Three major occurrences that could have further complicated the parlous state of Nigeria’s economic and political situation occurred between October and December, 2025. It started when Donald Trump suddenly designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern for the persecution of Christians in the Middle Belt of the country. Coming shortly after Abuja had quietly laid to rest rumours of a foiled coup and unrest in the military, the optics were indeed dire for the Bola Tinubu administration. As if seeking an opportunity for a fight with Nigeria, Donald Trump further turned the screw within weeks of his initial designation of Nigeria as of Particular Concern to America. He threatened the use of force against the terrorists engaged in genocidal activities against Christians.
Nigeria, he called a disgraced country to warm approvals of a section of the Nigerian opposition, particularly Peter Obi (I know each time his name is mentioned like this, his supporters pretend it’s because he is a politician of particular consequence- which he is not!) who is often thrilled by bad news about Nigeria and had for that reason quickly appropriated and amplified Trump’s actual words. He went on to deploy them in a series of tweets directed against the government. Quietly, President Tinubu went about his business, said nothing except deny the charge of ‘Christian genocide’ through officials of his administration. Another section of the Nigerian public, mostly Obi’s followers that are notorious for their online misbehaviour was delirious with joy and loud in their call for President Trump to invade the country even when his threat of military action was meant to galvanise Abuja into action against the terrorists he thought had apparently been operating without any challenge. His was not an unqualified declaration of aggression against Nigeria.
By this time the report was everywhere that Donald Trump’s actions were the culmination of efforts of lobbyists who had been working for months, even years, on behalf of church groups from the Middle Belt of Nigeria. That these lobbying efforts went on for so long without any meaningful response from Abuja showed how sloppy state officials had been. For observers like me, Nigeria’s failure to respond in time was a boon to the hapless people of the Middle Belt who had borne the brunt of the genocidal attacks of terrorists who hide under the label of herders to cleanse ethnic communities of Christians. Which is to say that I believe many of the so-called herders’ targeted attacks were instances of ethnic cleansing although not sanctioned by the state except to the extent that the late President Muhammadu Buhari’s apparent lack of concern could be so interpreted. Tinubu could have been more assertive in going after the terrorists but he was constrained by political considerations of his northern supporters.
What his opponents saw in all of this was, however, the opportunity to play politics by launching the usual attacks in an unusual and potentially explosive moment that should be of national concern. Many of them ignored the larger picture and reduced Trump’s threats to the government’s failure to appoint ambassadors two years after it came into office. Even though these criticisms were part of the opposition’s habit of hurling criticisms at the government without knowing which would stick, they made it look as if they were genuinely outraged by the government’s failure to defend itself and the country against the charge of Christian genocide. As part of its own response, government sent a delegation led by the National Security Adviser to the President, Nuhu Ribadu, to the US to engage Trump’s government officials. A Congressional delegation also visited Nigeria thereafter with the mandate for an on-the-ground assessment of the situation. The outcome of all of this was the Christmas Day deployment of missiles to take out terrorists in the North-West state of Sokoto.
Abuja continued its rapprochement with Washington and it was soon reported that it had signed a renewable six months PR deal of about $9 million with a lobby agency owned by a Trump associate. In the same vein, but before the Nigerian deal, it was revealed that a Biafra separatist group had retained the services of a lobby agency to push the latest claim of Christian genocide. They sought to link the trial of Nnamdi Kanu and the proscription of IPOB to the persecution of Christians and by extension the people of the South-East. As if they expected the Tinubu administration that had learned from its past inaction to sit back and watch as they sought to fraudulently insert themselves into a narrative that is not their business by presenting a misleading picture of the country to the world, the online urchins masquerading as spokespersons of an ethnic region were both upset and unsettled by reports of Abuja’s pushback.
They cursed and attacked the government that had outspent them, accusing it of wasting tax payers’ money on image-laundering. Considering what the consequences of neglect could mean, $9 million is not too much to pay. Since October, the Tinubu-led government has successfully managed and defused a potentially explosive situation. Providence seemed to have worked on behalf of the President to the discomfort of his opponents. Things have largely remained this way until this past Monday when a New York Times report that had been published a few days earlier suddenly triggered moments of mass hysteria and paranoia by a posse of Igbo commentators, some of who are political agents with an eye for public office. They are milking the collective trauma of the Igbo for personal gains while pretending to be public intellectuals. Their anger stemmed from the New York Times’ claim that the US relied on reports of an Onitsha-based trader, a screwdriver seller, Emeka Umeagbalasi, to launch its Christmas day attack of parts of the North-West.
For them, the report was a hack job of Abuja’s lobbyists in the US. They could be correct but rather than see it as evidence of what happens when families sell themselves cheap to outsiders, they see it as a display of Nigeria’s hate of the Igbo, priming them for mass attack in the North ahead of the 2027 election. Suddenly, The Cable is made the source of a report it culled from a foreign outlet- evidence of Yoruba hate. Some of them even directed their anger at an imaginary Yoruba woman said to have penned the offending report that bears a clearly different byline. The herd mentality, misplaced anger, finger-pointing and self-justification is just appalling. You can’t eat your cake and have it! One wishes these outraged voices speaking from both sides of their mouths had saved their energy. Nobody hates the Igbo but for as long as hateful separatists speak in the name of the Igbo and the majority concur, there will never be trust.
The post The separatists pretend Nigeria hates the Igbo, by Rotimi Fasan appeared first on Vanguard News.
