Pastor Tunde Bakare has claimed that former US President Donald Trump’s designation of Nigeria as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ — alongside his warnings of Christian persecution — is rooted less in humanitarian concern and more in American ambition for Nigeria’s oil, minerals and emerging tech economy.
Speaking during his State of the Nation Address in Lagos on Sunday, the Citadel Global Community Church overseer suggested the Trump administration views Nigeria as a strategic commodity, central to energy, real estate and tech supply chains underpinning US foreign and economic policy. His remarks come in response to Trump’s October 31 decision to reclassify Nigeria and his subsequent “guns-a-blazing” rhetoric on terrorism in the country — comments that prompted a swift rebuttal from the Tinubu government.
Bakare said he received what he described as a symbolic vision shortly after Trump’s 2024 electoral victory, in which the former US president arrived in Lagos “dressed in Arabian thobe and ghutra,” declaring, “We are here now.” The cleric interpreted the imagery as a sign of Nigeria’s future entanglement with Middle Eastern geopolitics, oil and tech, alongside potential religious sensitivities that, if poorly handled, could inflame domestic tensions.
“President Donald Trump has proven to be a transactional leader whose threats are usually invitations to the negotiating table,” he said, urging Abuja to respond with structured engagement rather than defensiveness. Nigeria, he argued, should proactively negotiate a strategic business partnership with Washington — one that protects national interest while accommodating legitimate US investment in energy and technology.
The address, wide-ranging in its critique, also dwelt on Nigeria’s worsening insecurity, which Bakare said reflects unresolved grievances long ignored by successive governments. He cited the Middle Belt, North-West and South-East as flashpoints of fear, banditry and communal fragmentation, adding that continued killings in Benue, Plateau and Southern Kaduna represent a “shame on the Nigerian state”.
Bakare was unsparing in his assessment of political institutions, faulting the National Assembly for only confronting insecurity after US lawmakers debated Christian persecution, and accusing the Foreign Affairs Ministry of passivity while communities pleaded for foreign intervention.
He argued that the South-East crisis and the prolonged detention of IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu show that Nigeria has yet to heal from the Civil War, and warned President Bola Tinubu that history will judge whether he chooses political expediency ahead of 2027 or undertakes the harder path of structural reform.
Bakare outlined a suite of proposals — from community policing and expanded military recruitment to a Victims and Survivors Register and a national apology to terror-hit communities. He urged the President to establish a Commission for Reconciliation, Reintegration and Restructuring, asserting that Nigeria cannot build peace on denial.
“No nation can be built on denial,” he said. “If we are to sit at the table of brotherhood, we must acknowledge the truth and confront it.”
His long-term roadmap includes devolved zonal security councils, federal coordination of state and community policing, an intelligence-driven national investigative service, and a reshaped National Youth Service Corps with its first year dedicated to defence training.
He also advocated a dual foreign policy — Trans-Saharan and Trans-Atlantic — to bridge the Sahel, Middle East and Western alliances. In Bakare’s telling, Nigeria’s stability will depend not only on oil and geopolitics, but on whether power and accountability finally align at home.
