Nigeria must not become America’s next battlefield

In aboriginal November, United States President Donald Trump declared that “Christianity is facing an existential menace successful Nigeria”. In a bid of posts connected his Truth Social platform, helium accused “radical Islamists” of “mass slaughter” and warned that the US “may precise good spell into that present disgraced country, guns-a-blazing“.

The assertion rested connected a acquainted assumption: that unit successful Nigeria is driven by spiritual ideology, with Christians targeted by Islamist militants.

In mid-November, a caller question of schoolhouse abductions revealed however perilous parts of bluish Nigeria person go for children of each faiths. On November 17, equipped men raided Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School successful Maga, Kebbi State, sidesplitting a vice main and abducting 25 students. The schoolhouse was state-run, and the victims were Muslim girls. One escaped, and the remaining 24 were aboriginal rescued.

Days later, successful the aboriginal hours of November 21, gunmen stormed St Mary’s Catholic Primary and Secondary School successful Papiri, Niger State, abducting pupils and teachers. While immoderate captives aboriginal escaped oregon were released, galore remained missing into mid-December, leaving families successful agonising uncertainty. Parents proceed to hold without answers, their desperation and anguish hardening into choler arsenic authoritative assurances fade.

Taken together, these attacks bash not bespeak a run of spiritual persecution. They travel a signifier that has go progressively acquainted crossed bluish Nigeria: wide kidnapping for ransom, striking opportunistically alternatively than on spiritual lines.

Trump’s remarks bash much than misdiagnose this violence. They reimagine it. With a fewer lines of incendiary rhetoric, a state grappling with transgression insecurity and organization illness is recast arsenic a beforehand enactment successful a civilisational conflict — a spot wherever force, not reform, becomes the implied solution.

Once framed that way, Nigeria is nary longer a nine successful request of extortion and repair, but a battlefield-in-waiting.

That displacement matters. When unit is described arsenic spiritual warfare alternatively than organised crime, work moves outwards, solutions go militarised, and overseas involution begins to dependable not reckless but righteous.

This signifier is hardly surprising.

American powerfulness has a wont of transforming analyzable overseas crises into apocalyptic motivation dramas, and past acting connected the communicative it has told itself.

Nonetheless, Nigerian religion leaders, who cognize the terrain and the radical intimately, cull Washington’s narrative. The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Kukah, a starring fig successful Nigeria’s peacebuilding efforts, for example, cautioned against interpreting the unit arsenic spiritual warfare, pointing alternatively to transgression motives and authorities failure.

Analysts concurred, emphasising that attacks autumn connected Christians and Muslims alike and often travel patterns of banditry and ransom alternatively than theology.

In Kebbi State, the victims were Muslim schoolgirls taken from a state-run boarding school. In Niger State, the targets were pupils and teachers astatine a Catholic ngo school. Across Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Kaduna, Niger and Plateau states, villages person been raided, farms abandoned and populations displaced.

This unit is driven chiefly by profit-driven transgression unit alternatively than spiritual belief.

Chronic poverty, agrarian neglect and younker unemployment — with astir 72 percent of agrarian Nigerians surviving successful multidimensional poorness — substance recruitment into transgression and equipped networks.

True to Bishop Kukah’s analysis, ideology accounts for acold little of this unit than predatory transgression behaviour and opportunism. What flourishes alternatively is organised transgression successful areas wherever the authorities hardly functions. The main menace present stems from equipped “bandit” networks alternatively than a azygous ideologically driven insurgent movement.

These transgression militias kidnap schoolchildren and commuters for ransom, rustle cattle, extort villages, onslaught highways and, according to aggregate reports, progressively pat into amerciable mining economies, often operating from wood bases crossed the northwest.

At the aforesaid time, Nigeria is not confronting 1 equipped menace but several. Across the northeast, Boko Haram and the ISIL (ISIS) affiliate successful West Africa Province (ISWAP) stay active. In the northwest and north-central regions, equipped bandit networks dominate. Further south, successful the mediate belt, militia unit feeds connected onshore disputes and communal tensions.

The result has been wide displacement and civilian decease connected a devastating scale.

Amnesty International estimates that much than 10,000 civilians were killed successful equipped attacks successful the 2 years aft May 29, 2023, erstwhile President Bola Tinubu took office. Hundreds of villages person been destroyed oregon emptied. Thousands of children person abandoned school. In parts of the northwest, attacks are reported to hap play and, astatine times, adjacent daily. More disturbingly, kidnapping present reaches highways and commuter routes successful and astir the capital, Abuja.

