Nigeria Needs to Heal Itself, but the United States Can Help

The man before me, with dilated, bloodshot eyes and barely comprehensible speech, could have been mistaken for a homeless person from any big city in the United States. Frighteningly, though, he wore the uniform of the Nigerian Army and poked his AK-47 through our car window, while his comrades laughed. My friends and I had been stopped at a routine checkpoint in southeast Nigeria. While Americans are typically accustomed to greater professionalism from police officers or government representatives, experiences like these are distressingly common in Nigeria, a country marked by significant corruption and a deeply dysfunctional government. 

While surprising to many, Nigeria has been and continues to be a critical African ally of the United States. The country boasts the largest population of any African country, and its population is young, with a median age of eighteen. Furthermore, the nation has been blessed with significant crude oil reserves and mineral deposits, and is a cultural hub of Africa with prominent film, music, and fashion industries. As such, it should come as no surprise that China is making substantial investments in the country.

It is in the interest of our own nation, therefore, to help Nigeria navigate the internal divisions this piece will discuss. And I say that as someone who generally prefers the United States focus on its own domestic issues.

This past fall, President Donald Trump declared Nigeria a "Country of Particular Concern" under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 amid continued reporting about the persecution of Christians.1 Before turning to that, I should add—having traveled to Nigeria ten times for business—that it is also an extraordinarily interesting country. It is rich in resources and in human vitality, being often described in terms of four broad regions: the North, the Middle Belt, the Southwest, and the Southeast. It has a population not much smaller than that of the United States scrunched into a land area about the size of Texas. There are at least 250 tribes and easily as many languages. 

The country came increasingly to President Trump’s attention due to the very real persecution of Christians, something that, sadly, has been taking place for over a century. On one of my trips to Nigeria about a decade ago, I heard about Fulani herders (a nomadic people, many of whom are Muslim) overrunning the fields of Christian farmers. Deep in the bush, I actually met Fulani squatters on a Christian’s farm, but the situation has gotten far worse in the time since I was last in the country in 2012. To this point, Steve Wagner, president of the organization Solidarity with the Persecuted Church, recently returned from Nigeria with stories of gangs of Fulani tribesmen armed with illegal guns brazenly crossing the Benue River in motorcycle convoys targeting one defenseless Christian village after another.

In addition to leaving many Christians dead, these raids destroy structures in the targeted villages, leaving survivors homeless. At the end of 2024, Nigeria was home to approximately three-and-a-half million internally displaced people, among the most in Africa. About half are taken in by relatives and neighbors, but the other half are forced to live in squalid camps. (It is important to note that not all internally displaced people become such due to religious persecution. Flooding is another cause.) Because these displacements happen within Nigeria, there is little international funding, publicity, or concern. The Nigerian government tends to turn a blind eye to the violence while also denying the existence of the camps.

As Wagner related to me, during his recent trip, he met with Catholic clergy in Nigeria, especially Bishop Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Makurdi. Makurdi is in the Middle Belt, where the majority of murderous raids are occurring. Bishop Anagbe has had to close seventeen parishes and noted that the Nigerian government has the capacity to end the violence but lacks the political will. As the Bishop put it, “It has always been a jihadist war—an attempt to occupy and conquer territory.” 

Living in the United States, it can be difficult to comprehend the violent imposition of a religion, but Nigeria is different. Aggressive domination is a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that some Nigerians subscribe to. 

In their 2021 history of Nigeria, Formation: The Making of Nigeria from Jihad to Amalgamation, Fola Fagbule and Feyi Fawehinmi go back two centuries, to the jihadist conquest of the north by the Hausa-Fulani tribes, the formation of the Sokoto Caliphate, and the subjugation of other Muslim and non-Muslim communities in the North and Middle Belt. While the British controlled Nigeria, the South absorbed British customs and institutions. In the North, however, the caliphate system was merely sanitized, abolishing slavery and transforming tribute into taxes but leaving the ruling Muslims in place, where they stayed even after independence from the United Kingdom in 1960.

Anti-Christian violence—and the government’s complicity in it—are problems that Nigerians themselves must resolve. But this will be very difficult to address head-on considering the degree of censorship present in the country. As the Nigerian author Elnathan John wrote in November: 

“It would be easy—comforting even—to call this a Christian genocide. It would give the chaos a villain and the West a moral script. But that simplification obscures the truth: Nigeria’s violence is a mosaic of neglect, greed, and inherited theology. The killers come in every creed; the dead fill every church and mosque.  

To call it simply Christian genocide risks excusing the state. It implies a clear intention where there is mostly indifference. What we suffer is not a single campaign of extermination but a sustained collapse of conscience.  

Nigeria is dying not because its people hate one another, but because their government loves no one.”

The Christmas Day bombing of Islamic State camps in northwestern Nigeria by the Trump Administration—while symbolically powerful—achieved very little practically speaking. Nigeria suffers from a fundamentally constitutional problem that no amount of bombs will resolve. As an outsider, I admit to seeing the only solution as a reconstruction of the country to conform to the tribal, ethnic, and religious differences, and the territorial characteristics that were heartlessly disregarded when the boundaries were set at the Berlin Conference in 1884–85. 

That is only my view. Most Nigerians remain committed to national unity and simply want an effective government capable of protecting them from violence. Perhaps our country could help in a way that goes beyond episodic military action.

First of all, the United States could organize conferences on policies that unite both Muslim and Christian Nigerians—defining marriage as between a man and a woman, strengthening family stability, supporting local civil society, and resisting social agendas pushed by the European Union and some non-governmental organizations that exacerbate internal divisions.

Second, Nigerians need to have more confidence in their elections. This starts with a census the people can trust. A common joke in the South is that the North includes cows in its census. We can improve trust at a very low cost by providing technical assistance for obtaining accurate census data. We could also expose corruption and share best practices on election integrity.

Finally, as President Trump weighs whom to appoint as the next United States Ambassador to Nigeria, he should earnestly consider someone with a forceful personality who is also committed to a peaceful and prosperous Nigeria—someone willing to tell uncomfortable truths and recommend painful but necessary changes.

Nigeria is one of the most important countries in Africa, and many Nigerians have a great respect for the United States, its history, and its institutions. Hopefully, the United States can show its people a better way, one that leads the country away from violence toward stability and greater social harmony.

Tom McDonough is the Executive Director of American Family Project. He writes the Substack Brownson’s Occasional Blog.

Endnotes

1. The first Trump administration had similarly designated Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern” on December 7, 2020, but that designation was removed in November 2021 by the Biden administration.