Ribadu, Nigeria-U.S engagement and narrative framing

So much has changed in Nigeria and the world since I wrote in these pages about Nigerian supporters of President Donald J. Trump five years ago in late January 2020. Yet so much has stayed the same. The U.S. 2020 election was not upturned as many “Nigerian Trumpists” had wished. But no matter, Trump has […]

So much has changed in Nigeria and the world since I wrote in these pages about Nigerian supporters of President Donald J. Trump five years ago in late January 2020. Yet so much has stayed the same. The U.S. 2020 election was not upturned as many “Nigerian Trumpists” had wished. But no matter, Trump has since returned to the White House. This time, his racism has grown military muscles the size of the world’s largest and most advanced war machine.

He has already taken Venezuela and captured its president without regard to diplomatic codes or international law. He covets Greenland, a part of Denmark, too, but has said he would not use force to take it. He has referred to the Prime Minister of Canada as “Governor,” implying that he could annex it and make it the 51st state of the U.S. by force, if he so wishes. Although less known, he has also installed himself as lifetime emperor of Palestine through an entirely illegal colonial entity he calls the “Board of Peace”.

All of these actions have sent chills down the capitals of many countries, including in Abuja here. It is not clear what Trump wants in specifics, but it is clear what he wants in general: everyone and every country in the world must bow to his whims. As the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in his important speech in Davos last week, all of this is a “rupture, not a transition”. We are entering into a whole new world, and no one is clear what that world looks like. Most countries and populations are devising their own strategies for coping with this development. Nigeria and Nigerians must prepare and thread with caution and self-awareness as we enter into this new world.

Unfortunately, the Nigerian government, and many Nigerians, appear to have already chosen capitulation to Trump. If in his first term many Nigerians supported him merely because of Obama’s perceived role in tilting the Nigeria 2015 elections against then President Goodluck Jonathan, they now have a more potent reason to do so. Trump has since assumed the role of “Protector-in-Chief” of Christians and Christianity in Nigeria, and on which account he has already struck missiles at Nigeria, the first time by a foreign country since 1914.

Of course, Trump’s popularity among Nigerians has only soared, as religion alone is now the defining lens by which more and more of our people view the world. One wonders, however, why Trump did not care about Venezuelan Christians when he took their country, or Gazan Christians when he supported Israel to bomb their churches, or yet European Christians as he threatens to take Greenland from Denmark. And how much does Trump care about black Christians in his own country? In 2025, that is, under Trump’s first year, a total of 1,201 blacks were killed by police violence in the U.S, according to reports. The overwhelming majority of blacks in the U.S are Christians, but not once has he talked about their disproportionate killing by police in the U.S. Instead, he has been more worried about a phantom “white genocide” in South Africa. And, when last does anyone see a black person near Trump or his government?

None of these appears to matter to Nigerians who support Trump, or to the federal government which engages with his administration without a clear narrative strategy. In a plurally fragile society like Nigeria’s, many people, including at the highest levels of government, accept Trump’s misleading and harmful framing of protecting Christians in Nigeria as exactly as told. That is concerning, or should be. No one is calling for Nigeria to engage in any confrontations with Donald Trump or the United States, but our engagement with Trump and his administration must be sensitive to our own fragile plurality.

In particular, Nigeria must be sensitive to narrative framing in its engagement with the United States. We must, for our own good, reject such frames as “religious persecution”, “religious freedom”, and “religious violence”, not to mention “Christian genocide”. These are no longer neutral terms; they are all politically charged in the current Nigerian climate and connote very specific and divisive things. Our government and media must be aware and be sensitive to it.

For example, following his meeting with U.S representatives at the weekend, newspapers quoted our National Security Adviser (NSA), Malam Nuhu Ribadu as saying that Nigeria treats “religious violence as an attack on the state”. I can understand the NSA is trying to shift the narrative away from “Christian genocide” to something else less potent or divisive for Nigeria. Still, to frame the issue in term of “religious violence” is rather unhelpful, even tactless. The NSA and Nigerian government must recognise that narrative framing is as important for negotiating security matters as are arms or boots on the ground.

To say that Nigeria regards “religious violence” as an attack on the country is to imply that Boko Haram terrorism, farmer-herder clashes, banditry, etc, are all forms of religious violence by one religious group against another or others.  For Ribadu to frame the issue as a “religious violence” is to imply that all Nigerian Muslims endorse the violent actions of Boko Haram, bandits, farmers and herders, or that all Nigerian Christians support the killings of Muslims in many Christian dominated areas throughout the country. Worst of all, it is to reduce the complexities of these conflicts to a single indicator, religion, and to elevate one category of victims above others, although both Muslims and Christians have been victims. In short, in narrative effect, “religious violence” is the same as “Christian genocide”, only different words.

That elevation is clearly evident in Nigeria’s engagement with the U.S delegation. Allison Hooker, U.S Under-Secretary of State and leader of the American delegation reportedly said that: “Today, we are here to discuss how we can work together to deter violence against Christian communities, prioritising counter-terrorism, insecurity, investigating attacks and holding perpetrators accountable. Reducing the number of killings, forced displacements, and abductions of Christians, particularly in North-Central states”, according to a news report in TheCable of 24 January 2026.

I don’t know what the Nigerian team makes of such statements, but as a political journalist, I believe this is not a positive or welcome framing of this issue in the current Nigerian context, and does not seem like what a foreign team here to help us solve our terrorism and general insecurity problem would say. It is what you would say if your goal is to cause confusion in a country with one of the world’s most fragile plurality, or what you would say when you don’t have the facts or when you don’t know enough about what you are talking about.

But the United States cannot pretend it doesn’t know what is happening in Nigeria. If anything, the U.S knows more than anyone that Nigeria’s insecurity challenges—Boko Haram terrorism and its affiliates, banditry, farmer-herder conflicts, indigene-settler conflicts, etc—cannot be framed simplistically in terms of “religious-violence”, or Muslim-against Christian, or Christian-only victims. Therefore, if the United States is actively elevating one category of victims in Nigerian violent conflicts above other victims of the same conflicts; if the United States is openly speaking to and making emotional appeals to one group of Nigerians against other Nigerians on the same issues, then the U.S must know that it is not helping Nigeria.

Rather, the U.S is simply adding fuel to an already scorching political situation. The United States should not be encouraging Nigerians to think of themselves only as Christians or Muslims in the context of victimhood, rather than as Nigerians. If the U.S continues on this path, then it must know that it is sowing the seeds of discord, confusion and conflict in Nigeria. Unlike the U.S, however, the Nigerian state does not have the resources or capabilities to deal with the consequences of extreme identity politics. The U.S must please, stop.

More importantly, the Nigerian federal government must reject such narrative frames. Nigeria cannot afford to accept these unhelpful framings exactly as they are projected by the U.S. If the objective of this Nigeria-U.S. engagement is genuinely to help—I have said that the Nigerian government must recognise that there is no such thing as help in international affairs—then the first thing is to engage, negotiate, and agree at the level of narrative framing. The issues must be framed in terms of all-embracing and more useful language like the rule of law, accountability, peaceful co-existence, mutual respect, and our common Nigerian identity. Nuhu Ribadu must pay attention to this, for the sake of us all.