Trump’s threat of war with Nigeria By Femi Fani-Kayode

By Femi Fani-KayodeImagine a recalcitrant and unrepentant schoolyard bully likePresident Donald Trump threatening our country with violence, military actionand invasion. What a nerve! Permit me to put the matter in context. A friend ofmine sent the following words to me last night after reading his threat of war& military action. She wrote: “How I wish we can simply ignore this petulantman spewing utter childish rubbish all over the place. They can categorise usas they like, that is on them, and there is nothing we can do OR ought to doabout that. He should bring it on. Let them send their troops and let us see.The same Islamic Terrorists that THEY FUNDED to destroy us. Serves us right, wehad the CHANCE to stand and be counted on the right side of history, beforeGod, with the genocide that is being committed by Israel and funded &supported by America. For all its worth, South Africa STOOD & REPRESENTED.We were nowhere to be seen or heard. AND YET look at this!” She concluded by saying the following: “It is not his faultor the Americans’ fault, it is SOLELY ours. I pray this is a wake-up call forus as leaders, as a nation & Africans. These people are NOT our friends,have never been & will never be; neither should we tolerate having them asour masters, or elders!” I concur with this deeply courageous lady who has said it asit is. Frankly, I couldn’t have put it better myself. My response to her was as follows. “You are right. They are evil and, if he carries out hisabominable threat, there will be a war. We shall not leave the country, but wewill fight it out with them. We behaved like cowards and allowed them todemonise us with no response. I do not know what is wrong with Nigerians butthis will be the greatest challenge they have ever faced and maybe after it isall over, they will appreciate the importance of having bold, articulate andcourageous leaders & disavow themselves of their accursed cowardice, ignorance,pettiness, weakness, envy & complacency.” I meant every word. Trump, a fascist & an associate of Prime MinisterBenjamin, has refused to call the Israeli Zionist Nazis and the UAE-backed RSFbutchers of Darfur, Sudan, mass murderers and genocidal maniacs, but he iscalling our people the “killers of Christians” and is desperately trying tolabel our nation with the genocide tag and create a crisis in Nigeria. I am not surprised. Permit me to tell you why. In my essay titled “Christian Genocide and the Danger ofMischaracterisation”, which was published one week ago, I wrote, inter alia,the following. “Our government must refuse to allow itself to be hoodwinkedby the words of middle-ranking American government officials who are notmembers of the MAGA inner circle & who do not truly represent the veryhardline and extreme views of the right-wing Christian fundamentalist &anti-Muslim forces that Trump holds dear. If they really want to know whatTrump is thinking but has so far refused to voice about Nigeria it would bewise for our Government to consider the words of Secretary of State Marco Rubio@SecRubio, Senator Ted Cruz @SenTedCruz, Congressman Riley Moore @RepRileyMoore& Congressman Chris Smith far more than the soothing and encouraging wordsand expressions of support from “friendly faces” in the Trump administrationwho have deep ties with & a soft spot for Nigeria but who are not at theheart of the #MAGA power configuration like Trump’s Lebanese brother in-law andSpecial Advisor on African Affairs, Massad Boulus, @US_SenAdvisorAF. Americandoublespeak & subterfuge is an art, and we must never take them at theirword or drink from their poisoned chalice. As the Bible says, “their speech isas smooth as butter but war is in their heart.” Sadly, our government did not pay heed to my words andinstead took the comforting words of Boulus as the position of Trump. How wrongthey were! What a profound miscalculation & grave error. Theysuccumbed to a sucker punch, and two weeks later, a devastating right cross wasdelivered to their chin. I saw it coming, but they didn’t. This decisive blow came when Trump not only claimed thatNigeria is the most dangerous country for Christians to live in the world butalso designated us as “a country of concern”, falsely alleging that “moreChristians are killed in Nigeria in one day than in the rest of the world puttogether”. He also said that he intends to do “far more againstNigeria” and that “this is just the beginning”. He proved his words by going astep further the following day by threatening to send military forces to ourcountry and kill our people. What he did not say, but which is obvious, is that a regimechange orchestrated by them may also be on the cards. That is their objectiveand desire. That is their style and modus. That is their character and nature. That is their history and practice in foreign lands whoseresources they covet & only a fool will deny it. Yet it did not stop there. On the same day, Pete Hegseth @PeteHegseth, the Americansecretary of war, went even f

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