OPINION:Don’t Be Fooled: The U.S. Will Not Save Nigeria’s Christians

By Emameh Gabriel

When a powerful nation begins to weave a narrative that is untethered from facts, the world should take notice. Last week, United States President, Donald Trump pronounced Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, designating it as a site of “Christian genocide”. This is not merely a misdiagnosis, it is a dangerous and politically motivated fiction. To accept this claim at face value is to ignore a far more cynical and established pattern of American foreign policy: the manipulation of human rights pretexts to justify intervention in resource-rich nations that dare to operate independently.

We cannot deny the fact that Nigeria is grappling with a serious and complex security crisis. The people of Nigeria, regardless of faith, are victims of violence from a mosaic of criminal entities. In the Northeast, Boko Haram and its splinter groups continue their reign of terror, which began under a Christian president and has killed countless Muslims.

In the Northwest, bandits—motivated by profit, not prophecy—terrorise communities, kidnapping Muslim and Christian children alike from their schools. In the Middle Belt, conflicts between herders and farmers, rooted in decades of ecological degradation and resource competition, have been cynically and simplistically framed as religious wars.

The South East is also not spared by separatists groups. To isolate the suffering of one community and label it “genocide” is not only factually incorrect but an act of disrespect to the thousands of Nigerian Muslims who have also been victims of this widespread insecurity. This narrative does not help Nigerians; it further polarises a nation desperately trying to find unity against a common threat of criminality.

So, why would the United States, with all its intelligence gathering capabilities, promote such a distorted view? The answer can only be answered in a long standing Washington playbook.

For decades, the map to destabilising sovereign nations has followed a predictable sequence. The United States and its allies loot resources, create conflicts, bomb nations into submission, and when that fails, they sanction and terrify those who will not fall in line. This is not conspiracy; it is recent history. We see this script playing out on the global stage today. The United States wants a war with China not because China is a threat to peace, but because its model of development and infrastructure investment offers the Global South an alternative path to productivity—one that doesn’t involve Western conditionalities and the perpetual extraction of wealth.

This same logic of domination underpins the American posture towards three nations in particular: Iran, Venezuela, and Nigeria. Iran possesses one of the largest oil reserves in the world and, critically, maintains a foreign policy independent of American diktat, including its steadfast condemnation of the atrocities in Palestine. Venezuela, sitting on the largest proven oil reserves globally, has sought partnerships with Russia, China, and Iran, creating a bloc that operates outside Washington’s sphere of influence. The United States hates nothing more than a nation that grows independently of its deceptive framework, which often promises partnership but delivers vassalage.

And then there is Nigeria. Nigeria holds the largest oil and gas reserves in Africa, alongside vast deposits of untapped solid minerals. It is a demographic giant and a traditional cornerstone of American influence on the continent. Yet, it has increasingly looked to diversify its partnerships, engaging robustly with Chinese firms on infrastructure and resisting certain Western pressures on immigration and economic policy. The “Christian genocide” narrative is the perfect pretext to begin applying pressure. It rallies a domestic American audience, provides a moral justification for future action, and sows discord within Nigeria itself.

The shǒuduàn methods are already in motion. The role of USAID has long been a subject of intense suspicion across Africa. It is worth recalling that the U.S. Congress and even the previous Trump administration itself pointed fingers at the dubious activities of certain agencies in the region. The model is well-established: just as jihadist groups were fostered in Syria to destabilise a government unfriendly to the West, the sponsorship of extremist elements in Nigeria, including Boko Haram, has been alleged by credible voices from the US to have involved Western intelligence machinations. The goal is not to protect Christians, but to create a state of perpetual chaos that makes the country easier to manipulate and its resources easier to control.

To the Christian community in Nigeria, we say this: if you believe the United States is your saviour, you are tragically mistaken. Look at the nations where America has intervened in the name of “human rights” or “freedom.” Look at the rubble of Iraq, the failed state of Libya, the ongoing devastation in Yemen. The American security apparatus does not discriminate by faith when it drops its bombs or imposes its sanctions; it creates universal suffering. Aligning with this narrative makes you a pawn in a much larger game, a game that, if successful, will lead not to your salvation, but to the destabilisation of your entire nation, to the benefit of foreign interests. Your Muslim neighbours are not your enemy; your common enemy is the criminality that preys on you both, and the foreign powers that seek to exploit your divisions.

The “Christian genocide” is a myth, but the threat to Nigerian sovereignty is very real. The solution lies in rejecting this pernicious narrative, holding our own government to account for its security failures, and forging a united national front. Our future must be written in Abuja, Lagos, Part Harcourt, Enugu and Kano—not in Washington. To believe otherwise is not just naive; it is an existential threat to the nation itself.