From Baghdad to Abuja: America’s old script of liberation and ruin

“The snake that offers to sing for you is only measuring how close it can strike.”

There is an old African adage that warns against gullibility — for when a people are too eager to believe every foreign tale, they risk losing both their sense of judgment and their sovereignty. This, sadly, is the path Nigeria appears to be treading in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s latest pronouncement, redesignating Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern and alleging, without a shred of credible evidence, that Christians in Nigeria are victims of a genocidal campaign. (Reuters, 31 Oct 2025)

Trump’s baseless allegations, couched in emotive rhetoric and backed by threats of intervention, are capable of inflaming an already fragile national fabric. He warned that if the Nigerian government “continues to allow the killing of Christians, the USA 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.” (ABC News, 1 Nov 2025)

His words threaten to deepen mistrust among communities that have, for years, struggled to heal from ethno-religious wounds. What is even more disheartening is how many Nigerians — blinded by political sentiment or religious bias — have cheered Trump’s declaration, naively welcoming the possibility of U.S. intervention as though history has not repeatedly shown the catastrophic consequences of such adventures.

From Iraq to Libya, from Afghanistan to Somalia, America’s military interventions have left nations in ruins — destabilised, fragmented, and worse off than before. Each was justified in the name of democracy, freedom, or humanitarian concern. Yet when the dust settled, the so-called liberation only birthed chaos, death, and decades of instability. To imagine that Nigeria could fare differently under such “concern” is to ignore the loud echoes of history.

Trump’s narrative of a “genocide against Christians” in Nigeria is a gross distortion of reality. The facts on the ground reveal that violence in Nigeria — whether from Boko Haram, banditry, herder-farmer conflicts or communal clashes — has claimed many Muslim lives, often in larger numbers than Christians. Entire Muslim communities in the North-East were decimated. Mosques were destroyed. Islamic scholars were assassinated. Farmers in predominantly Muslim areas could not access their lands for years. The Nigerian military set up countless checkpoints, and entire towns were emptied. Yet no one — least of all major Western powers — ever called it a genocide against Muslims. (The Week, Oct 2025)

The hypocrisy is even starker when one looks beyond Nigeria’s borders. As of 3 October 2025, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, over 67,000 people have been killed and more than 169,000 injured in the Gaza Strip — a population of just about 2.2 million. Yet Trump has not declared Gaza “a country of particular concern.” He has not called for intervention there. Why? Because the victims are largely Muslim. The double standard is glaring, and the moral inconsistency, deafening.

If truth be told, it is America itself that has long waged a sustained campaign against predominantly Muslim nations under various guises — counter-terrorism, peacekeeping, humanitarian rescue. Nigeria must not become the next target of that playbook. We cannot afford to allow another superpower narrative to define who we are, what our conflicts mean, or how we should be governed.

Nigeria is a sovereign state. Its government has repeatedly and categorically denied any claim of genocide against Christians. No foreign leader, no matter how powerful or loud, has the right under international law to launch military operations within our territorial boundaries. To do so would be an act of aggression, plain and simple. A child who lets a stranger settle a quarrel in his father’s house has already lost his inheritance.

In these times, Nigerians must think critically, not emotionally. The real danger is not just Trump’s rhetoric — it is our own willingness to believe it. For as the wise say, “When the outsider tells you your mother’s soup is tastier than yours, he is only reaching for your spoon.”

Abdulrazaq bn Bello bn Oare writes from Kaduna. He can be reached via [email protected] and [email protected]