By Hakeem Baba-Ahmed
I admit entertaining some doubt over the authenticity of US President Trump’s first tweet announcing that he had set in motion the process of classifying Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, again. The bit that confused me was the reference to Nigerian Christians as ‘our Christians’. The world is now familiar with the ramblings and threats regularly associated with the leader of one of the world’s oldest democracies.
The global community is going through a painful transition involving the design of imaginative strategies for dealing with a US President who sets for himself the task of changing the world and inserting the US back as its engine and driver. King Trump sees the world as a patchwork of triumph over the weak, accommodation of strong resistance and outcomes as his personal victory of a strong President. When he went ahead of the classification process to threaten military invasion two days later, any doubts I had that this is vintage Trump vanished. Now our beleaguered military has to share its attention between Trump’s designs on our country and killers we have lived with for more than a decade.
There is a strand of wisdom that says this is the wrong way to start a comment on a very complex and serious issue such as this one. A segment of the Nigerian Christian community thinks that Trump’s threat is a welcome relief, and any resistance to it amounts to complicity in an on-going genocide against Nigerian Christians.
Many Nigerian Muslims are offended that the US only sees the killings of Christians and feel doubly offended that they are treated as the collateral damage of more than a decade of weak will and corruption at leadership levels in Nigeria. Some Christians can see through the attempt to play to a gallery of the Christian population, because they know Muslims and Christians have been victims of a variety of sources and motivations for killing innocent citizens. Some Muslims think a US threat or intervention could hasten the defeat of sundry killers who have defied the Nigerian state and now hold entire communities hostage due to the impotence of the Nigerian state.
Some Christians believe the US government is acting on faulty information, but it will take the bravest of them to say so. Many Christian communities have lived with violence and terror from fellow Christians for many years, and have themselves committed atrocities against Muslims and killers without religious identities or motives.
So President Trump enters the fray in an African country which defies parallels or neat labelling. He has to do something now, since he has raised the stakes and is not known for standing down. The Nigerian government has done what it thinks is best: speak in diplomatic, polite language, the type President Trump likes to hear. It says there is no genocide against Christians in Nigeria. Genocide is what Israel did to the people of Gaza and the US tolerated it. Trump knows that. It says it is fighting killers of Nigerians. Trump knows that. It says countries like the US should stand with Nigeria and assist it to fight an assortment of killers of Muslims and Christians without let for more than a decade. Trump knows that.
The US under Trump had once classified Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. Another administration looked at the case and removed the stigma. There must be hundreds of briefs on Nigeria from the US Mission in Nigeria and many other sources which should advise that hostility from the US is the worst option for the US. It will hurt a country desperate for support to improve its governance and security capacities. Threats and sanctions arising from marginal hysteria in the US and Nigeria have neither foundation in facts, nor credibility as informed options. They may serve some dubious short-term interests of the US. They will hurt Nigerian Muslims and Christians.
Ultimately, the US will have to design an exit strategy which lets it keep some pride as a champion of sorts, and allow this huge country from listing it among its many existential threats. If Trump does undertake a hostile act against Nigeria, he must know there will be consequences on both sides. He calls us a disgraced country. If President Tinubu gets to meet with Trump, it is important he does not wear the mien of leader of a disgraced country.
True, Nigerians are very worried people. Our leadership deficits have been mounting for decades. An African country with 240 million people and all the resources in the world has been reduced to a scared pauper. It should serve as a beacon and standard for other African countries, not the target of contempt, daily losing its best and brightest to countries like the US. We will not beg Trump not to classify us or punish us for being victims of greed and incompetence of our leaders. We are a country of deeply religious Muslims and Christians. When you target Muslims, even those among them who kill and kidnap fellow Muslims daily, you are also targeting Nigerian Christians .This is the way God made us: a tapestry of dependent communities who argue like hell but cannot break their bonds.
If US really wants to help, it should sanction our corrupt leaders who steal our commonwealth, rig elections and pay its leaders visits as our leaders. Deny visas to leaders who send their children to your schools and universities and hospitals with money that should buy weapons and pay our troops allowances to fight killers. Arrest and jail our leaders who invest stolen wealth in your countries. Avoid politicians who want to manipulate faith as electoral assets. Help us improve our capacities to fight killers. Anything else will make the US complicit in our misfortunes.
Now, we should stop the quarrels over Trump’s threats. Only the US will win any fight between us. We could all end up a lot worse if we submit to the temptation to think our most serious problems will be fixed by military strikes, invasions or balkanization by force. We are not China, Russia, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Cuba or Pakistan. The US will not issue the Nigerian Christian a visa to escape ‘genocide’, but will issue it to a white South African for being white. There are enough lessons around the world on the futility of thinking countries with interests in your assets will come running to fix your problems and then leave. Powerful countries feed on weak ones, and right now we are weak, very weak. We should not be made weaker by countries that will benefit from more of our weakness.
The real threat we face is leadership which shows no capacity to make all of us more secure. The government of the US will not replace this leadership. It will punish all of us for our failure to reject leaders who tolerate the conditions under which we live and die. We should say to Trump, ‘no, don’t even think about it’. Then we should say to our leaders, ‘enough!’
