Jude Bela and the host discuss why Nigerians facing chronic violence and mass casualties, including burials led by Pastor Femi Lazarus in Jos, are calling for American intervention. The conversation weighs the legitimacy of that desperation against the risk of surrendering sovereignty to a foreign power.
Do you think Africa has friends? No, we don't. But America is coming to help us. Do you really think Americans are in the business of helping people? I don't know. Americans, one, they are not Father Christmas. But Trump is a Christian. Does it matter? He needs to help Christians.
I believe one of the things that has controlled us as a people in Nigeria is pain. The fact that our own people have not done so well when it comes to leading us. People have died, people are suffering. The political class have no mercy for the people, and it has pushed the people to say without thinking about the consequences that if we have suffered this much from the hands of our people, we don't mind being recolonized again. Now, if we are going to speak to this kind of situation, we really honestly— and this is what I have learned— have to also look at the pain of these people and the fact that pain can make people speak from misinformation. And, um, how do you want to start helping these people who are championing conversations like this from this depth of pain they felt from their own people? They were not around when their fathers were colonized, so they probably don't understand the depth of what those ones went through. But now this is the reality on ground. We are having a case where even youth are saying, whatever it is they want to steal, let them come. We're tired of people dying. And if we look at it, if we see— we saw what happened in Jos, the mother holding her son. She will pay any amount for that boy to come back alive. Recently I saw the video of a man who lost his pregnant wife, I think the father, and about 4 children in one night. So when we look at all that, this is painful to see and to watch. It makes the matters on ground difficult to meddle into without considering the emotions of the people and how they feel. How exactly can we help Nigerians at this point?
If you've not experienced this before, you would think the people calling for the intervention of the Americans, you think they are foolish. I don't think they are foolish. Yeah. Um, and like you rightly said, pain can drive people to do anything just to come out of this horrible situation. So you wish— we cannot just write off the pains of these people. Like that pastor, is it Femi Lazarus? Yes. Okay, his church was burned to the ground, right? Members killed. He has had to perform dozens of mass burials like this. So I understand from the perspective which they are speaking from and inviting the Americans to come and intervene. But what we are saying is that their pain is real, and we understand the pain. We feel it. They are our country people. But at the same time, we shouldn't hand over our home to someone we don't know.
