Andy Ezeani
In early 2025, after Donald John Trump, the 45th president of the United States of America (USA) returned to Washington DC., as the 47th president, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, former Minister of Foreign Affairs offered a public advise to Bola Tinubu, president of Nigeria. He advised him to try his possible best to avoid a quarrel with President Trump.
Akinyemi is a grounded student of international politics. He understands the tendencies in global politics, as well as the constitution of the actors on the global arena. He knows that Trump is not Joe Biden, his immediate predecessor, whose disposition was remarkably different. Trump takes no prisoners.
Tinubu must have taken Akinyemi’s counsel to heart. Over the months, therefore, he avoided not just Trump but USA in its entirety. He has even refrained from attending the annual General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. Discretion, he must have told himself, is the best policy in the face of troubling personal issues on record in the country of his youthful exploits. You just never know with Trump’s America.
For all his effort in heeding Professor Akinyemi’s considered counsel, what Tinubu failed to do, rather than what he did, has brought him face to face with Trump.
On November 1 2025, when President Trump officially designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), citing religious persecution of Christians in the country, which has resulted in the killing of thousands over time,he put Tinubu on trial, as it were.
Trump’s decision followed on the heels of his earlier indictment of officials of the Nigerian state for condonement if not connivance in the killing of Christians.
What the records speak of the persecution of Christians in Nigeria supports the denunciation of the country by Trump. It is not surprising that in the hours after the U.S president’s rebuke and threat of possible military action against terrorists in Nigeria, the internet was littered with details of atrocities against Christians in Nigeria, atrocities that the government always looks away from.
To imagine that for as long as memory can recall, Christians, either individually or in communities, have been killed,especially in parts of Northern Nigeria, often for no cause at all.
Many of these hapless citizens were killed in their homes, sometimes in the night.Not once has the state apprehended or tried any person for such heinous crimes. How does a country experience hundreds and thousands of its citizens violently killed by supposed terrorists in their homes, and there have been no reprisals and no trial of any of the killers?
So far, the Nigerian government has not presented any viable rebuttal to the weighty allegation by Trump. Such a statement by the Foreign Affairs Ministry that “Nigeria is committed to fighting terrorism, strengthening interfaith harmony and protecting the lives and rights of all its citizens”, reflect rank insipidity
What does being committed to fighting terrorism or promoting interfaith harmony mean in the face of the raging campaign of annihilation of Christian communities by Jihadist terrorists?
On April 13 2025 terrorists sacked Zikke Village, a Christian community in Bassa Local Government Area of Plateau State. Amnesty International recorded the killing of no less than 54 people in this incident. Children and elderly people who could not run, especially in the night when the attackers struck, perished.
Two months later, in mid-June 2025, Yelwata, a sleepy Christian community in Benue State, was sacked by a set of Jihadist invaders, leaving over 200 citizens dead, for no just cause.
The following month, July 2025, also in Plateau State, in the Riyon area, another Christian community, the terrorists attacked. A conservative estimate of 20 lives was lost, and the villages were burnt down. Last Saturday, November 1,2025, even as Trump was talking, seven people were reportedly killed in Southern Kaduna, another Christian community.
All these occurred under the watch of President Tinubu. In all these, no apprehension of the killers has ever been made. Security personnel were usually not available at the time if the attacks and no trial of any person over the crimes had ever yielded any conviction. So, what does government “being committed to fighting terrorism” mean?
What Trump has thrown at the Nigerian leadership is as serious an indictment as any country’s government can receive. It is not enough for traditional rulers and sundry toady elements to commence solidarity pilgrimage to Aso Rock. That will be trivilizing a serious matter.
What is expected of the Tinubu government, which is now on trial before the world, is to articulate evidential response to the charges,if any, detailing its response to the killing of Christians even in 2025. Let the world know how many of the murderers the security agencies have caught and arraigned. Let the world also know how many of the sacked Christian communities the government has recovered, reconstructed, and restored to the owners? Let the world know how and why security personnel that are very efficient in tracking down criminals elsewhere almost always record intelligence failure in the attacks on the Christian communities.
The manifest complicity of the Nigerian government in numerous acts of existential threat to Christians has placed many Nigerian Christians in a quandary over the threat by Trump. Make no mistakes abiut it, many Christian citizens feel a sense of appreciation to Trump for making a global issue of the religious blight in Nigeria. These citizens feel some relief from the expression of concern over their plight by a powerful “angel” from abroad.
Yet, there is a huge apprehension. Not many of these Christians, under normal circumstances, would welcome the prospect of a foreign military expedition to the country. Such expedition hardly leaves a positive impact behind. Almost always, they are harbingers of bigger crisis. But, the government of Nigeria has left many citizens with little or no choice in the matter.
Government propaganda that Trump and America are using the interest of Christians as a disguise for a hidden economic agenda hardly cuts an ice with many. The retort from many citizens to such government pitch is, what have you done for us lately? What danger will Trump present to Nigerians that will be more injurious than the constant threat of death and annihilation from Jihadists, to which the government never bothers with?
Then there is the audacious bandit-hugging religious belligerence of the likes of Sheik Abubakar Gumi. The reaction of Gumi to President Trump’s concern for the welfare of Christians in Nigeria is instructive. Indeed, it brings the issue that Trump raised to a bolder relief.
Gumi’s widely reported response to Trump’s warning is, “no reason to despair. Trump (is) the big daddy of Christians. Allah (is) the almighty of Muslims”. In other words, Gumi’s Allah approves the killing of Christians.
Considering that Trump did not threaten Muslims but terrorists and the forces of the state that kill Christians or facilitate that, it is curious that the Gumis in Nigeria are feeling ineasy.
Every true patriot in Nigeria should worry about the deficit in leadership that has exposed Nigeria to international odium.
The government should forget about recourse to claims of national sovereignty and the principle of non interference by foreign entities in the internal affairs of other nations. That provision is not absolute, anyway.
Donald Trump’s threat of intervention presents an opportunity for the Nigerian government to stir and rescue itself from this all-time low of presiding over a country that was once globally respected but is now denigrated as “a disgrace”.
