Nigerians must not let national pride bury our people
We are right to guard our sovereignty jealously. We may be lectured by those with more experience but not be bullied. But pride must not become an excuse for indifference. When millions of our countrymen are displaced, children lose irrecoverable childhoods, and whole communities vanish with fear, nationalistic posture alone is not a rescue plan.
Today, the United States has said what many fear to say. President Donald Trump has placed Nigeria on a watchlist under the U.S. religious-freedom law and said the U.S. would prepare options — including military measures — to protect targeted communities. That is perfectly inside U.S. law, the International Religious Freedom Act, which empowers Washington to name and act against countries it finds violating religious liberty.
Here are the facts and they demand we move past slogans. Since 2009 the Boko Haram and related jihadist groups have killed tens of thousands and displaced millions across the Lake Chad region, down the Middle Belt, and right into the rainforests of the south. By early 2025, humanitarian tracking identified over 1.3 million internally displaced persons across North-Central and North-West states alone, and humanitarian plans place people in need across Nigeria in the millions. Food, shelter and security are daily scarcities.
The point of accepting help is simple. We are not inviting occupation. We are inviting partnership to remove armed killers who sit in bushes and terrorize whole villages. The U.S. is offering capability. In August 2025, the U.S. State Department approved a possible $346 million sale of munitions and precision weapons to Nigeria to boost counter-terror capacity. That same partnership model can be adapted to surgical intelligence and special-forces support — not indiscriminate bombardment.
Why support the U.S. offer? First, because tens of thousands of Nigerians have already paid the price of our inadequate action. Second, because the victims are not abstractions. They are fellow humans, mothers and fathers. They are children in IDP camps with no schooling and little hope. Third, because radical jihadists driven by transnational ideologies pose a real contagion risk across the Sahel into our rural heartlands. This is not paranoia; it is history — and those who ignore it are doomed to suffer its ruthless repetition.
Sovereignty and safeguards must guide any engagements. That is non-negotiable. If President Bola Tinubu chooses to work with the United States, he should do so publicly and on Nigeria’s terms. We should demand a government-to-government memorandum that:
• specifies targets and timetables;
• limits any foreign kinetic action to designated terrorist cells and areas with confirmed threats;
• places oversight firmly under Nigeria’s defence and intelligence structures;
• includes human-rights safeguards and independent monitoring; and
• ties assistance to a clear exit strategy and capacity transfer so Nigerians run operations within months, not years.
We must remember recent lessons. Arms transfers and foreign help without rights protections have backfired elsewhere. Human Rights Watch and other groups warned that weapons packages should include safeguards to prevent abuses and to protect civilians. Any Nigerian request for assistance must therefore have these safeguards from the start.
The political calculus at home is ugly but fixable. Some of us fear any American involvement because of past interventions elsewhere. Others suspect geopolitical motives. Yes, both worries are valid. Yet those concerns must be balanced against a simple moral imperative: people are dying now every day. To turn down help because of who offers it is to put politics above lives.
How should the presidency respond? Tinubu should speak plainly and fast. He should acknowledge the suffering of victims and the just concern of the US – whatever we think their motive is. He should affirm Nigeria’s sovereignty. Then he should offer a working plan to the U.S. and global partners.
That plan can request intelligence sharing, satellite reconnaissance, specialized weaponry and targeted special-forces training. It should include a Nigerian timetable for measurable results. It should promise transparency to Nigerians. It should insist on human-rights safeguards. This is statesmanship, not supplication.
A second front must be domestic reform. Military hardware without governance will only get us short breathing space. We must strengthen police-community relations. If we’re going for state police, we should get on with it fast. We should accelerate judicial accountability for real killers and not politicize terrorism trials. Invest in surveillance and rescue capacity and aggressively cut off the finances of armed gangs. A foreign partner can help fast, but only a sovereign Nigeria can finish the work.
Finally, Christians and other communities who have lost loved ones should not be asked to choose between dignity and survival. It is a moral paradox to scorn assistance that could remove the killers at our door. We know how lethal jihadist violence can be. We’ve heard gruesome stories, and we don’t wish them on our worst enemies. We know the ideology is organized and transnational. No one expects Nigeria to surrender its will. What is asked is prudence and action.
This moment tests our collective conscience and our courage to defend one another. We cannot refuse a helping hand today, not least from the most powerful man in the world, with access to the most profound intelligence information, because no one knows what tomorrow brings, and who will be its victims.
We can sit back and refuse help while our people die. Or we can stand tall and take the assistance, with rigorous Nigerian oversight, to restore safety now and rebuild our and our institutions later. JolibaLive News know which path we have choosen.
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