By: Prof. Usman Yusuf
Nigerians will remember Christmas Day 2025 as the day a dangerous precedent was set and Nigeria’s sovereignty, pride and dignity as a nation were violated by America’s unprovoked airstrike on its soil.
President Trump announced the airstrike on his social media account with the following message: “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even centuries.”
American bombs hit an empty farmland in Jabo village in Tambuwal LGA of Sokoto. Jabo is a peaceful agrarian village with open arable land, with no forests or criminal hideouts; it has no history of ISIS, banditry, or terrorism. No security challenges have been reported in this area that would justify an airstrike.
Sokoto or North-West Nigeria has no history of Christian genocide. In fact, the victims of violence in the region over the years have largely been Muslims killed by bandits.
Trump’s assumptions are patently false and only deepen our ethnoreligious fault lines. His definition of Nigeria’s security challenges, rooted in faith and championing only Christian interests, is not only ignorant and dangerous but also intellectually lazy. Trump’s reckless military intervention only stirs up the hornet’s nest and puts the lives of many innocent citizens at risk, as evidenced by spikes in attacks and abductions in vulnerable communities.
The goal of this article is to pose a set of related questions, even though I know I will not get any convincing answers. Why did Donald Trump act on Christmas Day, and why was the heart of Sokoto Caliphate singled out? He claimed the aim was to protect Christians, but this justification needs scrutiny. Were the National Assembly or the Armed Forces informed in advance? Why was the federal government’s response muted? Why did the Foreign Minister, rather than the Defence Minister, take the lead in public statements? And why are IPOB supporters appearing as the instigators?
With the benefit of hindsight, the Christian genocide conspiracy seed was planted on 18 June 2025 in Makurdi, Benue state, after the Yelwata village massacre, when President Tinubu visited for condolences – a gesture never extended to other northern victims.
The President was accompanied by the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Inspector General of Police (IGP), Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and the National Security Adviser (NSA).
I sensed something fishy the moment the President turned this tragic loss of innocent lives into a political theatre and gave it a religious colouration. He publicly called out and asked the CDS and the IGP, both of whom are Christians, to stand up and proceeded to give them a directive to fish out the perpetrators of the gruesome act.
Vice President Kashim Shettima’s speech at the 80th United Nations General Assembly in New York on 25 September 2025, where he stated Nigeria’s support for an independent Palestinian state, did not go down well with Israel and its American supporters.
The fuse of the Christian genocide conspiracy in Nigeria was lit when American evangelical Christian groups and some republican members of the Senate and Congress went on a media blitz, aggressively pushing the false narrative.
This negative media campaign rattled Tinubu’s government, which appeared frozen and offering only weak responses. The NSA led a delegation comprising the Attorney General of the Federation, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, the CDS, the Chief of Defence Intelligence (CDI), and the IGP to the U.S. for some damage control. They met with Pete Hegseth, America’s War Secretary and Congressman Riley Moore, who is pushing the Christian genocide narrative.
The delegation signed undertakings allegedly dictated by the Americans, stating Nigeria’s failure to meet some demands would lead Trump to direct military action. These conditions remained secret, and the National Assembly, elected to question the executive, failed to ask for details of the meeting.
Congressman Riley Moore visited Nigeria on 8 December 2025 for a fact-finding mission on violence against Christians, then flew back to Washington, DC, to report to Trump. He only visited Benue State before returning to help Trump decide on potential military action.
I did not know whether to laugh, cry or be angry when I read an article in the New York Times on 18 December 2025, which reported that vocal supporters of the Christian genocide hoax in the American Congress and Senate relied heavily on the dodgy “research” via a Google search by a mischievous Igbo screwdriver salesman, conducted from his small shop in the dusty Onitsha market, as their source of evidence of Christian genocide in Nigeria.
It was based on this “research” that they recommended military action on Nigerian soil to President Trump. I was honestly very embarrassed by these American lawmakers, knowing full well the resources at their disposal to find the truth if they really wanted to. It is a pity that they do not care about the truth.
It is no secret that secessionist Biafra agitators have been the main initiators and drivers of this treasonous Christian genocide narrative to the world. Indeed, the information that convinced President Trump of the false narrative that Christians were being systematically targeted and genocidally killed in Nigeria was traceable to the IPOB, a terrorist Igbo separatist group.
IPOB has long spread false claims of Christian genocide in Nigeria via Radio Biafra and social media. It has built ties with some U.S. lawmakers, churches, and Christian NGOs. Its strategy is to divide groups by exploiting Nigeria’s ethnoreligious and political fault lines using religion.
The 3 main goals of IPOB are:
- Creation of Biafra: Following the bloody military coup of 15 January 1966 by Igbo military officers that resulted in the cold-blooded murders of Nigeria’s political and military leaders predominantly from the north, Nigeria was plunged into a tragic 30-month civil war that led to the loss of lives and displacement of millions. IPOB and its followers, many of whom were either not born at the time or too young to remember the horrors of the civil war and, apparently, not schooled by their elders, believe they can now achieve in peacetime, by lying in the name of a great religion, what those before them could not achieve on the battlefield.
