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 It is no longer secret that President of the Unit­ed States, Donald Trump, has issued one of those his bombastic threats, to wit, militarily invade Nigeria “if the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians”, add­ing that “the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria and may well go into that now disgraced country ‘guns-a-blazing’ to completely wipe out the Islamic terrorists who are committing those horrible atrocities.”

He went further to post on his social media outlet, Truth Social, “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it would be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attacked our CHER­ISHED Christians!” For all intents and purposes and, in particular, for those who are not familiar with Trump’s boastful communication style, an expression so terse as that used above should natu­rally trigger a “clear and present danger” response in any weak country against which such bullying animus belli were expressed.

CAN TRUMP UNILATERALLY INVADE NIGERIA?

Under the regime of International Law, no one, no matter how powerful can lawfully attack the territory of another country. Particularly un­der the UN system of global crisis management encapsulated in Article 2(4), thus: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial in­tegrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations”.

To the extent that the US and Nigeria are both members of the UN, it is the rational expectation that none can validly threaten to attack the territory of the other without distorting the legal equilibri­um established under the UN system. The world is already alerted to the potentially ominous de­velopment.

There are, however, certain exceptions to this general rule. They include the right of the inter­national community, acting in concert, to attack or invade another country’s territory, which is duly ad­judged of guilty of crimes against humanity such as unwarranted religious brutality, torture, killing and maiming of her citizens in a scale considered to be of genocidal proportions.

So, Nigeria can be collectively punished by the international community, acting through the UN Security Council, if there are proven evidence that she engages in large scale genocide through reli­gious, ethnic and political persecutions. But none of these exceptions gives Trump the sole right to invade Nigeria even though he can act punitive­ly against Nigeria by virtue of the long-standing America’s foreign policy stance of taking actions like economic sanctions or simply naming and shaming those involved.

It is also on records that the US, particularly under Trump, has adopted the anarchic habit of attacking relatively weak foreign countries for di­verse reasons, many of them falling short of the noble standards of international law.

ARE THERE EVIDENCE OF RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN NIGERIA?

The first thing to note here is that under the Nigerian Constitutional arrangement (starting from the Independence Constitution of 1960) our Founding Fathers, after considering the cultural and religious diversity of this country, wisely opt­ed of a form of government that is anchored on secularism in which there is an active separation between the State/Government and Religion. That is why we have Section 10 in the Constitution which boldly proclaims that: “The government of the Fed­eration or of a State shall not adopt any religion as State Religion”.

The moment this clause which is equally repli­cated in almost all the constitutions of the modern democratic world as a universal creed, started to get some deviant interpretations by some Nigeri­an religious fanatics especially those following the radical sect of the Muslim faith, the country start­ed exposing its underbelly of religious intolerance and unhealthy religious imposition for a concerned world to see.

Specific state action like the reckless affiliation of a delicately balanced secular country like Nige­ria into the Organization of Countries (OIC) was an alarming red flag about the persecutorial direction that those who had the sacred opportunity to lead the essentially secular country were headed.

Perhaps the greatest evidence yet that the Ni­gerian government has recklessly abandoned the secular principles of the Nigerian State is when some socially inept northern state governors start­ed turning their states into “Sharia Enclaves” , thereby making life extremely uncomfortable for the non-Muslim citizens that are located in those places. It was that blatant sectarian misadventure that gave birth to Boko Haram which has today practically destroyed the social fabrics of most of those states and has also expectedly consumed all those who initiated it.

When citizens who are not necessarily of the Muslim faith are being forced to obey Islamic in­junctions viciously enforced against them as public criminal norms, it did not take long for the rest of world to see Nigeria’s official policies enabling reli­gious persecution within. The failure of the federal government to legally terminate the incipient un­constitutional deviation, right from the Obasanjo’s administration under which the sharia imbroglio started, has emboldened criminal acts like the cruel and unusual penalty of stoning victims to death for the offense of blasphemy in a supposed secular society.

It is also never a credible defense that the killings equally affects both the Christians and the Muslims alike. The reality is that it is the Islamic terrorists that are doing the bulk of the killings, destroying Christian homes and burning down churches, forc­ing Christians into IDP camps for safety.

Those gory facts and the emergent perception have made it quite easy for the Trumps of this world to believe the gory tales of systematic massacres of Christian natives mostly in places like Benue and Plateau States and elsewhere by invading jihadist attackers with barbaric and vandalistic mien.

The very thought of one religion imposing its will, bigotry and doctrine on members of other religions in a multi-religious society like Nigeria immediately raises critical constitutional ques­tions of equal protection and the rule of law and any responsible government must watch out for such tendencies.

The simple truth is that this sectarian imposi­tion will not work in the enlightened Nigeria of today as people are not prepared to forego their conscientious religious convictions by force to any jihadist and no society in human history has been successfully subdued even after needless bloodlet­ting.

GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSES SO FAR

I think the government of President Tinubu has so far responded to the Trump challenge quite responsibly and largely in consonance with the requisite diplomatese. Rather than openly and un­diplomatically trading jabs across the ponds like the nasty one which happened between Kim Jong Un of North Korea and Donald Trump in his first term which ultimately descended into the child-like boasts of who has the bigger rockets, Tinubu has instead resorted to dialogue and diplomacy. It is remarkable that Trump eventually backed down on that heated “rockets” palaver due to the mundane exotic “love letters” he received from the seductive North Korean strongman.

There is no denying the fact that because of the nonchalant attitude of the Nigerian government over the threats being daily posed to non-Muslims by Boko Haram insurgents and their ISIS sectarian allies from the Shahel, it is going to be difficult for Nigeria to maintain a straight face in refuting the obvious tendentious exaggeration of the situation by Trump and his ilk.

Needless to say that the President urgently needs to empanel a Foreign Policy Team of citizens en­dowed with the requisite influence, good offices and diplomatic dexterity to guide him through this treacherous patch because this is not a game for exuberant “points-scoring” theoretical ideologues.

This Trump’s ominous threat should serve our leaders as the much-needed wake-up call. Appear­ing to favour one religion over other equally revered religions is a game we cannot afford to play.

This Trump’s threat has also revealed the ex­istence of a huge army of fifth columnists in the country. Rather than see this challenge as an occa­sion to patriotically rally around the government of the day, some habitual naysayers have shamelessly embarked on a taunting spree as if they have for­gotten how we got into this quagmire, namely, the undue introduction of religion into statecraft by a succession of inept, bigoted and corrupt leaders over the years.

CONCLUSION