Abuja Network News
When America sneezes, the rest of the world usually catches a cold. But this time, it seems Washington has decided to send the flu directly to Northern Nigeria. The new Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025 is not merely another congressional experiment in moral diplomacy — it is, by intent and design, a targeted attack on Islam and the Muslim North, draped in the hypocritical cloth of “human rights.”
Let’s drop the polite language: this bill is not about defending freedom. It is about punishing faith. Every one of the twelve states mentioned — Zamfara, Kano, Sokoto, Katsina, Bauchi, Borno, Jigawa, Kebbi, Yobe, Kaduna, Niger, and Gombe — shares two traits: a Muslim governor and a population governed under Sharia-derived laws. And that, apparently, is their crime.
The Americans call it accountability; we call it selective persecution. They say they are promoting religious freedom; what they are doing is criminalizing Islamic governance. The U.S. Senate’s message is clear: “If you practice your faith beyond the Western model of secularism, we will sanction you.”
No one is fooled. The bill, sponsored by Senator Ted Cruz, claims to target “officials who promote or enforce blasphemy laws.” But those so-called blasphemy laws are part of the constitutional fabric of the North — established under democratic process and supported by the people. What Washington brands as “religious oppression” is, to millions of Nigerian Muslims, religious obedience. So let’s call it what it is — a foreign assault on Islamic legal identity, disguised as a fight for liberty.
The hypocrisy is monumental. America, whose foreign wars have created more religious refugees than any other power on earth, now wants to lecture the Muslim world on tolerance. It invades countries in the name of freedom and leaves them in ruins. It claims to protect the oppressed but funds regimes that bomb children in Gaza. And now, it wants to teach Nigeria how to worship.
The so-called sanctions will include asset freezes, travel bans, and worse — the usual economic torture the West reserves for nations and leaders who refuse to kneel. Once the names are published, the targeted governors will lose access to their U.S. bank accounts, properties, and business interests. But make no mistake: the goal is not to stop corruption or protect minorities. The goal is to humiliate Muslim leadership, to reduce northern Nigeria to a compliant province of Western liberal orthodoxy.
This is not a misunderstanding. It is policy. The fact that all the targeted states are in the Muslim North is not coincidence — it is confirmation. If this were truly about justice, where are the sanctions on southern governors who preside over ritual killings, political assassinations, or forced evictions? Where are the penalties for security chiefs whose negligence fuels mass kidnappings? Silence. Selective morality speaks louder than sermons.
And yes, the North is bleeding — but not from the U.S. moral compass. It bleeds from insecurity, banditry, and neglect — failures that belong to the very governors now under Washington’s microscope. These leaders, for years, have used religion as a political bulletproof vest, while hiding the body of truth beneath their own excesses. They have looted state resources meant for development, silenced critics who dared to tell the truth, and persecuted journalists who reported insecurity.
The tragedy, therefore, is twofold. On one side, America’s arrogance, dressing Islamophobia as human rights. On the other, the North’s hypocrisy, where governors shout “faith” in public and whisper “failure” in private. Between the two stands a suffering population — Muslim, poor, and betrayed — whose daily battle is not with Washington but with hunger, fear, and unemployment.
So yes, this is a war — a political, ideological, and spiritual war. The U.S. may not drop bombs, but its sanctions are economic explosives, designed to cripple and shame. And the northern governors? They are guilty — not of being Muslim, but of failing the Muslims they lead.
If only they had used their power to secure their people, build their economies, and unite their states, no foreign legislature would have dared to interfere. Instead, they built palaces of denial, sponsored propaganda, and prosecuted those who spoke the truth. Now, the North faces an external enemy emboldened by the internal rot of its leaders.
So when the sanctions come — and they will — remember this:
America’s hands may press the button, but it was our leaders’ silence that loaded the gun.