Trump’s Nigeria Invasion Talk Is Fuel on the Country’s Fire

Over the past year, the issue of talk about Nigeria has gradually gained a foothold in right-wing media in the United States. It has spread even to relatively liberal spaces e.g Real Time with Bill MaherIt has now become official government policy. On October 31, US President Donald Trump instructed his government to place the country in the category of a “Country of Particular Concern” and to make plans to use firearms if necessary.

The ostensible reason: the Nigerian government’s terrible task of protecting “Christians” in its war against bandits, terrorists, and others who spread insecurity.

It is true that there has been violence against Christians in Nigeria, but they are not the only victims, and American military intervention will not help. Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy, is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country, with the northern part of the country inhabited mostly by Muslims and the southern part of the country mostly inhabited by Christians. But the demarcation is not black and white. The Middle Belt, often described as part of the north, has a large non-Muslim population. In the south, Christians, Muslims and traditional animists live side by side.

While the vast majority of Nigerian Muslims live in peace with their neighbors, the country has fought a militant Islamist insurgency, Boko Haram, for at least a decade. The global #BringBackOurGirls campaign was launched after some 276 schoolgirls aged between 16 and 18 were kidnapped in April 2014 by Boko Haram militants in northeastern Nigeria. Boko Haram has been active in Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Mali since around 2002, but has also carried out a number of insurgent attacks in northern Nigeria.

There are tensions between Muslims and Christians elsewhere in Nigeria, but these issues pale into the usual political divisions that have bedeviled the country since independence. The Muslim-majority north has enjoyed greater federal government power through the army for decades. (This issue stemmed from the North’s fear of exclusion after the country’s first military coup, which mostly targeted Northern politicians. Young Northerners recruited and eventually took over the armed forces. This original sin is also part of the sinister origin story of Nigerian politics.)

But in a country of nearly 240 million, originally held together by colonialism and often held together by military force, painful tensions are inevitable — and religion is not the only dividing line. Other violent groups in recent years have included the Bakassi Boys, a vigilante group operating mainly in the southern part of the country; Oodua People’s congress (and more recently Àmọ̀tẹ́kùn, its militant arm); and the Eastern Security Network, an armed group created to implement and enforce the aspirations of Nnamdi Kanu, founder of the indigenous people of Biafra, a separatist group aiming to separate the eastern part of the country away from Nigeria.

The presence of oil in the Niger Delta, which accounts for the bulk of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings, is a factor in many of these issues. Another motive was hunger and political corruption, which were the hallmark of much of public life in Nigeria. The 2020 “End SARS” protests — led by young Nigerians who sought an end to police brutality, through which state agencies typically oppressed and blackmailed young citizens — ended in a military attack on unarmed demonstrators, killing dozens. Even the elections that brought President Bola Tinubu to power were not free of ethnic and other forms of violence.

Another powerful driver of the conflict is climate change – a topic whose existence, of course, the Trump administration refuses to acknowledge. For many years, the biggest causes of clashes between nomadic cattle herders (often armed) and local farmers (usually unarmed) in the country’s middle belt have been the loss of grazing land due to the effects of climate change in the arid north and the incursion of these cattle into private farmland, leading to violent clashes.

Debt, money, regional divisions, and volatile politics have produced a combustible situation, one that could turn into a raging fire. The American move will increase the intensity of this fire, and will not extinguish it. There have been many cases of violence against Christian communities recently and throughout history, but also against moderate Muslims, who pose a threat to religious fanatics like the Christian population. It is understood that some have sought help from abroad.

In Plateau State in the Middle Belt, for example, Pastor Ezekiel Dachomo spoke about several issues affecting his community, including the recent attack on October 14 in the Barkin Ladi area, where at least 13 people, all Christians, were killed. He has called for international intervention, having failed to persuade the federal government to take the state’s long-standing security problems seriously. (I served in the National Youth Service Program in Plateau State in 2005 and 2006 and personally witnessed clashes between local farmers and Fulani settlers.)

Followers of traditional religions were not spared either. In October, there was a high-profile case in Kwara State of a woman practicing traditional Yoruba beliefs being harassed by Islamic clerics.

