Nigeria is once again on the global spotlight in the wake of its redesignation as a Country of Particular Concern and the accompanying threat of U.S. military action by the Trump administration to save Nigerian Christians from “genocide”.
This narrative is as dangerous as it is familiar, evoking the old imperial logic that simplifies and distorts our complex realities to justify external intervention.
As a student of politics of history and identity conflict, I find this portrayal beyond perturbing and perilous.
I witnessed firsthand how such perilous narratives were debated in international policy circles when I joined other Nigerian and British stakeholders at a high-level summit at Wilton Park In February 2020 for a dialogue on “Fostering Social Cohesion in Nigeria”.
Situated in the serene estate of Wiston House, Steyning, West Sussex, Wilton Park is an Executive Agency of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which is widely recognized as a global space for peace dialogues and post-conflict reflections.
The meeting was part of the UK government’s follow-up to the Bishop of Truro’s Independent Review on the persecution of Christians worldwide, in which Nigeria was identified as a major flashpoint of “religious violence.”
The Truro Report asserted that Nigerian Christians are facing systematic persecution and called upon Western governments to do more to protect them.
At Wilton Park we were offered more than an interfaith forum to dialogue, we were given the opportunity to deconstruct the dangerous oversimplifications that have come to characterize Western discourses on Nigeria.
Unlike the imperialist gimmicks and threats emerging from Washington today, the British government, through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, convened diverse stakeholders from Nigeria and the UK – religious leaders, politicians, diplomats, academics, and civil society representatives – to deliberate on the multifaceted security challenges confronting Nigeria and explore ways of building social cohesion.
I am not permitted by the Wilton Park Protocol to name participants or cite their specific interventions, but suffice it to say that, with few exceptions, those present were individuals who matter in Nigerian and British policy circles.
The participants spent three days discussing the farmer-herder crisis, the Boko Haram insurgency, and the persistent communal conflicts in the Middle Belt.
What struck me most was the consensus among Nigerian participants — Muslims and Christians alike — that the “Christian persecution” framing was profoundly misleading.
We emphasized that the reality was far more complex than the narrative of religious persecution suggests.
The problem, as several participants observed, is not that Christians do not suffer violence, but that violence in Nigeria is indiscriminate, affecting all communities.
To single out one group as uniquely persecuted is to misread the nature of the crisis.
The Wilton Park approach reflected a subtle but significant shift– the need to appreciate the wider social, political, and environmental dynamics of violence in Nigeria.
While the Truro Report relegated these factors to the background, we strongly highlighted them, showing that Nigeria’s crisis is a shared national tragedy rather than a targeted religious war.
The goal was to nurture a more nuanced understanding, one that resists the reductive opposition between Muslim perpetrator and Christian victim.
The meeting concluded on a high note with consensus around the “sensitivity and diversity of conflict narratives,” recognising that every victim’s voice deserves to be heard.
It was agreed that shifting the narrative from “Muslims against Christians” and other binary categories must therefore be a priority if we are to avoid deepening existing divisions.
The meeting recommended that the Nigerian government should “commission and fund independent, credible research on climate change, number of attacks, crime victims, cattle routes and patterns; develop strategy on how to use data to proactively educate, myth-bust and shape narratives for both sides of the argument; justice and peace training to be included in schools; Government of Nigeria to appoint a National Reconciliation Adviser; establish a Joint Religious Coalition to ensure accountability of government for insecurity and politicisation of conflict; develop religious engagement strategy; and commence dialogue to facilitate creating ‘Code of Conduct’ for religious leaders,” among other actionable recommendations.
This later became the groundwork for further peacebuilding engagements between Nigerian and British stakeholders.
The Wilton Park dialogue is a model of thoughtful engagement, the kind of thoughtful diplomacy the world requires in times of conflict, not the militarized moralism coming from Washington.
The question is what are the true intentions of Trump? Is he genuinely motivated by a humanitarian desire to protect Nigerian Christians, or is this another exercise in US geopolitical and imperial crusade?
History offers little reason for optimism. We know that Imperial interventions are always preceded by humanitarian and messianic pretexts.
In 19th and 20th century colonial logic, it was “civilising mission”; today it is “defence of persecuted Christians”.
The language changes but the logic remains the same- define and rule to borrow from Mahmood Mamdani.
The Palestinian literary critic, Edward Said, describes this imperial habit of defining how others are seen and how their suffering is interpreted.
Therefore, classifying Nigeria—a complex, plural, and Muslim-majority nation—as a persecutor of Christians is a convenient casus beli for Trump, masquerading as humanitarian concern.
Meanwhile, I congratulate the proponents of the “Christian genocide” narrative in Nigeria and beyond. We are now officially a Country of Particular Concern, polarised and divided.
As the advocates of the narrative await, with self-righteous anticipation, an American-led “rescue mission”, I want to remind them of the devastation that American invasion has brought to nations in the name of salvation: Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Vietman, Somalia.
Each intervention was couched in the language of freedom, yet each left behind broken societies and deepened resentment.
The “Christian genocide” narrative is doubly dangerous: while deepening domestic divisions it legitimises foreign intervention.
This is not to deny the suffering of Christians in parts of Nigeria. Their pain is real and deserves acknowledgment. But this is equally true of Muslims and others that have suffered the same fate. The question is not who suffers most, but how that suffering is framed.
In the final analysis, the Nigerian state bears the greatest responsibility for its failure to protect all citizens. Endemic corruption, elite impunity, and the persistent inability to provide security for Nigerians have created fertile ground for such divisive narratives to thrive. Unfortunately, the citizens themselves have failed to collectively hold the government accountable for these failures. Instead, they are busing competing for victimhood, thereby creating the conditions for external powers to intervene discursively and politically. It is this vacuum that the Trump administration is filling.
The task before Nigerian scholars, faith leaders, and policymakers is to reclaim the narrative, not through denial, but through a more honest, inclusive, diplomatic and historically grounded understanding and framing of its own complex realities. The federal government must strengthen its security institutions and reassert the primacy of equal citizenship. All lives matter in Nigeria—Christian, Muslim, and traditionalist alike.
Samaila Suleiman, PhD
Department of History
Bayero University, Kano