Trump’s Holy War: When ‘Guns-A-Blazing’ Sounds Like Gospel to the Average Nigerian

 

President Trump’s words, for many Nigerians like me, sounded like overdue thunder. When he said America might step in “guns-a-blazing,” I didn’t hear colonialism—I heard deliverance. Call it controversial, but when your government behaves like an undertaker instead of a protector, foreign bullets begin to look like blessings.

 

When President Donald Trump thundered that America may very well go into that now disgraced country, guns-a-blazing, to wipe out Islamic terrorists, Nigerians froze—then whispered, “Maybe.” It was the kind of statement that cuts deep and sweet at the same time. The Nigerian elite called it imperial arrogance. But the ordinary people—the ones who bury their children and rebuild their shops after each massacre—heard something different. They heard hope wrapped in American firepower. I was one of them. And I make no apology for it. When a nation bleeds while its leaders dance, even the sound of distant boots can feel like music.

Nigeria, often called “Giant of Africa,” has become a wounded elephant limping under the weight of chaos. The country’s 230 million citizens are roughly split between the Muslim north and the Christian south, but what used to be religious coexistence has curdled into rivalry and resentment. Northern Nigeria has become a living nightmare, thanks to the jihadist sect Boko Haram—whose name literally means “Western education is forbidden.” They have turned holy verses into weapons, abducted children in the name of purity, and burned entire villages in the name of God. Since 2009, their terrorism has claimed more than 35,000 lives and displaced millions. Yet the Nigerian government keeps promising victory while attending conferences in Abuja’s air-conditioned halls. It’s like promising rain to a desert and showing up with a teaspoon of water.

In the west, bandits rule the roads, kidnapping schoolchildren like cattle for ransom. In the east, where my roots run deep, the so-called “Unknown Gunmen” hold Igboland hostage, murdering villagers and policemen alike. And in the Middle Belt—Benue, Plateau, Kogi—Fulani herders and Christian farmers clash over land soaked with more blood than rain. Nigeria’s tragedies multiply faster than the government’s excuses. And through it all, the same refrain echoes: religion, ethnicity, politics, and land. It’s the same old curse sung in a new key of horror.

When I was a boy growing up in Nigeria in the 1980s and 1990s, I saw it firsthand. The Hausa and Fulani mobs descended on Igbo-owned businesses in the north like locusts on a ripe field. They burned the shops, looted the goods, and left the streets littered with what used to be someone’s dream. It was not war, it was sport. Christians were hunted like goats before a feast, and their cries were drowned out by silence from the authorities. That silence became the national anthem of cowardice. By the 2000s, the violence had evolved into something monstrous: Boko Haram—the child of fanaticism and neglect—burst onto the scene, spreading death with sermons and dynamite.

Trump’s words, for many Nigerians like me, sounded like overdue thunder. When he said America might step in “guns-a-blazing,” I didn’t hear colonialism—I heard deliverance. Call it controversial, but when your government behaves like an undertaker instead of a protector, foreign bullets begin to look like blessings. The Nigerian army, accused by human rights groups of killing civilians and looting villages, has often been a greater terror than the terrorists they claim to fight. Politicians hire thugs for elections, while citizens hire prayers for survival. The absurdity is so thick you could spread it on bread.

Trump’s threat to strike Nigeria is not just political theater—it’s a mirror exposing how far Nigeria has fallen. When a foreign president talks about saving your citizens from their own government’s failures, that’s not an insult—it’s an obituary written in advance. Nigeria’s leaders, fat on corruption and thin on conscience, have treated insecurity like a side hustle. Their strategy for peace is photo ops and empty condolences. Meanwhile, mothers in Chibok still wait for daughters who vanished into Boko Haram’s camps over a decade ago. Children in Kaduna and Katsina grow up learning that gunfire is part of the weather forecast.

So yes, I support Trump’s fury. But I also extend him a challenge: Mr. President, when your army finishes cleaning the jihadists from Northern Nigeria, make a detour to Igboland. Help us wipe out the “Unknown Gunmen” gangs that have turned our once-peaceful east into a crime carnival. I’ll personally campaign to give you an Ozo title—the highest honor among the Igbos—if you can restore sanity where Nigeria’s own government has sown despair. After all, if you can drain the swamp in Washington, you can certainly drain the blood-soaked rivers of Imo, Abia, Anambra and Enugu States.

Some critics will call this madness. They’ll say inviting the U.S. Army into Nigeria is like calling the fox to fix the henhouse. Maybe they’re right. But what do you do when the hens are already dead and the farmer’s asleep? You either wake him up with a shout or bring in someone who can fight the fox. The Nigerian military has had decades to prove itself, and it keeps proving one thing: its loyalty is to the paycheck, not the people. Insecurity has become an industry, and peace is bad for business.

Nigeria’s ruling class will gnash their teeth at Trump’s talk of intervention. They’ll cry “sovereignty” as if that word hasn’t already been buried in mass graves across Borno and Benue. Sovereignty means little when your citizens are butchered daily. A flag is not a shield, and national pride is no substitute for protection. The world intervened in Iraq, in Libya, in Afghanistan—and yes, those operations had their horrors—but at least someone tried. In Nigeria, nobody’s even pretending to try anymore.

The truth is painful, but pain is the only language Nigeria seems to understand. Trump’s threat may be the wake-up call this sleeping giant desperately needs. The Nigerian government has perfected the art of denial, but even denial has an expiration date. When your people start cheering for foreign troops to invade your soil, that’s not patriotism—it’s protest. It’s the final scream of a nation that’s tired of dying quietly.

So let the diplomats clutch their pearls and the elites compose their outrage. The common people in Nigeria have buried too many neighbors to care about their sensibilities. If Trump wants to send in his “guns-a-blazing,” let him aim them at the real enemies—the jihadists, the kidnappers, the bandits, the politicians who feast while the people fast. And when the dust settles, let him send a message to Abuja: leadership is not about wearing agbada and quoting unity—it’s about saving lives before there’s nobody left to govern.

If America does this right, history will call it salvation. If not, it will call it spectacle. But at least there will be history left to write. Right now, Nigeria is erasing itself one grave at a time. Trump’s idea may sound like madness to the polished minds of diplomacy, but to those of us who live beneath the smoke and the sirens, it sounds like sanity dressed in camouflage. When a nation is on fire, even foreign rain is welcome.