By: Celestine Mel
Prologue: “When a house is on fire, even the rat learns to pray.” – African Proverb
Let me lay my cards on the table, face up and unblinking. I live in the Federal Capital Territory. My sister, her husband, and their seven children dwell in Kaduna. Her third son is a young pastor whose congregation grows like wild yams after a heavy rain in Kaduna. The alternate executor of my will is a Muslim friend from Borno, a man I trust without residue. In Abuja, where I live, my Muslim friends and colleagues outnumber my Christian ones, and our fellowship ripens with the years. That, to me, is Nigeria: a quilt of faiths and fates, stitched together with blood, betrayal, and the fragile threads of hope.
Yet, for more than two decades, insecurity has remained our daily bread and nightly fear.
Barely three months into President Buhari’s tenure, Lai Mohammed, then Minister of Information and Propaganda, promised that the government was compiling a list of terrorism sponsors. The nation exhaled in relief and expectation. Eight years later, the only list published was silence.
There is no doubt that insecurity has become an extremely huge industry in Nigeria, where influential people play and cash out unchecked. Folks rooted deeply in the national superstructure are involved in the bazaar that has become our story in security management. And the numbers are staggering.
On a year-on-year basis, “defense and security” has gulped the largest chunk of our national budgets, more than infrastructure, education, healthcare, enterprise, etc. Let’s take a look at the recent numbers:
* In 2022, defense gulped ₦2.41 trillion — 15% of an ₦18.1 trillion budget.
* In 2023, ₦2.4 trillion — 13.4% of ₦21.8 trillion.
* In 2024, ₦3.25 trillion — 13.38% of ₦27.5 trillion.
* In 2025, ₦4.91 trillion — 9.87% of ₦49.7 trillion.
Every year, the numbers swell like a python after a feast, yet the soldiers starve. Terrorism spreads like palm oil on top of water; barracks decay like abandoned shrines. Soldiers and policemen are stretched to exhaustion, guarding the powerful and their pampered heirs, while the rest of us watch our villages burn. Where do these monies go to?
The industry of insecurity has matured into a sophisticated syndicate of greed feeding on the nation’s blood in daylight. The soldiers die, the looters dine, the nation mourns, and then moves on.
While trying to figure out what was going on, Elon Musk and the Chinese folks pushed electric vehicles, AI, and the Internet of Things (IoT), which were mere sci-fi concepts only a few years ago, into mainstream production, sparking a rat race for rare earth minerals that form critical components of modern EV and AI gadgets. These rare earth minerals are found in abundance only in China and Nigeria. While the Chinese race to exploit theirs to leapfrog above the USA in the AI and EV race, Nigeria, which has the second-largest deposit, remains consumed in its internal contradictions and primitivism. And China, being what it is, swooped on these resources through the back door by partnering with locals and a few powerful individuals in the Benue, Plateau, and Zamfara axis to exploit these resources unencumbered.
Into this disorder, America returns, not as a savior, but as a strategist. After the Malian junta expelled AFRICOM in 2023, ejecting the U.S. from its Sahelian nerve center, Washington’s eyes pivoted swiftly toward Nigeria, the last fortress worth courting in a region slipping from its grasp.
I recall that nearly twenty years ago, Nigerians rejected America’s plan to site AFRICOM on our soil. “It would compromise our sovereignty,” we said. Today, the same Nigerians – battered, indebted, fractured, and caught in the web of strong sponsors of terror cloaked in the garment of religion, are happy that President Donald Trump is soon coming to save us from “Christian genocide.”
But why would Donald Trump, who described Nigeria as a “shithole” and “disgraced” country, be so in love with our people that he is risking American assets on that mission? Because Russia and China have burrowed deep into Africa’s crust, carting away rare earth metals, lithium, gold, and coltan; the minerals that fuel modern empires. The global race for Africa’s resources has turned the continent into a vast chessboard of invisible wars. Nigeria, bleeding minerals and misrule, is the glittering queen in that perilous game.
