14 March, 2026
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his inner circle are basking in what they call a diplomatic triumph. After Donald Trump’s explosive October 2025 redesignation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern and his chilling “guns-a-blazing” threat to intervene over the slaughter of Christians, Abuja’s praise singers now trumpet Tinubu’s “strategic acumen.” They celebrate the pivot from confrontation to partnership: a December 2025 joint US-Nigeria strike on ISIS targets, a $9 million Washington lobby contract, the January 2026 inauguration of a bilateral working group, and the arrival of 100 American trainers in February. “Tension doused,” they declare. “Masterstroke.” Yet this self-congratulation is not statesmanship—it is the dangerous delusion of a novice who believes he can outmaneuver the very power that has repeatedly turned compliance into catastrophe.
Nigerian leaders have long surrounded themselves with a glittering retinue of experts: scholars, professors, technocrats, and seasoned diplomats. Yet time and again they sideline these voices, granting them neither regular access nor influence. Instead, they lean on praise singers and political fixers whose counsel is calibrated to flatter rather than warn. The result is a leadership class chronically deaf to history and blind to the evidence unfolding before its eyes.
Nowhere is this failure more glaring than in Tinubu’s embrace of Trump’s promises. While Abuja celebrates “holding hands” with Washington, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, lies dead—assassinated on 28 February 2026 in coordinated US-Israeli strikes. The timing could not have been more damning. Only days earlier, Iranian and US negotiators had concluded what Oman’s foreign minister described as “the most serious and constructive” round of nuclear talks in years, with mediators reporting flexibility on enrichment limits, sanctions relief, and IAEA verification. A principles agreement seemed imminent. Then the bombs fell. Khamenei, his family members, the defence minister, and IRGC commander were eliminated in a precision decapitation strike. Trump announced it with characteristic bluntness; Netanyahu’s office confirmed the operation. Tehran was blamed for the ensuing chaos. The lesson was delivered in real time, on live global television: negotiations are no shield when Washington decides the threat is existential.
Tinubu’s government appears determined not to absorb that lesson. It repeats the fatal pattern of Gaddafi, Saddam, and now Khamenei—compliance followed by vulnerability.
Recall Muammar Gaddafi. In December 2003, after the interdiction of the BBC China carrying nuclear components, Gaddafi struck a solemn bargain with the United States and Britain. He surrendered his entire nuclear programme—centrifuges, designs, yellowcake—along with 23 tons of mustard gas precursors and long-range missiles. IAEA and OPCW inspectors verified every step of destruction. Sanctions were lifted, Libya was removed from the terrorism sponsors list, and Gaddafi was welcomed into the international fold. He repeatedly invoked the “understanding” that disarmament guaranteed security. Eight years later, in 2011, the same Western powers that had praised his cooperation launched NATO airstrikes under UN Resolution 1973. Gaddafi’s forces were shattered; he was hunted down and killed in a drainage pipe. The pretext had shifted to civilian protection, but the outcome was identical: the disarmed leader was expendable.
Saddam Hussein offers an even starker precedent. After the 1991 Gulf War, UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors systematically dismantled Iraq’s chemical, biological, and nuclear infrastructure. By 1998 the programmes were gone; the 2002-2003 UNMOVIC inspections confirmed no active stockpiles or reconstitution. Aluminium tubes were for rockets, not centrifuges; mobile labs were phantoms; Niger yellowcake documents were forgeries. The Iraq Survey Group’s post-invasion report was brutally candid: “We were almost all wrong.” Yet on 19 March 2003 the United States invaded anyway. Saddam was toppled, captured, and executed. Full compliance with every disarmament demand had purchased him nothing but a noose.
Syria under Bashar al-Assad followed the same script. After the 2013 Ghouta sarin attack, the regime acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention, declared 1,308 metric tons of agents and precursors, and shipped them out under OPCW supervision. Destruction was certified complete by 2016. The deal, brokered by Russia and accepted by Washington, averted immediate strikes. Yet in 2017 and 2018 the United States, Britain, and France launched missile barrages on Syrian government targets over alleged chlorine and sarin incidents. The bulk stockpile was gone, but the regime still faced American bombs.
These are not isolated anecdotes; they form a documented pattern of American statecraft. In Afghanistan in late 2001, Taliban leaders—already militarily broken—offered unconditional surrender and amnesty through Hamid Karzai. The United States ignored the overture and continued operations. In Vietnam, the 1972 Paris talks produced an October agreement; when it faltered, Nixon unleashed the Christmas bombing of Hanoi to force resumption on American terms. In Kosovo 1999, Rambouillet talks collapsed after NATO’s non-negotiable demand for troop immunity across all Yugoslav territory; bombing began the next day without UN approval. And in Iran itself, the 1988 Operation Praying Mantis struck oil platforms and frigates while a UN ceasefire resolution was already on the table, accelerating Tehran’s acceptance of Resolution 598.
