Nigeria...?

Recently, the Trump administration’s threat to deploy troops to Nigeria raises significant ethical and geopolitical concerns. As someone who was married in Yoruba land and whose spouse is Nigerian, I find this development deeply troubling. The long-standing conflict between northern and southern Nigeria cannot be simplistically framed as a religious war. Both Muslims and Christians have been victims of violence, and such conflicts are rooted more in socio-political, economic, and historical tensions than in purely theological disputes.

The narrative currently circulating in the United States particularly among segments of Christian conservatism presents the situation as a deliberate attempt to annihilate Christianity in Nigeria. This interpretation is profoundly misleading. In southern Nigeria, which is predominantly Christian comprising Evangelical, Anglican, and Catholic communities Christians coexist peacefully with their Muslim and traditionalist neighbors. These interfaith relationships are characterized by mutual respect rather than hostility.

During my time in Nigeria, I have lived among Muslim neighbors and routinely heard the call to prayer echo through the community each morning and evening. Far from being a source of division, such practices underscore the pluralistic fabric of Nigerian society, where religious difference coexists with shared humanity and mutual regard. Islam as a religious construct was a part of Nigeria before Christianity especially in the north. The radicalization of Islam and lack of education has retarded economic, cultural, and social advancement of the majority of northern Nigerians especially girls.

The deeper issue at play lies not in religious persecution but in the geopolitics of resource extraction and control. Nigeria’s vast reserves of oil, gold, and other minerals as well as its intellectual capital and cultural innovation represent a form of Black excellence that has long attracted external interests. Many Nigerians, though modernized and globally connected, still contend with the enduring legacy of colonialism, which continues to shape national identity, governance, economic dependency, and demote indigenous culture; tradition.

If Christianity in Nigeria faces any genuine threat, it is not from internal religious conflict but from external forces seeking to exploit the nation’s wealth and undermine its sovereignty. Forces from the Middle East, China and America. Thus, it is imperative to approach Western political rhetoric about Nigeria with critical discernment. Such narratives often obscure economic motives behind a veneer of moral or religious concern. The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 was the beginning of the forced intergration of indigenous people who would have never lived together constructed by European powers.

Understanding Nigeria’s current dynamics requires situating them within the broader history of British colonial intervention and its long-term effects on the nation’s political and religious structures. Only through such a lens can we resist the reductive and instrumentalized narratives that perpetuate neo-colonial control under the guise of humanitarian or religious protection.

United States intervention is not about “saving Christians or Christianity” if that were the case what about the thousands of Christians right here in America who will not have health care, SNAP benefits, or those who have lost assistance through USAID. Enslavers who were often Christians never cared about the black and brown bodies they enslaved there was always a justification for the development of a master/slave relationship based in economic or racial/ethnic and even religious identification and this is just more of the same packaged as care.

nigerian and american flag