As Thucydides warned two millennia ago, “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
Behind the bullets of the bandits lies a colder calculus. The illegal mining web strangling Zamfara, Niger, Benue, Plateua and Kaduna is no grassroots hustle. It is an international enterprise, financed largely by Chinese interests.
They bankroll local warlords, arm them, and spirit away the loot. Gold, tantalite, lithium, all flow eastward under the cover of chaos. Senator Adams Oshiomhole, in a viral exposé, laid it bare: “Chinese investors fund local fronts who trade blood for minerals. Some of these men, born into mud huts, now command private militias and fly private jets.”
Meanwhile, the Nigerian state looks on, pretending blindness, counting the crumbs that fall from the thieves’ feast, and scrambling to save face.
When Donald Trump blusters about “moving in” militarily, it is tempting to dismiss him as a showman. Yet history warns that America’s jokes often end in somebody else’s ashes. The Nigerian poor, weary of promises and funerals, are whispering that they should come to reset the country. Hmm.
I am all for the arrival of Trump troops, “guns-a’blazing.” But let us remember: Libya still bleeds from the “help” it received. Egypt still limps from its American-inspired revolutions. Iraq is a graveyard of good intentions. Afghanistan is proof that when America exits, the smoke remains.
America never rescues for free; the invoice always arrives, and it is denominated in sovereignty and blood.
Yet, paradoxically, Trump’s thunder has rattled Abuja awake. For once, the government looks busy. The usual obsession with chasing protesters has given way to “urgent security briefings.” The DSS, long fixated on Omoyele Sowore, suddenly remembered the real terrorists. It paraded suspects of the 2011 UN House bombing four days ago—fourteen years late. Nigeria, it seems, only moves when frightened by foreigners.
Even the judiciary has begun to stir, like a python waking from drugged sleep. Judges now tread carefully, fearful of finding their names in Senator Ted Cruz’s notorious “blacklist” of sanctionable officials. The Senate is running from pillar to post, trying to reassert itself. The whole system, once numb and narcotic, now looks—for the first time in years—alert. Fear, it turns out, can be a moral stimulant.
Still, let us not confuse motion for movement. This is the hour for patriots to rise and put on their thinking caps. Our salvation will not fly in on American drones or Chinese cargo planes. It must rise from the stubborn soil beneath our feet. While our leaders trade pleasantries with Trump, we must confront our own demons and wean ourselves off the hateful predisposition to kill and maim for the lure of lucre. The blood of Nigerians must start to mean something. We need to awaken our conscience to see ourselves first as humans before any other tag. The saboteurs in the ministries and mines must be exposed. The looters in uniforms and agbadas must face the music of justice. We must reclaim every inch of this country—not only its land but its moral geography. As the Ghanaian sage Kofi Awoonor once said, “The true tragedy of Africa is not that outsiders exploit her, but that her children sell her cheap.”
Let the government talk to Trump if he is prepared to listen. From his outing behind the American shield two days ago, it is as sure as a given that America has found an opportunity of a lifetime to move into Nigeria and establish a strong presence here, using the genocide outcry as the perfect alibi. I do not think anything can be done at this time to stop Trump from negotiating a fair deal to annex a portion of Nigeria for the American CENTCOM command. I did not oppose the idea in 2002 and do not oppose it now.
And for the rest of us: this is no time to yawn. When a man’s house is ablaze, he does not debate who lit the match. He fights the fire first. We failed in our duty to behave well as a country and to put the country first in the minds of the citizens. We tolerated the carnage for too long. People grew too big and above the law. We could not have continued that way.
Nigeria must wake, reclaim her soul, and rebuild her dignity before the world’s vultures make a banquet of her bones. I hope we are not too late into the game, as it seems.
^^^^^^ Celestine Mel writes from Abuja, FCT.