Each case shares the same sequence: negotiations or compliance create a window of perceived weakness; the United States strikes when the target is least able to retaliate. Trump’s own record with Iran in 2025-2026 merely updated the playbook. Indirect talks were active when Israeli jets, backed by US intelligence, obliterated Khamenei’s compound. The message to every leader contemplating American partnership is unmistakable: your concessions will be pocketed, then you will be targeted.
Tinubu believes he is the clever one—playing Trump while the world applauds his diplomacy. This is the arrogance of a novice who mistakes tactical flattery for strategic mastery. While his lobbyists polish Nigeria’s image in Washington and his spokesmen hail the “joint working group,” the killing fields at home remain soaked in blood.
The statistics are not contested; they are overwhelming. From December 2025 to date, over 5,800 Nigerians have been killed, including both Christians and Muslims—an average of nearly 30 per day. Reports indicate that in northern states such as Katsina, Zamfara, Niger, and Kebbi, Muslim communities suffered significant losses alongside Christian communities in Plateau, Benue, and Kaduna. Open Doors’ 2025–2026 World Watch data recorded thousands of faith-related murders in Nigeria, showing that religiously-targeted violence affects both faiths. Specific atrocities since December 2025 continue unabated:
December 2025, Plateau and Benue: dozens of Christians and Muslims killed, churches and mosques burned, villages displaced during seasonal attacks.
January 2026, Katsina and Zamfara: coordinated raids left at least 45 civilians dead, homes and farmlands destroyed.
February 2026, Niger and Kebbi: over 30 people, both Muslims and Christians, ambushed while traveling or farming.
March 2026, Kaduna: multiple communities targeted in simultaneous attacks, dozens killed, schools and places of worship damaged.
April 2026, Plateau, Benue, Katsina: recurring attacks claimed at least 60 lives, leaving families orphaned and villages abandoned.
These are not abstract figures. They are named communities, buried children, orphaned families. Yet Tinubu’s government maintains the fiction that the violence is merely “banditry” or “resource conflict” affecting all Nigerians equally—ignoring documentation that frontline states like Kaduna, Plateau, Benue, Katsina, Zamfara, Niger, and Kebbi experience disproportionate killings targeting both Christians and Muslims.
Rev. Akinyele Abiodun James of the Evangelical Fellowship of Nigeria put it plainly in March 2026: “US pressure is forcing authorities to intervene more in the ongoing attacks on Nigerian communities.” While some US officials frame it as a “Christian genocide,” the underlying reality is broader—Muslims are also being targeted, and the strategic focus from Washington is often more about Nigeria’s oil, rare earths, and other resources than purely humanitarian concerns. Both the Christian Association of Nigeria and Muslim advocacy groups have repeatedly affirmed that “many communities… have suffered severe attacks, loss of life, and the destruction of places of worship” and called for urgent government action.
Tinubu thinks he can deceive Trump and the international community—projecting partnership abroad while the slaughter continues at home. He is repeating the exact miscalculation of his predecessors. Machiavelli warned centuries ago: “A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.” And “Men are so simple… that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.” Robert Greene, in The 48 Laws of Power, cautions that those who conceal their true intentions eventually fall to the very deception they practice: “Be wary of friends—they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy.” Baltasar Gracián captured the futility of such cunning: “Cunning grows in deceit at seeing itself discovered, and tries to deceive with truth itself… One deceit needs many others, and so the whole house is built in the air and must soon come to the ground.”
The house Tinubu is building rests on sand. He has traded Gaddafi’s nuclear surrender for America’s temporary military trainers. He has echoed Saddam’s compliance with Washington’s demands for counterterrorism cooperation. He has watched Khamenei negotiate in good faith only to be erased from the map. And still he believes his praise singers’ narrative that this time will be different.
History does not negotiate. It records. If President Tinubu continues down this path—celebrating illusory diplomatic victories while ignoring his own experts, relying on sycophants, and pretending the blood of Nigerian Christians and Muslims is merely collateral in a larger game—he will not be remembered as a master strategist. He will join the graveyard of leaders who trusted American promises after disarming or appeasing. The killings will not stop because Washington now sends trainers; they will stop only when Nigeria confronts the root causes with honesty and resolve, not with lobbyists and photo-ops.
The communities of Plateau, Benue, Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara, Niger, and Kebbi—both Christian and Muslim—are not waiting for another joint working group. They are burying their dead. The question for Tinubu is no longer whether he can outsmart Trump. It is whether he can learn from Gaddafi, Saddam, and Khamenei before Nigeria becomes the next cautionary tale. History is not asking politely. It is demanding.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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