Nigeria’s inept diplomacy is to blame for Trump’s military threats

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The writer is a historian and the author of ‘The Forgotten Era: Nigeria Before British Rule’

US President Donald Trump’s recent threat to go “guns-a-blazing” into Nigeria to take military action to stop the killing of Christians says more about the country’s diminished strategic importance and inept foreign policy than it does about its problems with religious violence. Nigeria has multiple insecurity problems — including an insurgency in its north-east, banditry in its north-west and central region, commercial kidnapping in its south, and clashes between farmers and pastoralists. However, this violence is overwhelmingly not targeted at Christians because of their faith.

In fact, Muslims have been victims of the violence as much as (if not more than) Christians. Clashes between farmers (who are mostly Christians) and cattle herders (who are mostly Muslims) are about ecology and access to natural resources, not religion. Allowing the most unpredictable US president in recent history to simplify Nigeria’s complex insecurity to “the killing of Christians” is primarily an outcome of Nigeria’s foreign policy bungling.

Nigeria’s sudden appearance in America’s military crosshairs is a jarring shock because Abuja and Washington have been longtime economic and military allies. Nigeria previously wielded economic and military deterrents. Formerly nicknamed “The Giant of Africa”, Nigeria is Africa’s largest crude oil exporter, most populous nation, and for most of the past 60 years, was the continent’s richest and most powerful country. Twenty years ago, the US bought around 400mn barrels of crude oil from Nigeria per year. In the 1990s, Nigeria’s military was so powerful that it simultaneously intervened in Liberia and Sierra Leone to stop civil wars in both countries.

But Nigeria no longer has the international clout it once did. These days, the US exports more crude oil to Nigeria than it buys, and Nigeria’s military is too overwhelmed with internal security challenges to embark on ambitious extraterritorial missions. Nigeria used to be the US’s biggest African trading partner. That title has shifted to South Africa, while Nigeria’s economic attention has turned east. Its current biggest trading partner is China.

Simply put, Trump can threaten Nigeria and refer to it as “that now-disgraced country” because the US no longer needs or wants anything of importance from an old ally that has lost its way, that cavorts with America’s greatest geopolitical rival, and that can no longer play regional military policeman as it used to do in the 1990s.

Nigeria’s waning importance to the US is largely its own fault. By failing to manage its relationship with the most powerful person in the world, not controlling its own narrative, and by allowing its insecurity to increase, Nigeria has placed itself in a precarious position.

More than two and a half years after taking office and recalling his ambassadors, Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu has not appointed new envoys abroad. He has no ambassador in Washington to get in Trump’s ear and explain Nigeria’s positions. Tinubu commands the domestic political arena, but does not have the international cachet that his predecessors had (such as Olusegun Obasanjo, who was a friend of ex-US presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton).

America is too powerful and Trump is too impulsive for Nigeria to ignore his sabre-rattling. Nigeria has to respond. The choices before Tinubu are stark. He can buy breathing room by letting his military wield a heavier sledgehammer against bandits and insurgents. However, the timing of Trump’s threat could not be worse as Nigeria’s military is in flux after several officers were arrested for allegedly plotting a coup to overthrow Tinubu.

Tinubu appointed new commanders for Nigeria’s army, navy, and air force less than three weeks ago. In addition, last week the State Security Service (Nigeria’s equivalent of MI5) announced that it had dismissed 115 of its personnel. With new commanders grappling with domestic problems, Nigeria’s security forces could do without the baptism of fire of dealing with a bellicose US president. Nigeria’s insecurity is too complex for its overstretched security forces to change instantly.

A better option is for Tinubu to lobby Trump and belatedly try to change his mind about Nigeria (admittedly, a very difficult thing to do). This process could include expediting the appointment of an ambassador in Washington, accepting US military assistance and sharing more intelligence with the US. However, Nigeria’s military is notoriously resistant to outside interference and has clashed with the Pentagon in the past.

Tinubu has a reputation for being a shrewd operator and for cutting ingenious political deals. He may have to dip into his dealmaking toolbox to strike a deal with a mercurial US president, who might drive the hardest bargain he has ever encountered.