Nigeria’s political class has been on edge since the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, announced the redesignation of the most populous black nation on earth as a “Country of Particular Concern” on October 31, 2025.
Trump, who announced on social media, Truth Social, a style that is consistent with the American leader, said he could be going into Nigeria to fish out terrorists, who, in his words, have been killing Christians in that country. But Trump’s hammer did not just fall suddenly on Nigeria. There were processes to the eventual decision and the homily that followed.
The first lesson from the Trump announcement on October 31 is that you never take a looming danger lightly. The Yoruba would say that if you are to avoid a sharp object hitting your eyes, you take the step early enough. The first hint that Nigeria could be redesignated as a Country of Particular Concern came weeks earlier when American Senator Tedd Cruz accused some unnamed Nigerian officials of facilitating the mass murder of Christians. Though his statement heightened the prospect of the country re-emerging on the unwanted list, not much coordinated action was seen from the government to avert the looming danger.
A few days after Senator Cruz made his position known, the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, spoke in the Vatican City, where he told the United States not to designate Nigeria as a country of particular concern on account of the killing of Christians. Yes, his voice was deep and presented robust arguments capable of prompting a rethink among the Americans, but the government’s voice was not immediately coordinated in one direction. In his submission titled “Comments at the launch of ACIN 2025 World Report on Religious Freedom in the World,” Bishop Kukah said that while Nigeria faced a dire situation in terms of religious dichotomy under the eight years of the late President Muhammadu Buhari, the situation has changed under the Tinubu administration. He stated that whereas “there have been serious concerns nationally and internationally over the deterioration of security matters in Nigeria,” the reports have focused on what he called “the tragic outburst of violence that has turned huge swaths of the Nigerian landscape into a huge killing field.”
He declared that classifying Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern could hurt the job religious leaders have been doing to foster unity and religious freedom.
He said: “I do believe that today, acts of impunity persist, but it is my view that re-designating Nigeria a Country of Concern will hurt the initiatives we are working on with the current government to collectively resolve the nagging problems of first, the persecution of Christians, and of course, the larger issues of ending the mindless killings of our citizens.
“Designating my country, Nigeria, a Country of Concern will only make our work in the area of dialogue among religious leaders in our country and elsewhere with the Nigerian state even harder. It will only increase tensions, sow doubt, open windows of suspicion and fear, and simply allow the criminals and perpetrators of violence to exploit. What Nigeria needs now is more vigilance by the organisations such as the ACIN and civil society groups to continue to press for change and to deliberately work to end impunity.”
While Bishop Kukah is a right and appropriate person to speak on the matter, his voice became isolated because public communicators did not follow in his footsteps. Whereas Kukah spoke about the need to ensure a united front among the religions, public commentators who spoke on the side of the government chose to weigh the extent of the evil being condemned by Americans. For instance, they kept on saying that the killings in Nigeria were not restricted to Christians- as if it is a good thing to kill any Nigerian. I am sure such comments added to the anger among American stakeholders and propelled Trump to announce his decision to go into that “disgraced country”, gun blazing.
So, we have a lot to learn about political communication in this matter. Although political office propels the holder to the pinnacle of the social ladder, the Nigerian system hardly prepares public office holders for the challenges of that office. The whole lot of what you do in the office rests on political communication. And since communication theorist Paul Watzlawick and his colleagues saddled us with the Axioms of Communication, resting firmly on the very first, which says ‘you cannot not communicate’, the reality has remained unwavering that whatever you do in public office will either count for you or be counted against you. It then happened that Trump and his operatives simply read the body language of Nigerian leaders as that of those who were not ready to halt the scourge of violence in their land, and pronto, the redesignation as a CPC.
And as soon as the Trump hammer landed, we started seeing all manner of knives, as if an elephant had died and everyone was scrambling for the huge flesh. Some commentators have raised conspiracy theories, insinuating that America’s anger wasn’t just about the killings but about something it was pushing to level with Nigeria about. Some said that Uncle Sam and his children have their eyes on Nigeria’s natural resources and thus were looking for an avenue to gain access to a portion of the land.
I do not buy into all those conspiracy theories. Indeed, the Nigerian situation is not one that we can rightly categorize as genocide against Christians. It is genocide against Nigerians of all walks of life. It is an attack on the collective psyche of the hapless and helpless Nigerians, who have nowhere to go except their village farms and many of whom have been condemned to become destitutes, living in IDP camps. Why should someone the Yoruba would call Omo onile olona (one with a designated address) be condemned to daily life in IDP camps? How many of such camps are being operated in Benue, Plateau, Adamawa, Yobe, Borno and other states? How many of the IDP citizens are being returned to their homes, year in year out, and what is the plan to terminate the operation of IDP camps in the country? Those are the questions Senator Cruz didn’t mention in his statement, and which amplified Trumps homily of October 31.
Curiously, the real fact that should address Trump and Senator Cruz did not start coming into the Nigerian space until Wednesday, November 5. The Minister of Information and National Orientation, who addressed the media alongside some of his colleagues in Abuja, said that 17,000 terror suspects have been arrested and are undergoing trials, while 13,500 terrorists have been killed and 9,800 victims have been rescued. Even though the data he has released will not bring back the lives that have been lost, there is a bit of assurance that the administration is doing something about the agents of violence. That is a scorecard and a form of accountability, which should define democracy. However, Nigerians certainly need not wait for a Trump threat or homily before they get to know that something is being done to keep them safe.
And for the terrorists and their sponsors, the lesson for them is captured in a proverb I will paraphrase; if the home does not train a child, the street would do. They should know that if Trump and the American system say they are ready for them, it will not take eternity. They should ask themselves, what is Nigeria gaining from their evil acts?
In the last ten years or so, it appears as if the more we grow into democracy, the tighter lip the governments are becoming. The late President Muhammadu Buhari started the tight-lippedness, or so, when he often ignored his citizens and would only drop hints of government policies through foreign media. And such occasions looked like Christmas days in the media. Since the Tinubu government came on board, things have only improved a bit. What former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan instituted as monthly media chats has gone into oblivion.
Democracy demands that the citizens hear from their leaders very often. You can’t finish counting the number of media engagements the American President undertakes in a year. People deserve to know, and not carrying them along in the running of their own affairs is absurd.
A key lesson that our public officers should also learn from the ongoing Trump/Tinubu saga is that governments cannot afford to keep quiet. You either communicate at the right time, using the right channels, or you are ascribed the wrong perception. When you don’t inform your citizens about your activities, your efforts, your challenges and successes, or near successes, the people get despondent, and the vibes you hear portray a people abandoned. One way or the other, such vibes escape through the borders and feed the ears of the West and the East, who process the signals for their own good. It is wrong that political actors take on this Kabiyesi (overlordship) outlook immediately after the swearing-in. Perhaps that affects the level of their commitment to accountability. But if they take offerings from political communication theorists into account, the same citizens they despise would be their strongest pillar and public relations tool.
(Publushed in the Sunday Tribune of November 9, 2025)