To dainty this catastrophe arsenic spiritual persecution is not conscionable inaccurate but profoundly dangerous. This mendacious framing transforms organised transgression and authorities illness into a story of spiritual war, 1 that obscures causes and invites disastrous cures.

That is wherefore connection matters: it shapes intent and consequences.

When Washington defines home illness arsenic motivation failure, Nigeria ceases to beryllium seen arsenic a state successful request of reconstruction and starts to look similar an planetary menace to beryllium managed from outside.

Global attraction shifts from strengthening section institutions towards employing fiscal leverage, coercive tools and subject force.

Communities go talking points successful US politics.

In the process, Nigerian citizens are reduced to abstractions alternatively than treated arsenic surviving quality beings with rights, and localities similar Kebbi and Niger are recast arsenic struggle zones alternatively of places successful request of urgent repair.

When almighty states specify a crisis, they statesman shaping the outcome.

History offers nary reassurance.

From Iraq to Libya, US-led interventions person ushered successful untold devastation, leaving successful their aftermath nationalist institutions successful ruins and wars without end.

Crucially, each subject run promised bid and stability. Over time, each ngo has killed thousands of civilians and near full countries successful ruins.

If US forces entered Nigeria, adjacent successful tiny numbers, overseas troops would rapidly go magnets for onslaught and targets for retaliation, turning villages and wood communities into imaginable battlefields.

Communities would beryllium squeezed betwixt bandits and overseas firepower, arsenic transgression networks splinter, rebrand and accommodate to the caller battlefield.

This is the architecture of the US’s warfare cycle: an excuse first, unit second, and civilian lives last.

Nigeria should not presume immunity from this large powerfulness logic, arsenic countries bash not go warzones overnight. They are archetypal described arsenic failures, past reframed arsenic threats, earlier being treated arsenic acceptable targets.

Nigeria’s organization weakness is nary accident. It is rooted successful years of protecting assets alternatively of people, portion neglecting policing, justness and basal services.

Colonial and post-colonial regularisation built systems for earthy assets extraction alternatively than national protection. For galore decades, often nether subject rule, securing lipid gross and governmental power mattered much than effectual governance, nationalist payment oregon quality security.

In the Niger Delta, this attack has meant biology ruin, nonaccomplishment of livelihoods and organization neglect — the existent outgo of protecting wealthiness earlier people.

Today, that systemic plan persists: the authorities inactive defends assets much efficaciously than lives, portion inequality and neglect person deepened civilian exposure.

Even so, Nigeria inactive has options.

In precocious November, Tinubu declared a nationwide information emergency, ordered the recruitment of 20,000 further constabulary officers arsenic portion of a broader enlargement plan, redeployed VIP escorts to front-line duties, and authorised the deployment and enlargement of DSS wood guards to hunt bandits and rebels.

Whether these moves nutrient results depends not connected announcements but connected enforcement and extended reform.

Police and quality services indispensable beryllium strengthened and reoriented towards assemblage protection, with due oversight and resourcing, not simply expanded connected paper.

Only astir 15 percent of Nigerians accidental they spot the police, portion galore presumption officers arsenic corrupt oregon violent, leaving communities fearful of some criminals and instrumentality enforcement.

Courts and fiscal regulators request the capableness to dismantle ransom and extortion networks arsenic concern systems, not lone to pursuit their gunmen.

Regionally, Nigeria indispensable propulsion for superior practice connected quality sharing, borderline power and associated operations, oregon equipped groups volition proceed to determination freely crossed borders with near-total impunity.

From Washington, Nigeria does not request troops oregon threats.

It requires enactment to rebuild the institutions that support citizens safe: forensic capacity, actionable intelligence, grooming and diplomatic backing that strengthens Nigerian sovereignty alternatively of overriding it.

With astir 61 percent of Nigerians reporting that they person felt unsafe successful their communities successful caller years, this indispensable beryllium a nationalist wake-up telephone for Nigeria’s governmental class.

Only a broad solution tin present bid and support besieged communities successful bluish Nigeria.

Trump indispensable de-escalate. Tinubu indispensable enactment decisively.

What volition find Nigeria’s aboriginal is not overseas firepower, but whether its institutions are rebuilt to support citizens alternatively than assets.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.