligation to intervene decisively and protect its citizens.
Yet US threats of military action remain unjustified and counterproductive. History shows that American interventions, whether to safeguard national interests or dismantle terrorist networks, have often destabilised target nations further.
Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the US launched a global war on terror, invading Afghanistan in October to oust al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
In March 2003, a US-led coalition invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein over alleged ties to al-Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction.
In 2011, the US participated in NATO-led airstrikes that helped overthrow Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
Starting in 2014, US forces conducted airstrikes and supported operations against ISIS in Syria. Drone campaigns extended to Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
These actions, intended to eradicate terrorism, instead bred chaos. In Afghanistan, the Taliban regained control in 2021 shortly after the US withdrawal, reviving its regime of oppression.
Iraq, post-Saddam, saw the rise of ISIS from the ruins of the invasion. Syria devolved into a protracted civil war, factional strife, and a humanitarian catastrophe.
Libya fractured into rival militias, rampant human rights abuses, mass migration, and institutional collapse. America must avoid dragging Nigeria into this same quagmire of endless instability.
Tinubu, for his part, should de-escalate the tensions. His administration should cease denying these attacks and dismantle the perpetrators with resolve.
Moreover, Tinubu’s delay in appointing new ambassadors after recalling them in 2023 has exacerbated diplomatic isolation, contributing directly to the US’s recent designation of Nigeria as a CPC for religious freedom violations.
Without robust representation abroad, Nigeria forfeits its voice on the global stage. Resolving these internal failures is the path to stability—not inviting foreign intervention.
The two-year diplomatic blackout must be urgently addressed to ensure balanced engagement on security and other issues of national interest.
Tinubu should alter the optics of his administration. At the highest levels, the President, the Vice-President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Deputy Senate President, the Foreign Affairs and Defence ministers are Muslims. A rebalancing might portray Nigeria in a better light.
Not only Tinubu. Governors are vital in the scheme of things. Although the 1999 Constitution avers that Nigeria is a secular state, 12 states in the North defy Section 10 of the document by introducing the Sharia Law.
The Hisbah police destroy beer bottles and other economic assets in the name of Sharia. Christians are killed on charges of blasphemy. Some states subtly restrict access to churches. All this should change.
Instead of attacking Nigeria, Trump should fish out those aiding Islamic terrorism and sanction them.
Tinubu is out of excuses; he should quickly appoint ambassadors.
In the interim, he can enlist eminent ex-diplomats like Bolaji Akinyemi, Emeka Anyaoku and Ibrahim Gambari and former President Olusegun Obasanjo to represent Nigeria in dialogues with the Trump administration.
Tinubu should mandate the new Service Chiefs to frontally tackle insecurity. If there is no result, he should review their appointments.
The single police architecture has failed woefully, and Nigeria’s notoriously flawed political system is catching up with it. Rather than the mindless defections blighting democracy, the political class should sit down and fashion a truly federal constitution that promotes state police and fiscal federalism.
Indeed, the antidote to the rampant insecurity is state police.