Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation. In fact, 20% of Africans are Nigerians. It has the most oil reserves in Africa. 98% of the country’s export earnings come from oil.
There are some Nigerian billionaires. Corruption and kleptocracy are endemic. Tens of millions of Nigerians live in abject penury. Part of the problem is that the oligarchs expatriate their lucre to Switzerland, Monaco, the United Kingdom and the USA.
Downtown Lagos is as developed as the capital of a Western country. The Nigerian upper class is 0.1% of the population, and they live as well as the upper class of any country. At the top of society, Muslims and Christians mingle happily.
A Nigerian Christian friend told me he did not know his friend was a Muslim until he was invited to a feast at Eid. There are a few inter-religious asperities among the educated.
Muslims are a slight majority in Nigeria. Muslims predominate in the northern states. Christians are a majority in the southern states along the Bight of Biafra.
There are four major linguistic groups in Nigeria and dozens of minor ones. The Hausa and Fulani speakers mostly subscribe to Islam. Those who speak Yoruba and Igbo are principally followers of Jesus Christ. There are, of course, exceptions! Some Yoruba people are Muslims.
Christianity in Nigeria is often mad keen. Western Christians often find Nigerian Christians to be embarrassingly effusive in their evangelicalism. There are some Christians in Nigeria who are more ordinary in their faith and practice, as well as those who are lax to the point of indifference.
Likewise, Muslims in Nigeria vary, from a handful who are akin to the Taliban to those who are far more liberal. The majority of Muslims in Nigeria are observant, and of course, there are a few who are so liberal that they are nominal Muslims.
Some of the northern states have sharia law. That is what the people there want.
The presidency of Nigeria has been held by Muslims half the time and Christians half the time. The political parties are all inter-religious. All state institutions are open to people of both faiths. The government is secular, and so are most educational institutions.
It was Biafra, an overwhelmingly Christian state, that attempted secession in 1967. This occasioned a horrific civil war.
In 2002, Boko Haram was founded. This means ‘Western education is forbidden.’ Boko Haram wants people to do Quranic studies and nothing else. One of the few ways this diverse country of 220 million people is united is by the English language. Moreover, the Republic of Nigeria has chosen to follow the British model of education since its independence in 1960.
Boko Haram railed against all manifestations of what they perceived to be infidel unrighteousness, such as unveiled women, music, dancing, sports, and non-halal comestibles. Most of Boko Haram’s victims are fellow Muslims. If they deviate from the very narrow path dictated by Boko Haram, they face condign punishment.
Most Nigerian Muslims view Boko Haram as medieval theocrats. Boko Haram regards females as chattels and encourages marriage as soon as a girl reaches puberty.
The Government of Nigeria has striven to quell Boko Haram with limited success. Boko Haram is part of a string of Islamist militants across Africa. There are similar outfits in Mali, Algeria and Libya.
The Nigerian Army has the president as its commander-in-chief. The President of Nigeria has often ordered his troops to defeat Boko Haram.
It is doubtful that there is genocide in Nigeria. It is true that Boko Haram has massacred civilians, but these are sometimes moderate Muslims and not just those who profess the Christian faith. Boko Haram has sometimes burnt down churches. Some Boko Haram violence is tribally and not religiously actuated. Sometimes it is a dispute about farmland. Some of it is sheer banditry with some religious slogans thrown in. That is one of the reasons why they attack their co-religionists.
It would be asinine to assume that there are no bad Christians in Nigeria. For every Muslim bigot, there is a Christian bigot. There are Christian dominionists in Nigeria, egged on by Christian fundamentalists in the United States. They seek to oblige Muslims to abandon their faith and embrace Christianity.
The Government of Nigeria is emphatic that there is no genocide in Nigeria. There has been internecine violence for decades. But it is not systematic nor is it state-directed.
Patently, what is transpiring in Nigeria does not satisfy the criteria to be defined as genocide as per the UN Convention. The Trump White House has claimed this is genocide. That is misdirection because the US Government is worried about the superabundance of probative evidence of its perpetration of genocide in Gaza.
Trump has mused aloud about a military intervention in Nigeria to save Christians. This would play with Christian wingnuts in the red states. But it would be fuelling the flames in Nigeria. Trump said he kept the USA out of forever wars. When he mulls invading Nigeria, he ought to first consider just how badly wrong this could go. Donald J Trump suffers from dementia most of the time, and was ignorant and semi-literate at the best of times.
For the USA to invade Nigeria would be criminally stupid. So don’t rule it out.