President Trump’s Threat, Issues That Should Not Be Ignored.
Wednesday (Eke) 05-11-2025.
Brouhaha, apprehension and uncertainty have become evident in Nigeria’s national discourse in the recent times due to President Donald Trump’s designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, CPC.
By way of simple understanding, if a country is designated to be of particular concern, it means such a country, in the view of the President of United States of America, conveyed by the Secretary of State, has been deeply ignoring violations of religious freedom as against International Religious Freedom Act, 1998.
The uniqueness of the above threat is that President Trump was quoted to have threatened that the Pentagon may go into Nigeria ‘gun-a-ablazing’ over attacks on Christians in Nigeria by fulani Islamist terrorists.
Even though the pronouncement by President Trump stands as a threat, in itself, to Nigeria’s sovereignty, there are many issues that need not be ignored.
To begin with, it is important to state that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu inherited a country that had almost been irretrivably devastated by terrorism and insecurity under the pleasant watch of late President Muhammadu Buhari. What is happening today is not the making of President Tinubu.
No honest Nigerian would forget in a hurry that no sooner had Buhari threatened, after his third presidential loss in 2011, that ‘if what happened in 2011 happens again in 2015, by God’s grace, the dog and the baboon will be soaked in blood’.
It was believed thousands of foreign fulani terrorists migrated into Nigeria from the Sahel and many parts of West Africa following that threat. Nothing good has ever come out of the fulani since they so migrated into Nigeria from 2011. It has been one carnage, disaster, massacre or another. Who does not know that the victims of their atrocities have mainly been Christians in the Middle-Belt, including Christians in Southern Kaduna?
In 1999, to the shock and surprise of Christians in Nigeria, the Governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Ahmed Sani Yerima, enacted a proclamation of a full circle of Sharia Criminal Law. Eleven other States in the North subsequently did the same proclamation.
Yet Section 10 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria declares Nigeria a ‘Secular State’! Neither the Federal or State Governments are authorized to adopt any religion as an official vehicle of worship, as to avoid pushing the country into a theocratic diarchy.
Today, the secularism that should characterize Nigeria has been compromised by virtue of the ‘Theocratic Diarchy’ that now operates in majority of the States in the North.
In 2022, for instance, a second-year Christian female student of Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto, Miss Deborah Samuel Yakubu, was stoned to a miserable death by her fellow students who were moslems on mere allegation of blasphemy. Violent sentiments of Sharia Criminal Law were applied to a Christian, and neither the Governor of the State nor any Government Official condemned such an act of primitive brutality.
The infamous abduction of an estimated 247 female Students of Government Science Secondary School at Chibok in Borno State on April 14, 2014 was a direct attack on Christianity. Was it in doubt?
Let no mistake be made about using number of persons killed to determine or define a genocide. Genocide has more to do with intent than number. Once there is an intent to eliminate any group of people, be it on the basis of tribe, religion or on the grounds of economic classification, even if it is only one or two person(s) that is or are killed, it has automatically become a genocide.
Will the Bishop of Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Rev Father Mathew Kukah , in all honesty, affirm that the killing of over 70 Christians at Saint Francis Catholic Church at Owo in Ondo State by Fulani jihadists in June 2022 was not a genocide? It will be utterly hypocritical of that Bishop to be economical with the truth.
The Owo genocide attracted condemnation from the British Parliament, Pope Francis, and many World Leaders.
Not long ago, in June 2025, the Tor Tiv, erudite Professor James Ayatse, told President Tinubu who was on an official visit to Benue State because of mass killings by the Fulani terrorists that ‘the killings of Tiv People by the Fulani were not just farmer-herder clashes but a calculated, well-planned, full-scale genocidal invasion and land-grabbing campaign that has been ongoing for decades’. Is there any doubt that more than 90% of Benue indigenes are Christians? An attack on them is an attack on Christians!
American Congressman, Senator Ted Crux, did not manufacture the figures of 50,000 Christians killed, 2,000 Schools, and 18,000 Churches destroyed between 2009 and date. Global Network of Intelligence must have been monitoring and taking records of these atrocities and acts of condemnable brutality.
Equity Global Reporters Ltd wishes to advise that President Tinubu, the Nigerian Government and the Nigerian Peoples ought not misconstrue President Trump’s designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, CPC. It should rather be accepted as an ‘eye opener’. Come to think of it, the constitutional responsibility of any Government is the protection of lives and properties of her citizens. This has not been the case in Nigeria, especially during the tenure of Buhari.
What President Trump has just done was to issue a warning that if the killings, be it called massacre or genocide, do not stop, that America would stop giving aids to Nigeria. The question of military invasion or attack is neither here nor there. It would be too costly and regrettable to the United States of America.
What the Nigerian Government needs to do now is to go back to its drawing board and ask itself fundamental rhetorical questions.
It is diplomatically embarrassing that a ‘Giant’ like Nigeria has had no High Commissioners or Ambassadors for more than Two years running. More embarrassing is the fact that Nigeria also has had no Permanent Representative in the United Nations within the period under review. So, diplomatically-speaking, Nigeria’s foreign relations have been as good as empty, leaving the country without any form of intelligence. Those that surround Mr President are either his worst enemies for failing to draw his attention to this major flaw or are just a bunch of incompetent subordinates.
This is not a time to massage national ego, by trying to talk down on the United States of America. It is, rather, a period that calls for introspection, sober reflection, and altruistic patriotism. Let the President search for competent capable citizens that can help his Administration rewrite the present situation. They may not necessarily be his Yoruba kinsmen.
National Security Architecture should be under constant survey. If it was true that the United States of American Military had sometime in the past suggested that Boko Haram Insurgents in the North-East would be gassed in order to bring back the Chibok Students at the early stage of their abduction but before the operation it was discovered the insurgents had started wearing Gas Mask, it means the Security Agencies had a hand in the ‘business of insurgency’.
One thing is, however, clear and that is any person accumulating wealth out of insecurity in Nigeria, and its attendant spilling of blood should know that such primitive brutal accumulation of material riches can not bring sustainable wealth and comfort to his or her family.
The National Security Adviser has to show character, competence and capability by identifying sponsors of terrorism and insurgency in Nigeria. If he proves unable to achieve it and restore security in the next six months, his competence would then become doubtful.
Sir Don Ubani; KSC, JP
Okwubunka of Asa and Okeamadi Gburugburu,
Former Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Abia State,
Publisher,
Equity Global Reporters Ltd.
