By Femi Fani-Kayode
Mr. James Barnett, a PhD candidate at Oxford University, wrote the following in an essay titled Nigeria’s Crisis Runs Deeper Than Just a War on Christians for the Washington Post a few days ago.
He wrote, inter alia, that, “Christians absolutely are being threatened and killed in parts of Nigeria. I can personally attest to it. But to frame Nigeria’s crisis entirely in that way badly distorts the complicated and tragic reality on the ground. Shaping U.S. policy around such distortions, especially when U.S. troops may be put in harm’s way, will not yield good outcomes. For several years, I lived and worked in Nigeria, studying its conflicts and interviewing different militant groups. I would never advise anyone to downplay the suffering of Christians who have experienced horrific attacks. I have seen and heard from many victims firsthand. But I have also seen the impact of similarly horrific violence across Muslim communities. To ignore the latter is to misunderstand what is really going on. Voices ranging from former Trump officials to the Vatican have cautioned against framing Nigeria’s complex insecurity in solely religious terms. Conflict has grown rampant in Nigeria under successive governments and the country now faces various militant groups pursuing different agendas. Lumping them all together and reducing their motives to anti-Christian animus is a mistake.”
Barnett is absolutely right. I sincerely hope and pray, for all our sakes, that someone in the White House is listening before it is too late.
Permit me to begin this contribution with the following basic points.
My belief is that we must eliminate every single terrorist and those that are sponsoring them in Nigeria.
I do not believe in dialogue with them or forgiving them. I do not believe in negotiation with them. I do not believe in pampering them or managing them. I do not believe in rehabilitating them into the Nigerian Armed Forces.
I believe in crushing them and sending them to their maker, and in doing so quickly and decisively.
This has been my position for the last 20 years and it will always be my position.
Demons and vampires do not have any place in the land of the living and they have no right to life.
The Bible tells us that there can be no fellowship between light and darkness, and you either choose God or Belial: I choose God.
Every single one of them, whether they be Boko Haram, ISWAP, Ansaru, Al Qaeda, JNIR, Lakurawa, the killer herdsmen, the kidnapping bandits or any other, must be despatched to hell where they came from, and our country must be cleansed of their filth and verminous evil.
They are a cancerous plague that must be eradicated with clinical precision and by brute force.
Outside of that, I believe that genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes and mass murder of the most horrendous nature have been carried out by each of these groups in Nigeria over the last 20 years against Christians, and I have been saying so for many years—perhaps more than anyone else. But today there is a difference and a caveat that makes the problem even more horrendous than it already is, and which we ignore at our own peril.
The caveat and difference, and this has been so for the last ten years, and is a fact that many, including yours truly, were totally oblivious to, is the fact that their villainous and callous butchery was not limited to Christians alone: they butcher the Muslims too, and they do so in equal if not greater numbers.
That is the reality and challenge that we are faced with, which is lost on many, whether anyone cares to believe it or not.
We are all victims today and not just the Christians, and this does not in any way diminish the suffering that the Christian community has experienced for many years. It only means that we have not suffered it alone.
The solution to the problem is for our political leadership and Armed Forces to muster the resolve and political will to ruthlessly wipe out the Islamist terrorists and foreign militias once and for all.
That is an obligation that falls on the shoulders of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu alone and he must honour it.
From what I have seen so far, it appears that he has the fortitude and courage to do that, but he must go all the way and finish the job.
The world and the Nigerian people want to see concrete action and the implementation of extraordinarily ruthless, violent and aggressive methods, and not just hear long talk, promises of success or long-winded and outworn platitudes from government officials.
To be fair to the security apparatus and the current administration, more terrorists have been killed in the past two years than the previous eight years put together.
This is commendable, but they must go further. The Nigerian people are baying for the blood of these terrorists and they must see it flow into an ocean of divine retribution.
What certainly does not help is when, instead of that, we are assaulted and provoked with pictures and video footage of Islamist terrorists having so-called “peace talks” with state government officials in places like Katsina.
Yet as traumatising as all this may be, our greatest challenge today comes not from the Islamist terrorists in the North or even from the equally barbaric savagery of separatist groups in the South-East like ESN, but rather from the wild, puerile and infantile tantrums, psychotic delusions and sadistic disposition of the Jekyll and Hyde character, feral psychopath and malevolent narcissist who currently presides over the affairs of the United States of America and who sits in the White House.
Let me make this clear: anyone that does not fully appreciate the fact that Donald Trump’s motives for threatening our nation with war are disingenuous, self-serving, baseless, unfounded and questionable, and anyone that does not recognise the fact that his mental instability, thin skin, fragile ego, incendiary emotions, pernicious deceit, avaricious appetite, obsession with money, lust for power, low intelligence quotient and volatile disposition are capable of driving him into actually dropping bombs on Nigeria and sending in American ground troops for no just cause, does not know Trump.
