The offer by President Donald Trump to assist to drive out terrorists and their sponsors, after designating Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), on October 31, 2025, has elicited a volley of reactions. They come in different shades, from the belligerent to the uncritical and the laughable. In the main, the critical point is missed: that we’re responsible for our folly.
One television analyst, purported to be a professor, was most incomprehensible. According to him, President Trump threat was designed to prevent President Tinubu’s return in 2027. When it comes to the battlefield, he said Nigerians, by themselves, would meet the U.S. army and crush it. He had even gone ahead to allot graves to the imaginary enemies. His outpouring encapsulated the meaningless and deathly rants of Abubakar Shekau, the foremost Boko Haram leader, before he was exterminated.
In the absence of a convincing and harmonious response by the Nigerian authorities, different layers of spokespersons, including terrorism sympathisers, regime defenders, religious bigots, contractors and politicians, unleashed themselves in the media, to mouth whatever tickled their palates.
Many are still living in self-denial, despite the evidence of calculated and deliberate killings in the Plateau, Benue and Southern Kaduna, which are predominant Christian communities. The petitioners who took their afflictions to Mr. Trump aren’t dumb; they did not go to the U.S. Congress with empty hands.
It is troubling therefore, that instead of discussing reparation, otherwise knowledgeable commentators are still disaggregating the identities of the victims, whether or not the numbers are sufficient to activate the December, 9, 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Long after the U.S. had gathered concrete evidence and is set to intervene, not a few of Tinubu’s ministers are still denying the obvious.
Last week, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Yussuf Tuggar insisted that, “the Nigerian State is secular in both structure and function; policies and institutions operate without religious bias, ensuring that Christians and Muslims hold leadership positions across all levels.”
But where was the minister when candidate Tinubu foisted a Muslim-Muslim ticket on the country in 2023? That was a clear violation of Section 14 (3) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, and a disregard for the Christian community. Does the minister have an idea of the PR mileage a balanced presidential ticket would fetch the government at a time like this?
Mr. Dele Alake, the Minister in charge of Solid Minerals, said, “when terrorists go to attack, they don’t attack because of religion. They attack for different reasons, largely economic. Some may be political, but largely economic.” Really? What was the economic motive for the killing of 40 worshippers at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State, on June 5, 2022. Were the terrorists in Owo out to sell moin moin; or they went to prospect for solid minerals? Clearly ludicrous.
The Aviation Minister, Festus Keyamo, was careful, knowing that spoken words have consequences. He stated: “President Trump, the Nigerian people ask for deep and sincere understanding from your government at this point. We ask for support, cooperation and collaboration to confront this menace of terrorism.”
The Information and Orientation Minister, Mohammed Idris, said: “Nigeria faces long-standing security challenges that have impacted Christians and Muslims alike. Any narrative suggesting that the Nigerian state is failing to take action is based on faulty data.”
So, when not less than 350,000 of your citizens are killed by terrorists in 15 years, and the terrorists have spread from North-east to North-west, and are now in Niger and Kwara, killing more people, what other data do you need to agree that government is failing to take action?
Let the ministers and spokesmen of this government not compound issues for the country, in their failed efforts to minimise tragedy and twist facts. They make a mockery of the serious quagmire the country is in. Their reactionary and counter-productive narrations have never helped the government to admit failure and do things differently. They contributed to the disasters of the Muhammadu Buhari years.
The issue is less about President Trump and the United States’ meddlesomeness, and more that the generation of leaders has failed to lead Nigeria well. They failed to honour and uphold the agreements that were signed when Nigeria was created in 1960.
The country has deviated from the plan of the founding fathers, which was to build an amalgamation of tribes and peoples into a Nigeria where no man is oppressed and no religion is made to feel privileged and others tolerated.
They worked out the terms into the 1960 Constitution and improved on it in 1963, to protect all citizens, particularly minority populations.
Therefore, the conversation that Trump’s threat has triggered should be on how to return to the template the elders negotiated, of a country where there is equality of all citizens irrespective of religion and tribe. The Federal Government is complicit in the systematic oppression of the minority people in the country, especially in the North.
