By Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D
When United States President Donald Trump announced Nigeria’s designation as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) due to alleged violations of religious freedom, he reignited a complex conversation that has plagued Nigeria’s global image for over a decade.
In his characteristic blustery tone, Trump accused Nigeria of “systematic, ongoing and egregious persecution of Christians,” warning that the United States might halt foreign aid and even consider military action if the Nigerian government failed to “stop the killing.”
The announcement, though dramatic, is not without precedent. In 2020, under the same Trump administration, Nigeria was first placed on the CPC list, only to be delisted a year later by President Joe Biden.
Its re-designation now underlines not only America’s revived concern about religious violence in Nigeria but also the growing perception that the Nigerian state is unable or unwilling to protect its citizens from sectarian conflict.
The Nigerian government swiftly rejected Trump’s claim, calling it “ill-informed and diplomatically offensive.” Officials at the Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs insisted that Nigeria is not a theocracy and that its crises are driven more by poverty, land conflict, and governance failure than by religion.
They rightly pointed out that both Christians and Muslims have fallen victim to terrorism and banditry. Yet this defence, while partly valid, sidesteps the larger issue: persistent impunity and the state’s failure to act decisively when citizens are killed because of their faith.
The online outrage over the CPC designation has been hijacked by self-styled crusaders on both sides who thrive on division rather than truth. While some couch their arguments in moral outrage and others in nationalist pride, both camps miss the deeper point.
The atrocities that gave rise to the CPC label are not propaganda; they are tragic realities of villages razed, worshippers massacred, and children abducted. For over a decade, Boko Haram, ISWAP, and allied groups have waged a campaign to establish an extremist theocracy through terror. To deny this or politicise it is to insult the memory of those who have perished.
The hypocrisy in the domestic reaction is also glaring. While the Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris, has acknowledged that insecurity persists, he emphasised that the government is “leaving no stone unturned” in its effort to eliminate terrorists.
According to him, since May 2023, security agencies have neutralised more than 13,500 terrorists, arrested over 17,000 suspects, and rescued about 9,800 abducted victims. These statistics, if accurate, are commendable. They prove that some progress is being made. Yet, for communities still under siege, numbers offer little comfort. For them, safety is not measured in press briefings but in whether their loved ones return home alive.
More troubling is the moral dissonance displayed by clerics like Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, who recently advised President Tinubu to “ignore Trump” and boasted that he would not allow Trump to enter Nigerian forests to “kill our children.”
Such rhetoric is dangerous. To describe armed terrorists as “our children” is to romanticise mass murderers and trivialise the grief of thousands who have lost their families. It reflects the perverse moral inversion that has weakened Nigeria’s collective resolve against terror.
The fight against extremism cannot succeed when influential figures defend the indefensible and do not get pulled in to answer questions as to their complicity with terrorism.
The government, too, must resist the temptation to reduce the debate to a question of national pride. The issue is not whether Trump exaggerated the crisis but whether Nigeria has done enough to protect its citizens and uphold its own Constitution.
The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and equal protection under the law. Yet, in too many cases, justice remains elusive.
From the Christmas Eve bombings in Madalla (2011) to the Owo Church massacre (2022) and the recurring pogroms in Plateau and Benue States, accountability has been scarce. Each atrocity unpunished becomes an invitation for the next.
To dismiss the CPC label outright would be shortsighted. While Trump’s tone is characteristically inflammatory and politically motivated, the designation carries diplomatic and economic implications. Under the International Religious Freedom Act, the US can impose sanctions, restrict exports, or suspend aid to nations deemed guilty of systematic persecution of religious groups.
Even if such measures are not immediately implemented, the stigma itself damages Nigeria’s reputation and deters investors who are already wary of insecurity and instability.
What Nigeria needs is not another round of defensive rhetoric but visible reform. The government must strengthen its justice system, ensure impartial investigations into religious and communal violence, and end the culture of selective prosecution.
Faith-based organisations should be empowered to build bridges rather than fortify divides, and leaders at all levels must speak with one voice against hate and extremism.
The debate over whether these killings amount to genocide misses the moral point. How many lives must be lost before the world calls it what it is? Thousands have been slaughtered in Plateau, Benue, and Southern Kaduna in attacks that target victims along religious and ethnic lines. The obsession with semantics only distracts from the urgent need for justice and healing.
Even the United States, for all its self-assigned moral authority, must tread carefully. Trump’s reckless talk of “air strikes” against Nigeria betrays a dangerous arrogance that ignores the lessons of Iraq and Libya, where interventions in the name of humanitarianism left nations in ruins.
Sovereignty remains sacrosanct. No foreign power has the moral right to threaten a sovereign nation under the guise of protecting human rights. Nigeria must assert this firmly while fixing its internal failures that make such threats plausible.
Ultimately, the CPC saga is both an indictment and an opportunity, a mirror held up to a wounded nation. It challenges Nigeria to confront its contradictions, to match rhetoric with reform, and to prove that it can protect its people without external pressure. True sovereignty is not the absence of criticism but the presence of justice.
Trump’s declaration should not provoke outrage alone; it should provoke introspection. The task before Nigeria is straightforward: reject external bullying, but end internal bloodletting. The world is watching, but more importantly, Nigerians are watching their government to see whether it will rise to the moral challenge of governance or remain trapped between Trump’s threats and its own failures.
Dr Lemmy Ughegbe, FIMC, CMC
Email: lemmyughegbeofficial@gmail.com
WhatsApp ONLY: +2348069716645
