By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Many are outraged that President Donald Trump called Nigeria a “disgraced country.” I am too. But my anger is not against Trump. I am angry with President Bola Tinubu who brought this insult on us. The only reason why Trump would disparage this country of over 200 million people is because Tinubu has damaged our collective reputation in the eyes of the international community.
An African adage says, “He who fetches ant-infested firewood invites lizards in his house.” So, I am not cross with Trump’s showboating. Yes, as a Nigerian, my national pride is deeply hurt when the president of another country ridicules mine.
Trump’s derisive words: “If the Nigerian government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, “guns-a-blazing,” to completely wipe out the Islamic terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” are deeply offensive.But for national pride to make sense, it must have the capacity of helping to generate the sense of community that inspires people to protect others and serve their communities. In Nigeria, the reverse is the case. How can there be a sense of community in a country where citizens are deliberately victimised for no reason other than their ethnicity and religious inclination?
Tinubu’s acolytes say the issue of insecurity preceded his presidency. True! But that is a single story. The truth is that not much, if anything at all, has been done in the two and half years of his presidency to stem the horrendous tide because he lacks the political will. Tinubu, obsessed with his re-election in 2027, prioritises politics over protection of lives and property of the citizenry. What is more, he has found out that it is easier to, at all costs fight for political power, grab it, snatch it, and run with it than to govern.
It is not Trump’s fault that under Tinubu’s watch, Nigeria has no ambassadors in any of the 193 member states of the United Nations. Do we need a rambunctious Trump to tell us that it is a disgrace, in a world that has become more complex, not to have ambassadors in any of the global power centres – U.S., China, Russia, Britain, France – or even Germany, the economic power house of Europe? In the absence of ambassadors, who represents Nigeria’s interests abroad? Who helps in building and maintaining diplomatic relations with other countries? Who negotiates agreements, protects Nigerians abroad, promotes our country’s culture and economic interests, and provides Abuja with intelligence about foreign affairs?
As if that is not bad enough, we now have a president who is afraid of travelling to the U.S., the leader of Africa’s most populous nation, who apart from the 78th session of the UN General Assembly, which he attended in 2023, artfully dodged the 79th session in 2024 and the 80th session in 2025. It is a colossal loss of prestige that almost three years into his presidency, Tinubu is yet to be invited by the U.S. for a state visit. President Muhammdu Buhari did much better. In July 2015, barely two months in office, he paid a state visit to the U.S. on the invitation of President Barack Obama and did an encore in April 2018, this time hosted by President Donald Trump, the then 45th President, making him the first sub-Saharan African head of state to have an Oval Office meeting with Trump.
Yet, coming back as the 47th President of the U.S., the same Trump does not want to dine with Tinubu even with the axiomatic long spoon. Tinubu’s presidency has been so diminished that we now luxuriate in visiting Saint Lucia, the Eastern Caribbean island nation with a population of 179,744 people. Such a steep fall from the diplomatic perch is the colour of disgrace. So, why are we angry with Trump rather than Tinubu, who has thrown the country under the grinding wheels of global locomotive of scorn?
Besides, is karma no longer a bitch? Those who are dismissing the discomforting narrative of Christian genocide, the reason for Trump’s outburst forget that it was Tinubu and his co-conspirators in the All Progressives Congress (APC) that first alerted the world of the tragedy. On January 29, 2014, he tweeted: “The slaughtering of Christian worshippers is strongly condemnable. It calls to question the competence of Jonathan to protect Nigerians.”
On September 9, 2014, he was at his toxic political game once again: “The festering Boko Haram attacks in the North East and massacre of innocent citizens is concrete proof that Nigeria has no government.” He capped it with another tweet on November 6, “Why should any part of this country be under occupation? In any civilised country, Jonathan should resign.”s
The same year, Tinubu was in Buhari’s entourage to Washington DC, together with Chief John Odigie-Oyegun to meet with then U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry. Their mission? To besmirch Nigeria’s image. Now, the chicken has come home to roost. It is a case of retributive justice, a well-deserved comeuppance that is completely in sync with the cosmic law of cause and effect. By his bad politics, Tinubu sowed the wind, and it is only natural that he will reap the whirlwind as he seems to be doing right now.
Anyone who denies the fact of Christian genocide in Nigeria is speaking with forked tongue. This week, Emmanuel Alabi, one of the three students of Immaculate Conception Minor Seminary, Ivianokpodi, Estako East local government area, who was abducted on July 10, 2025, was killed. On December 25, 2011, St. Theresa Catholic Church, Madalla, Niger State, was bombed resulting in the death of at least 37 people, in what was the deadliest of a well-coordinated Christmas Day bombings that took place same day in Jos, Gadaka, and Damaturu. The overall death toll was at least 41. On June 5, 2022, a bomb attack targeting Christian worshippers occurred at the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, Owo, Ondo State. At least 40 people were killed.
Reports from various human rights organizations estimate that over 19,000 churches have been attacked, destroyed, looted, or violently closed in Nigeria since July 2009. Majority of the estimated 15 million people that have been displaced, forced to abandon their ancestral homes and churches in order to flee the massacres are Christians. Today, they live in squalid IDP camps.
Reports from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) claim that at least 11 Catholic priests have been murdered and 145 kidnapped between 2015 and early 2025. A Christian group, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), reported that four Catholic priests were murdered in 2022 alone, and 23 others, including one seminarian, kidnapped.
The International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety) reported that over 600 Christian clerics (including both priests and pastors from various denominations) have been abducted since 2009, many of whom were later murdered or never found. An August 2025 report by Intersociety claimed that at least 7,087 Christians were massacred across Nigeria in the first 220 days of 2025 alone, with an average of 32 Christians killed per day.
The massacres and mass burials which have become the shame of our country continue apace. That is what Trump means when he calls Nigeria a disgraced country because any man’s death, as the English poet John Donne’s noted, diminishes us because we are involved in mankind. Even if we concede that Moslems and Christians are being killed in equal numbers, the question remains, who are the killers? Are they radical Islamists or Christians? Why are they on this murderous spree?
On Tuesday, the member representing Agwara/Borgu Federal Constituency, Hon. Jafaru Mohammed Ali, escaped death by the whiskers after bandits opened fire on his convoy while he was touring his constituency. Six soldiers drafted to provide security for the convoy were killed in the gunfire. The bandits, numbering over 50, armed with sophisticated weapons laid an ambush for the convoy at Kuble community, a few meters from the Kainji National Park, occupied by bandits for nearly two years now.
Nigeria under Tinubu’s watch remains a country with a large swathe of ungoverned territory. Under his watch, Nigerians are gruesomely murdered daily by radical Islamists and buried in mass graves. That is a disgrace. It does not matter whether the victims are Moslems or Christians. Nigerians deserve better. Any such killing diminishes Tinubu’s presidency and validates Trump’s claim that Nigeria is a disgraced country. A self-conscious leader would resign just as he advised President Jonathan 11 years ago.
*Amaechi is the publisher of TheNiche
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