By Adekunle Adekoya
It is no longer news that President Donald Trump of the United States has designated our dear country, Nigeria, as a CPC — Country of Particular Concern.
It is also no longer news that the US president further threatened military action against our country should the political leadership fail to curtail what he said was the killing of Christians in Nigeria. By now, we also all know that Trump has asked for a “plan” of military action to save Christians in Nigeria.
The road to this bus stop began eight months ago, when the US Commission on International Religious Freedom accused Nigeria in its 2025 annual report, published in March, of “engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.”
The report recommended that Nigeria be designated as a CPC. The step triggers no automatic sanctions but requires the US to negotiate an action plan with the government of the listed country.
By procedure, the US State Department was expected to issue its next CPC list in December, but Trump jumped the gun and in an October 31 post on X, announced he was designating Nigeria a CPC. The rest of the world might have to wait till December to know which other countries would be on the CPC list when the State Department releases it.
Naturally, the pronouncements by Trump, including asking the War Department to prepare a plan of military action in Nigeria, from where I’m sitting at the moment, amount to sabre-rattling which should actually serve as a wake-up call to the country’s political leadership and power elite, especially the faction ruling at the moment. While some have used the development to lambast the president and his men, others are gloating, particularly on social media about the development as a comeuppance for the administration.
Yet others are seeking to make political capital out of it. Poor. This is no time to be partisan; this is the time to stand up for Nigeria. It is the only country we have, and we must protect and guard her interest as jealously as we can. Let nobody be deceived; you only see the beginnings of a war, nobody ever knows how it will play out or end. I’m sure if Adolf Hitler had known better, he’d have reconsidered starting World War II with the September 1, 1939 blitzkrieg attack on Poland.
This is a very serious matter, but the events leading to it, I’m sorry to say, have not been taken as seriously as they should have been, even if as late as just six months ago. Instead, we play here, and politicise issues that border on life and death, and even the corporate existence of the country. With the hydra-headed monster that insecurity has become, should the political class be preoccupied only with 2027 elections and defections from other parties to the ruling party?
Not just that, response to the Trump threat has been feeble, and in fact is rationalising Trump’s motives, whatever they are. The response that not only Christians are being killed in Nigeria is self-immolating. Should anybody be wantonly killed at all, as is the case in Benue on a daily basis? Others are churning out statistics of killings of Muslims in states like Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Kebbi. Borno. Is that not an invitation to some Ayatollah or Grand Mullah somewhere else to equally declare a plan of action against us?
In addition, some of the things that we should have done have been left undone, and have contributed hugely to this embarrassing situation. I shudder when a man of the morals of Donald Trump calls Nigeria a “disgraced country.” Pray, why haven’t we had ambassadors since 2023 when those in place were recalled? If our mission in the US is up to its task with an ambassador in office, it would have been apprised of the report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, since March when it was issued. It would have taken a position on it, and advised the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who would have kicked it up to the President.
The fire could have been doused since then! But till now, our missions are being run by cadres of foreign service officers in superpower countries like the US, Uk, Canada, etc. Why should that be? In addition, our missions seem to be very poorly funded. It’s either we have a diplomatic service or we don’t. Should we wait for a crisis with UK or Japan or any other country before thinking that we need to appoint ambassadors?
As I said earlier, the Trump threat should be a wake-up call to our leaders to provide leadership, immediately. Let there be an end to playing politics with the lives of our compatriots and the corporate existence of our country. I urge that the security agencies, heads of whom have just been shaken up by the president, go into overdrive and STOP the killings that have turned our country into an abattoir of mindless slaughter.
This is to remind the President that under him, we got to this shameful junction where the president of another country, some 12,000 kilometres away, is telling him and his men that he has failed to protect his citizens. He also has the obligation of steering us away from this disgraceful junction by rising to the occasion with everything he has that this country can muster. Killings of Christians, Muslims, traditional religion adherents, must stop. American military action on Nigeria will leave us all where we didn’t want to be; it MUST not happen, and it is the president’s duty to ensure it doesn’t.
*Adekoya is a commentator on public issues
No comments:
Post a Comment