Nigeria’s Security Crisis Must Not Be Recast as a Religious War/American Xmas IS hamper gift – Lanre Ogundipe

We have taken note of the recent public comments by Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi regarding alleged United States airstrikes and their implications for Nigeria’s internal security and national cohesion.

While concerns about national sovereignty, civilian safety, and the limits of foreign military involvement are legitimate and deserve sober discussion, we strongly reject the attempt to reframe Nigeria’s security crisis as a religious or civilizational conflict. Such framing is reckless, divisive, and profoundly dangerous in a country already strained by violence and mistrust.

Nigeria is not facing a “neo-Crusade.” Nigeria is confronting a prolonged failure of state capacity: weak intelligence coordination, porous borders, compromised enforcement, and insufficient accountability across political and security institutions.

To cast these failures as an external religious agenda is to misdiagnose the problem and risk inflaming sectarian tensions where none need exist.

If sovereignty is the true concern, then it must be stated plainly: sovereignty is not protected by merely substituting one foreign power for another. Whether assistance comes from the United States, China, Turkey, Pakistan, or any other nation, Nigeria’s sovereignty depends on clear rules of engagement, transparent agreements, civilian oversight, and Nigerian command authority. Anything less is abdication by another name.

I am particularly alarmed by claims suggesting that military actions in predominantly Muslim areas constitute symbolic religious aggression. Any military operation anywhere in Nigeria—north or south, Muslim or Christian—must be assessed strictly on the basis of legality, intelligence accuracy, proportionality, and civilian protection.

Religious demography cannot and must not be the metric for judging security actions.

Equally troubling is the assertion that terrorism in Nigeria is “manufactured and sustained” by those claiming to fight it, offered without evidence.

This narrative obscures the well-documented realities of local terror networks, criminal economies, and internal enablers. Nigeria’s insecurity has claimed the lives of countless Muslims and Christians alike; it cannot be dismissed as foreign theatre without dishonouring those losses.

I also want to caution against calls for the uncontrolled circulation of casualty images and videos. In an environment already vulnerable to misinformation, such actions risk provoking reprisals, spreading panic, and escalating communal tensions rather than advancing justice or accountability.

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I agree on one point only: airstrikes or bombs alone cannot defeat terror. But neither can rhetoric that weaponises faith. Extremism feeds on polarization, and every attempt to cast Nigeria’s security challenges as a religious contest only strengthens the very forces that threaten our collective survival.

Nigeria’s path forward lies not in crusade narratives or proxy alignments, but in rebuilding a professional, accountable, and Nigerian-led security architecture; confronting complicity wherever it exists; and preserving national unity above sectarian or political expediency.

This is not a campaign slogan. It is a national imperative.

Signed:
Lanre Ogundipe
Former President Nigeria and Africa Union of Journalists
December 26, 2025