Make no mistake: his intention is not to help us fight the terrorists or to save Christians in Nigeria but rather to drive a wedge between Christians and Muslims, ignite the fire of a brutal and never-ending religious war, establish a Sudan-like arena of butchery and carnage, send in the Marines or Eric Prince’s CIA-funded private army of Blackwater mercenaries, and finally carve up and occupy our land and pillage our rare earths, gold, lithium, uranium, diamonds, gems, precious metals, crude oil, aluminium, natural gas and other mineral resources.
His intention is not to help our country fight the terrorists and rid us of them but to subject her to the same thing they did to Yugoslavia in the 1990s by bombing the entire country to smithereens, shattering our fragile unity and breaking us up into five or more smaller countries and vassal states, each of which will be compelled to have U.S. military bases, each of which will take orders from Washington, and each of which they will control, manipulate and dominate.
Total and complete oppression, subjugation and re-colonisation: that is their ultimate objective, and anyone that cannot see or appreciate that knows nothing about the intrigues and deadly power play of world politics or world history, and is chronically and wilfully blind.
It is true that Christians have suffered immeasurably in our country over the years and have been subjected to genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the most vicious and pernicious forms of persecution at the hands of foreign-backed terrorists and Islamist militias, but it is not true that they are the only ones that have suffered this terrible fate and horrendous ordeal.
Muslims have suffered the same fate and in equal measure at the hands of the same barbaric monsters and terrorists.
As a matter of fact, if you want to talk about state-sponsored persecution and genocide in the North over the last twenty years, it is not the Northern Christians that were subjected to this but rather the Shia Muslims of Kaduna, who had over 1,000 of their members slaughtered in one afternoon in Zaria, Kaduna State, in 2016 simply for blocking a road when Gen. Tukur Buratai was Chief of Army Staff, Nasir El-Rufai was Governor of Kaduna State, and President Muhammadu Buhari was President.
Outside of that, I am not aware that Christian communities in Northern Nigeria were targeted for elimination or mass murder by officers of the state anytime or anywhere over the last 20 years.
They have been targeted by non-state actors and terrorist militias but certainly not by officers of the Nigerian military as the Americans are trying to suggest.
Trump claims that Nigerian Christians are facing an existential threat, yet this is far from the truth.
It is true that many Christians and Muslims are being targeted and killed by terrorists in Nigeria, but it is not true to suggest that Christianity is facing an “existential threat,” and if it is true, then it means that Muslims are facing an existential threat as well.
How can we be facing an existential threat when there are over 120 million Christians in our nation, which represents 50% of the overall population?
How can we be facing an existential threat when every single one of the seventeen states in Southern Nigeria and three of the nineteen states in the North are headed by Christian governors and chief security officers?
How can we be facing an existential threat when 62% of all government appointments have been given to Christians under the Tinubu administration?
How can we be facing an existential threat when the Senate President, the Secretary to the Federal Government and the majority of federal ministers—including those that preside over key Ministries like Finance and Coordinating Economy, Federal Capital Territory, Internal Affairs, Works, Communications and Digital Economy, Marine and Blue Economy, Aviation and Aerospace, State for Oil, State for Gas, State for Foreign Affairs and so many more—are all Christians?
How can we be facing an existential threat when the Chief of Defence Staff, the Chief of Air Staff, the Chief of Defence Intelligence, the Inspector General of Police, the Director General of the DSS, the Chairman of the EFCC, the Director of Military Intelligence, the Comptroller General of Immigration, the Comptroller General of Prisons and so many more that head our nation’s military, paramilitary and security agencies are Christians?
How can we be facing an existential threat when for the previous eight years before Tinubu came to power, every single operational security chief in our nation’s seventeen security organisations was a Northern Muslim, yet when he assumed office, he changed all that and balanced the equation by appointing and including Christians?
How can we be facing an existential threat when the Governor of the Central Bank, the Chairman of the Tax Reform Committee and the Chairman of the FIRS are all Christians?
How can we be facing an existential threat when three out of the ten largest, richest and most powerful and influential churches and church leaders in the world—who have broken enormous boundaries and spread the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in a remarkable and groundbreaking way both in our nation and outside it—are Nigerians?
How can we be facing an existential threat when the President’s wife is not only a Pentecostal Christian but also a pastor?
How can we be facing an existential threat when, for the first time in many years, Christians are treated with respect and accorded decorum in all spheres of human endeavour in our nation ever since Tinubu took over the reins of power?
We may be facing a strong challenge from Islamist terrorist organisations, and there may be tensions between Christians and Muslims in some parts of our country, but to say that Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria is not only absurd but also betrays a sinister and malevolent motive in the hearts and minds of those who propagate and assert it.
They are crying wolf where there is none and they are setting us up for the kill.
Trump is driven by a pathological hatred for Africans, black and brown people, and Muslims.
He is also driven by an overwhelming, compulsive, all-consuming and inexplicable greed and avarice for material things.
