by Augustine Eigbe, PhD.
As a historian, I find the designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) and the subsequent threat by U.S. President Donald Trump to champion military action, allegedly to protect Christians in Nigeria, quite worrisome and disturbing because of its likely repercussions if implemented.
The CPC designation, administered under the International Religious Freedom Act, constitutes a macro-level condemnation of a nation-state. It is a sledgehammer—an instrument of collective reproach that imposes a broad diplomatic stigma and threatens sweeping economic penalties.
To hold an entire population economically and diplomatically hostage for the transgressions of a minority, the CPC paradigm often aggravates civilian hardship while failing to meaningfully inflect the calculus of the perpetrators themselves.
History shows that these kinds of designations and military interventions in countries such as Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria etc have not panned out as anticipated but have rather caused greater problems, affecting the very fiber of their societies.
Instead of a designation and threat of military action from the U.S., which would adversely affect the entire nation and its citizenry, including Christians they claim they want to protect, a more effective approach would be to implement the Global Magnitsky Sanctions (GMS). This framework would focus precisely on the individuals, identified through their sophisticated intelligence, who sponsor and support terrorism and human rights violations in Nigeria.
The Global Magnitsky Sanctions represent a paradigm shift towards a micro-targeted strategy of accountability. It functions not as a sledgehammer, but as a scalpel. Its mechanism is one of exquisite precision.
With the GMS, the US, and their allies can impose travel bans, freezes on assets abroad, and other financial restrictions on identified top corrupt politicians and religious extremists responsible for sponsoring and orchestrating mass killings and human rights abuses in the country.
The issues at stake are beyond sentiments, emotions, and partisanship; they concern the future socio-political and economic stability of Nigeria.
For the many Nigerians pained by the anti-people policies that have plunged over 139 million people into poverty, and for the power mongers desperate to grab power at all costs, specifically those who believe that supporting the U.S. designation and clamouring for military action will grant them easy access to the corridors of power, it is time they reconsidered and became good students of history. They must remember the devastating impacts such interventions have had elsewhere.
It is imperative that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration focuses on governance and treats the safeguarding of lives and property as its topmost priority. The government must have the political will to arrest and prosecute those already identified in the previous administrations as real sponsors of terrorism in the country. The time for half-measures against violent killings is over. It is time for decisive action.
For U.S. foreign policy to remain both ethically coherent and strategically potent, it must prioritise the scalpel (GMS) over the sledgehammer( CPC) and possible military action.
Therefore, the path to drastically curbing the senseless killings and enforcing human rights lies not in stigmatising the country, but in precisely incapacitating the predatory individuals responsible. The Global Magnitsky framework offers this essential surgical precision. Its adoption is a more strategic and moral imperative for dismantling Nigeria’s cycles of organised violence and impunity.
Augustine Eigbe, PhD, is a historian and development communication expert.