So, yes, intolerance and extremism are deeply rooted in the country and often overshadow other important issues. And yes, self-inflicted PR wounds like Nigerian soldiers posing for photos in November 2023 with Zakir Naik (an Indian preacher banned by several countries for hate speech and alleged links to terrorism), and a national television interview with a Hamas spokesman in February 2024 in which he defended the October 2023 attack on Israel, may give the impression that a country is not working together.

However, none of it calls for invasion.

What unites everyone today is the desire for good governance, improved costs of living, and security. Two years ago, Tinubu, the former governor of Lagos State and an acclaimed economic reformer, was elected to office with a northerner as his running mate. Although they were Muslims, many Christians voted for them, and a bitterly divided opposition split the vote.

Since then, the president has given public assurances about economic transformation; Commissioned huge public projects; The country’s currency, the naira, is mostly stable. A new private oil refinery – controlled by Nigerians – began operating, and at the end of October, a tariff was imposed on foreign imports to keep domestic production viable. Citizens are still waiting for tangible returns from his mandate.

Nigerians also wonder whether these changes, and Nigeria’s new assertions of economic independence, have anything to do with the United States’ new interest. Conspiracy theories abound, especially in light of Nigeria’s mineral reserves and China’s use of rare earth elements against the United States.

The cancellation of the visa of Wole Toyinka, Africa’s first Nobel laureate in literature, a week ago has put many Nigerians on edge against US policies, which appear increasingly driven by impulsiveness and, at times, racism. (Only white farmers in South Africa appear to be freed from the sweeping new immigration policies Trump has passed across the continent.)

Internally, the political mood was already tense. About a week ago, the Nigerian president dismissed all army commanders and replaced them on suspicion of a failed coup attempt, which surprised the country. There has been no coup in the country since the end of military rule in 1999.

There is only so much one can come to an informed conclusion about what is going on. But the US President seems confident that he understands this volatile and complex situation. He is egged on by those already disaffected by historical injustices, including his own defense minister – or “war minister” – who is eager to prove himself in at least one winnable theater.

Some of these allegations have reached the right-wing media sphere through social media, celebrity interest in Trump’s circles, the evangelical milieu, Nigerians with a desire to engage with the Nigerian state, and an apparent desire in Washington to deflect attention from public discontent with the American role in the war in Gaza. (Maher reiterated a common theme, which is to blame young Americans for their Gaza protests, not attacks on Nigerian Christians.)

The voices of Nigerian Christians and Muslims who have been victims of Boko Haram, as well as other victims of violence (including illegal miners of the country’s mineral resources) are being drowned out by this cloud of interference for fear of adding more to the already incendiary environment. Conspiracy theories about the US interest in instability in Nigeria continue to abound.

American military intervention would be disastrous. It would sow mistrust, exacerbate divisions, fuel conspiracy theories, and will not end the insurgency in the northeast, which appears to be fueled by the region’s poverty, illiteracy, access to illegal mining opportunities, distrust of the central government, and links to larger jihadist networks.

Many prominent Nigerians have called for some kind of national constitutional conference to properly negotiate the definition of the state, beyond the parameters imposed on it by the retreating junta in 1999. This appears to solve a number of problems, including the call for self-determination for its component parts. Washington’s military adventures, from the Bay of Pigs to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, were largely disastrous. A prolonged US move will only lead to refugees, waste, loss of life, and destabilization in the West African region.

If the Trump administration really cared, it could impose sanctions on leaders who foster religious divisions, confiscate corrupt funds hidden abroad, and provide military cooperation with Nigeria’s leaders in a way that helps stamp out the insurgency without harming citizens.

The Nigerian government itself must do much to regain the confidence of its citizens. The alienation felt by many groups as a result of years of neglect, corruption, and sometimes outright victimization, is real and profound, and citizens have lost trust in the country’s military establishment to keep them safe, especially in the north. Allowing violence to fester will only lead to more fragmentation. When the country’s foundations of trust and unity crumble, offers from even foreign demagogue leaders to fill the gap can be tempting.