By Kachi Okezie, Esq

The air in Abuja is thick with outrage. It’s not the familiar stench of insecurity or the chronic haze of corruption that hangs over the nation, but the collective indignation triggered by President Donald Trump’s threat of military action against Nigeria, contingent on the government’s failure to stop the ongoing massacres of Christians.

The predictable reflex is to rally behind the flag, denouncing the threat as an assault on national sovereignty and an act of neo-colonial arrogance. But this furious distraction is a luxury Nigeria cannot afford. The painful truth is that Mr. Trump’s warning is not the cause of our national shame; it is merely the bright, unwelcome spotlight shining on the profound and prolonged governance failure that created the crisis in the first place, and the docile citizenship that has tolerated it thus far.

Nigerians must resist the urge to unify against the messenger. They must blame their leaders for creating the conditions that make such an external threat plausible. And this dates back over a decade before the emergence of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as President just two years ago.

As the adage goes, “Nothing inspires cleanliness more than an unexpected guest.” Trump is the unexpected guest forcing the Nigerian elite to confront the tragic reality of their broken contract with the people.

The idea of a modern state is rooted in a simple but sacred exchange: citizens cede some freedoms to a governing body in return for security and justice. This is the social contract.

Philosophers like John Locke argued that the sole justification for a government’s power is its ability to secure the life and property of its citizens. By this metric, the Nigerian state has demonstrably failed.

For years, communities across the Middle Belt and the North—Christian and Muslim alike—have been subject to wave after wave of violence: terrorist attacks, banditry, and sectarian killings. The fact that the massacre of Christians has become a persistent, internationally recognised feature of our national life signals that the government has failed at its most fundamental reason for existence.

When state security forces fail to respond to distress calls, when survivors recount tales of security personnel arriving only after the attackers have left, and when the perpetrators act with impunity, the Nigerian government has effectively broken its deal with its citizens. It is this failure to contain internal threats that is the root cause of instability; the external threat is merely a tragic consequence of it.

The notion of sovereignty—a nation’s right to govern itself without external interference—is a cherished principle, especially for post-colonial states. Yet, the current global consensus views sovereignty as an obligation, not an absolute shield. In contemporary international law, sovereignty is conditional, not absolute.

This concept is codified in the international norm known as the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Endorsed by the UN General Assembly, R2P is built on three pillars. The first, the primary duty to protect populations from mass atrocities (genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity) rests with the individual state itself. Secondly, the international community must assist states in meeting this duty. And, thirdly, if a state is “manifestly failing” to protect its populations, the international community must be prepared to take collective action.

The violence targeting Christians falls under the umbrella of mass atrocities. The R2P principle assigns the primary fault and failure to the Nigerian government for its “unwillingness or inability” to meet this core sovereign duty. The litmus test is simple: “Can not or will not?” Some prefer: “Unable or Unwilling?” That is to say: is this a case of the Nigerian government being unable to protect its people or unwilling to do so?

This reframing is essential. The threat of intervention—however politically motivated—is a measure considered only because the Nigerian leadership has essentially forfeited its exclusive right to manage the crisis through its prolonged inaction. An external spotlight is only possible because the internal light of accountability has been extinguished.

The inability to stem the violence, it seems from all available reports, is not solely a problem of military capacity; it is a profound problem of political will and pervasive impunity. It’s a crisis of impunity and will.

Nigerian security analysts have consistently argued that the security crisis is fueled by a governance crisis, including widespread corruption, the creation of ungoverned spaces, and the failure to reform security architecture. As one commentator noted, “Bad leaders see the problems, close their eyes and do something else!” This perfectly describes a political elite that prioritises political maneuvering over decisive action.

The most corrosive element is the culture of impunity. When thousands of lives are lost and there are virtually no high-level prosecutions—when attackers consistently escape justice—it sends a clear message to perpetrators that violence is a low-risk, high-reward enterprise. This failure to prosecute publicly and mete out consequence, is the government’s biggest liability, cementing the perception that either the state is complicit or simply too incompetent to enforce the law.

The former Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria once issued a stinging rebuke to the leadership: “Since the President who appointed the Heads of the nation’s Security Agencies has refused to call them to order, even in the face of the chaos and barbarity into which our country has been plunged, we are left with no choice but to conclude that they are acting on a script that he approves of.” This quote crystallises the belief that the failure is deliberate, or at least politically convenient, and thus squarely the fault of the executive.

Against the foregoing backdrop, to focus our energy on President Trump’s inflammatory language is to indulge in a politically convenient distraction. It’s said that “a “weak leader gives blame and takes credit, but a “strong leader takes blame and gives credit.” It is respectfully submitted that the only honourable way to neuter any threat of external interference is to remove its justification. Nigeria’s leadership must immediately quit denying the religious dimension in ghis saga and acknowledge the clear religious and ethnic components of the violence instead of vaguely blaming “bandits” or “farmer-herder communal clashes.”

The government must end impunity, create, fund and empower specific judicial and military task forces with a mandate to achieve high-level prosecutions for mass atrocities within a defined timeline. Specifically, the government must immediately do away with its abhorrent non-judicial de-radicalisation programmes and bring all enemy combatants within the civil legal process so that victims would be involved in the law enforcement and justice delivery process.

Protection of ALL Nigerians must take priority over pomp. The government must radically recalibrate security deployments, pulling personnel from guarding politicians and allocating them to high-risk, vulnerable communities. The real danger is not a foreign force that may never arrive, but the continued presence of a domestic failure that is systematically eroding the foundations of our country.

By shifting the blame outward, we merely prolong the internal failure. The time for deflecting is over; the time for decisive action to protect Nigerian lives is now. This is not about foreign policy; this is about reclaiming our nationhood.

An apt Igbo proverb translates: “If your home is unkempt, it’s bound to attract the passing fly.” Trump is not the problem: we are.

Source: Law & Society Magazine