The location of state institutions was rigged to favour larger ethnic groups and their religion. The people of Kaduna South can testify to this. Data has confirmed this too, that most Federal Government institutions were located in the Central and North Senatorial districts of Kaduna State. This has implications for employment opportunities and cohesion.
The same thing has happened in Niger State, where the Gbagyi have been systematically marginalised. Their original homelands have been diffused by the big ethnic groups. In 1999, Dr. Shem Nuhu Zagbayi was deputy to former Governor Abdulkadir Kure. The notion of power sharing then suggested it was possible for a Gbagyi to be governor. But that has since changed.
For the Gbagyi to thrive politically, they’ve demanded a state that is homogeneous, instead of being dispersed among Niger, Kaduna and the FCT. Legend has it that Gbagyi were the indigenous settlers in Kaduna town. Political domination by their larger neighbours pushed them to the periphery, just the same way their lands were appropriated by the government in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Their kingdoms have been renamed as emirates and they have been dominated and their originality neutralised. Very few people speak for them.
Beyond the physical genocide, the softer versions are carried out systematically and conventionally. The Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah, lamented last Thursday, that getting public tertiary institutions in the North to allocate places of worship for Christian students is difficult.
It would really help if tertiary institutions rise above base prejudices, particularly religious intolerance. But there is intolerance everywhere, not just in the North. The Nigerian State has weaponised religion as a tool to access power, influence and to dominate.
The creation of local government councils is another area of historical inequity. The disparity between Lagos’ 20 constitutionally recognised council areas and Kano’s 44 is a huge gap not justified by the close population of the two states. Even the difference in land mass cannot account for the differential. That is yet to be addressed. As governor of Lagos, Tinubu forcefully created more councils but he met an obstacle in the Constitution.
This is the time to reopen a conversation on how to remedy the distortions that plague this peculiar federal system, where, each group is wired to grab and snatch something for itself, rather than seek the good of all. Those who recite the cliché that the unity and corporate existence of the country remain non-negotiable are talking to themselves. Nigeria was negotiated to adhere to a constitutional pattern.
Now may be the time to return to that pattern, where it was agreed that though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood the country shall stand. To deny that the country is in a deplorable and disgraceful state is to embrace self-delusion. How to get out of that state should be everyone’s concern.
In year 2005, a report by the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC) presented scenarios of what might happen to Nigeria by 2015. The verdict was that the country could become a failed state based on certain indices and mappings. At the time, Nigeria hadn’t recorded a kidnap case. We only hear of kidnapping in distant territories such as Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and others.
Today, though Nigeria has not become a totally failed state, the country is losing the stature of Africa’s foremost country. The political authorities do not like to hear the truth, because they have managed to use state resources and coercive powers to sustain a rentier economy that has refused to develop like China and India.
The political class and their elite friends have managed to sustain the territory, largely for their own economic survival. Those who claim sovereignty as a defence against Trump’s threat pervert the constitutional meaning of the term.
The sovereignty of a country belongs to the people, which they surrender to political authorities to manage on their behalf, with guarantees for the people’s welfare and security. That is the reason there is a government and why it is a social contract. Where a government has failed grossly, to secure life and property of citizens, it loses the moral right to claim sovereignty.
President Tinubu used to be an apostle of true federalism and devolution of powers. Eminent citizens have made suggestions on how to gradually restructure, towards stabilising the country. But Tinubu seems to prefer a solo effort, perhaps to be crowned the architect of a new Nigeria. He is picking and choosing the aspects of previous conferences and national dialogues to implement.
He has created regional commissions to attempt rechanneling the economy to empower the regions. He has approved the University of Applied Sciences in Kachia, Southern Kaduna, a zone that had been denied. The President approved splitting the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria, into six campuses to be located in the six geo-political zones. The college had been the exclusive preserve of Zaria.
In a way, the President appears to be chiseling at the Nigerian behemoth, redistributing privileges and deleting oligarchies. But that is not enough. The complexity of Nigeria demands a national dialogue for a critical reset!