- In Nigeria, as the Presidential election nears, IPOB and its supporters often launch insults, blackmail, and threats of violence or secession against northerners, trying to intimidate voters to support an Igbo candidate or favour zoning the Presidency to the South-East. The Christian genocide lie is another blackmail tactic.
- Another delusion of these purveyors of hate and falsehood is that President Trump would give them special visa status for being “persecuted Christians,” as he granted to white South Africans.
What is in it for Northern Nigerian Christians, who should know better than these hateful interlopers with a secessionist agenda? The simple truth is that they will be used as pawns on IPOB’s hateful chessboard and for their votes in 2027 by selfish politicians, just as northern Muslim voters were deceived by the ruling party’s Muslim-Muslim scam in the 2023 general elections.
Why would a group of Nigerians go into the world spreading falsehoods and calling for a military attack on their country, one would ask? Their motive is simple, they are driven by a deep – seated hatred of Islam and northern Nigerian Muslims. The question on everybody’s mind in the north is, how would any sane person in the region trust or vote for someone who hates him, his religion, culture and region?
Following the American airstrikes, Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, appeared on several news outlets. He said that Nigeria provided the intelligence for the US strike and that he spoke twice with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for 19 minutes and 5 minutes, before the strike was launched. He said that they both agreed that the statement that would follow should downplay religion as the reason for the strike.
The Foreign Minister’s media appearances raised more questions than answers:
- Did Nigeria really give the Americans the intelligence to attack what turned out to be empty farmland in Sokoto?
- Who initiated the call? Was it Nigeria or the US?
- Should the call not have been between President Trump and President Tinubu, as protocol requires?
- Was it a one-off permission or a blank check to the Americans for subsequent attacks, like Trump himself said that more are coming?
Nigerians expected to hear from and be reassured by their President and Commander-in-Chief, or at least their Minister of Defence, not the Foreign Minister. Their silence raised a few questions.
- Were the Armed Forces informed about this strike, and did they approve it? Gen. CG Musa, The Hon Minister of Defence, did not seem aware of the airstrike, as he was seen dancing at his 58th birthday party on the day of the attack. The following week, he surfaced again at a homecoming event and church service while Nigerians waited for his comments.
- Was there anything that the American airstrike did that the Nigerian Air Force could not do?
- Trump openly stated his air strike in the heart of Muslim Sokoto Caliphate was to save his “cherished Christians.” Why didn’t the Defence Minister and CDS, both Christians, represent the government in explaining this military action to Nigerians?
- Why did the government send the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Information, both of whom are Muslims, to talk about a military issue?
- Gen. Musa’s appointment as Minister of Defence on 2 December 2023, after being dropped as The CDS on 24 October 2023, was aimed at pacifying the northern Christian constituency that Tinubu seeks to win in the 2027 elections and to follow Trump’s directive. If the alledged Christian genocide truly occurred, when did it occur? Was it when Christians were heading almost all of Nigeria’s security agencies? Gen. Musa, a Christian, headed the armed forces as the CDS, the Chief of Army Staff, CDI, IGP, and DG DSS were all Christians.
It was deeply disappointing to watch respected shows on some major Nigerian television outlets as they blindly joined the “Christian genocide” bandwagon, in blatant disregard for the ethics of professional journalism. These shows became embarrassing echo chambers, where their anchors and guests spewed out inciting information, opinions and falsehoods that reinforced their existing bigoted beliefs while shutting out guests with opposing viewpoints.
President Tinubu has mismanaged Nigeria’s diversity by deliberately and selfishly widening the ethnoreligious divide in the country for his electoral gains firstly, by flying the Muslim-Muslim ticket in 2023 and now pivoting for northern Christian votes in 2027 by being sympathetic to the Christians genocide falsehood as exemplified by his appointment as the electoral umpire, INEC Chair, a gentleman who wrote a flawed legal opinion 6 years ago supporting this false narrative.
Tinubu has squandered all the goodwill he came into office with by running a never-before-seen tribalistic, nepotistic and state-capturing administration that does not care about the security and welfare of citizens. His failure to protect all citizens regardless of their faiths is setting Nigerians up against each other and giving his failed administration a free ride.
It appears that President Tinubu is either knowingly or unknowingly midwifing the breakup of Nigeria as a single entity. Internationally, he has surrendered our sovereignty to America and France and is allowing Nigeria to be drawn into America’s proxy war with China over control of our natural resources.
We must all do our part to prevent Nigeria from descending into the anarchy we now see in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and Libya.
A stitch in time saves nine.
Usman Yusuf is a Professor of Haematology-Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation
