On 20th December 2025, the United States announced that it had signed a five-year bilateral agreement with Nigeria, aiming to support Christian faith-based healthcare providers. Through this intervention, the US will invest $2.1 billion in health programmes that can mitigate HIV, malaria, polio and tuberculosis while also contributing to maternal and child health improvements. As clearly announced, the target beneficiaries are Christians and Christian communities alone, not all Nigerians.
While this is good news for the Nigerian health sector in the first instance, it is yet another manifestation of the dangerous and divisive approach the US has been adopting for Nigeria in recent times, without any regard for its multi-religious composition. It projects the US as a Christian nation and tells the story of Christians vs. others, where only the former should matter, while the latter can falter.
Hitherto, President Donald Trump had threatened to invade Nigeria, calling it a disgraced country, because of a far-right narrative of “Christian genocide.” Despite the Nigerian government and some religious leaders, including those of Christian quarters, having disclaimed such accusations against Nigeria, emphasising that victims of insecurity problems in the country are not from one religious quarter but rather across multifarious religious and tribal affiliations, the US President remains hellbent on peddling the narrative. He even redesignated the country as a “Country of Particular Concern,” just as he did in 2020, before the Biden administration retracted the label.
Still, in an attempt to further peddle this narrative, some voices in the US have suggested that Nigeria should ban Sharī‘ah, which it thought was the motivation for its imagined Christian persecution and considered sanctioning twelve Nigerian states that combined Islamic law enforcement with the Nigerian constitution.
These interventions have continuously positioned the United States as a biased interlocutor on Nigerian matters. As such, many Nigerians continue to ask, Why should health interventions be restricted by religious affiliations? Why should an advocate of tolerance for diversity be promoting divisive narratives and deploying selective aids? Why is the US interested in an imaginary Christian genocide and not the menace of insecurity in Nigeria?
These questions account for why a sample of public opinions has read sinister motives into the US's recent interventions in Nigeria’s matters. Such critics feel the US is seeking an excuse to destabilise the Nigerian economy, considering its recent economic stability, particularly with the improvements in foreign exchange and petroleum products. To them, the US is insecure because the realisation of economic stability by an African country like Nigeria can impact the global market greatly and begin to upset the economies of developed nations like theirs.
While such presumptions of an economically stable Nigeria are rather too lofty and early, especially considering the level of corruption and incompetence in its governance over many decades, the interventions of the United States seem not to be coming from mere goodwill for Nigerians’ welfare. Not with the declaration of war-excited Donald Trump, when he says:
…the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities. I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!
Even supposing the US was sincere in this presidential declaration, many socio-political critics and security experts could not possibly be convinced, considering how fruitless the States’ efforts had been across conflict regions such as Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, amongst others, where it had made similarly nepotic interventions. In all of such instances, violent conflicts still linger, if not get worse.
Why Nigerian Muslims are particularly disappointed in the recent health intervention, which targets only Nigerian Christians, is not just because the US offers selective assistance that could strain interreligious relations. After all, Nigeria cannot dictate how the US should spend its money. It is rather because foreign interventions like that from Muslim regions had never isolated non-Muslims from prospective beneficiaries. A few months ago, for instance, the Saudi government expended $47m on ninety-eight Nigerian communities that required humanitarian aid with no regard for their religious affiliations. Similarly, Nigerian Christians continue to benefit from privileges the country enjoys as a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), including developmental non-interest loans and scholarships, even though the same community opposes Nigeria’s membership of the organisation. This is similar to the various socio-economic Sharia structures and products. A typical example is the sukuk bond, which has financed the construction of many public schools and federal roads in Nigeria. This is same with Islamic banking systems as Muslims and non-Muslims continue to transact through them.
That notwithstanding, the US health initiative for Nigerian Christians poses important questions to the Muslim world. If Muslims are the ones who have unity and brotherhood as socio-religious fundamentals, why is there no cohesion and solidarity in the modern Muslim world? Why is it difficult for Muslims to come together to speak with one voice at local, national and global levels? Are the assertion of Allah that Muslims are ’ummatan wahidah (one cohesive socio-religious bloc) in Quran 21:92; the uniformed religious rituals; the common time of prayer; and unity of qiblah direction, just performative and mere aesthetics?
In addition to the above, this also serves as a wake-up call for rich Muslim countries, who sometimes fund the construction of boreholes, well waters, madrasahs, mosques, hosting iftar, etc., through private individuals, to standardise their interventions in ways that make their agents accountable. Moreover, greater effort should be made to channel these funds into sustainable development strategies for impoverished Muslim communities, so that assistance moves beyond short-term relief toward long-term empowerment. In this regard, priority should be given to human capital and capacity building rather than merely providing immediate material aid. As a matter of fact, efforts should be intensified to ensure tangible socio-economic and socio-religious initiatives are prioritised and channelled through government institutions that could be held accountable. For indeed, if the US could be outrightly biased, it would be sheer shamelessness if it made an outcry when Muslim regions intervene in Nigeria in like manner.
*The views expressed in this content are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of İdrakpost.
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