He has been afflicted with what those of us in Pentecostal circles describe as a “Demastic anointing” (named after the Apostle Paul’s loyal disciple called Demas, who lost his way and fell in love with worldly things), which has resulted in his obsession with and addiction to the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the lust for power, the lust for treasure, the lust for land and the pride of life.
He is also totally and completely irrational, unpredictable and unbalanced, which makes him a very real danger to the entire world.
His words must not be taken lightly and we must prepare for the very worst.
Those that believe that he can be talked into not doing what he clearly wants to do to our nation are ignorant, undiscerning and deluded, and they are oblivious to his innate and irredeemable lunacy.
I say this because there are speculations and reports in the media that President Tinubu seeks to meet with him at the White House in an attempt to “resolve” all the issues.
If true, such an initiative is as incredulous as it is baffling, and it will come to nought.
As a matter of fact, it may make matters worse, as our President may be verbally and savagely assaulted, insulted and berated right in front of the White House Press Corps.
Surely our Jagaban is bigger and better than that and he certainly does not deserve it. And neither would he take it lying low like others have done.
Some have also said that our President may opt to meet with Trump or his Vice, JD Vance, on the sidelines at the G20 meeting, which is scheduled to hold on the 20th of November in South Africa.
One wonders why some of our government officials that say such things find it necessary to clutch at straws rather than cultivate a firm resolve to stand up for the government they serve and their country, and act with a level of self-respect, decorum and dignity.
I say this given the fact that Trump has said that no U.S. government official will attend the G20 meeting in South Africa because the white Afrikaans people of that country are, according to him, being subjected to “genocide” whilst their farmlands are supposedly being confiscated without compensation.
He concluded by saying that he believes that South Africa is a “disgrace” and should not even be a member of the G20.
I ask those that are indulging in wishful thinking and fantasy about this proposed “peace meeting” between Trump and Tinubu in South Africa at the G20 meeting: who exactly is our President supposed to meet and discuss our problems with “on the sidelines” once there, given the fact that the Americans have made it clear that they are not attending?
It is important that those that are charged with the task of telling us what is going on get their facts right; otherwise, it complicates the issue.
Diplomacy is one thing but shameful capitulation with our tail between our legs is quite another.
Outside of that, it is trite that the open and public display of weakness and fear attracts even more aggression.
Surely we are bigger, better and stronger than that. We are not a nation of slaves and beggars. We are not a nation of cowards and peasants who bow and tremble before a schoolyard bully.
I do not understand the logic and cannot appreciate the wisdom in seeking to sit down with a man who has contempt for you and your people, who considers you and them as being sub-human, who has referred to your country as a “disgraced” one and who has referred to your continent as a “shithole.”
You are talking about diplomacy and a diplomatic settlement when the man and country that you are up against have thrown diplomacy out of the window, designated your country as one “of concern,” placed your nation on a “watchlist,” and said that they intend to violate your sovereignty on a false premise, bomb your country and attack you with their military.
His Defence Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Press Secretary and other key government officials have reiterated the threat, and you are hiding under the table and saying that it will all be resolved at the G20 meeting in South Africa, when you know very well that Trump has said he has no intention of attending that meeting.
When will those in high places in Nigeria learn that you do not kowtow to Nazis, racists, religious bigots, ethnic supremacists, ethnic cleansers, schoolyard bullies, genocide enablers, lawless brigands, treasure hunters, drunken sailors, shape-shifting reptilians, sons of perdition and those that threaten the very essence of our existence?
When will you accept the fact that you have no choice but to stand up to them?
When will you appreciate the fact that peace without honour, self-respect and dignity is a curse?
When will you understand that the peace of the graveyard in which we must smile as we are being insulted, ravaged and threatened is no peace at all but rather the most refined and supreme form of servitude, bondage and torment?
I would rather die on my feet as a free man than live on my knees as a slave. We are a nation of 250 million people. We are not weak and we are not small. We are resilient and strong, and our spirit cannot be broken. We are too big to take this nonsense from anyone.
We liberated Sierra Leone, we liberated Liberia, we liberated São Tomé and Príncipe, we liberated South Africa, we liberated Chad, we liberated Zimbabwe, we liberated Congo, we liberated Angola, we liberated Somalia, we liberated Mozambique, we liberated Namibia, we liberated Zambia, we liberated Uganda, we liberated Kenya, we liberated Equatorial Guinea.
*Being the keynote address delivered by Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, the Sadaukin Shinkafi, at the Akure NBA Conference, 11th November, 2025
*Chief Femi Fani-Kayode is the Sadaukin Shinkafi, the Wakilin Doka Potiskum, the Otunba Joga Orile, the Ajagunle Otun Ekiti, a former Minister of Culture and Tourism, a former Minister of Aviation, a former Senior Special Assistant and spokesman to President Olusegun Obasanjo , and a lawyer.