Let us retire a convenient fiction. Donald Trump, his Department of War conservatives, Zionists, and the Make America Great Again crowd—now rehearsing awkward expressions to justify a second Trump presidency—do not concern themselves with Nigeria. Not seriously. Not attentively. Not in the daylight sense of the word. Whether Nigerians are Muslim or Christian, shrine-keepers of the Egba Fortress of Abeokuta or pew-sitters, alters nothing essential. The distinction is decorative.
No one cares. Nigerians care about Nigeria. Others watch for openings.
No one in the United States of America lies awake thinking about Nigeria—except where leverage is possible, where control can be demonstrated, where a familiar thrill returns. Except where a felon, charged and convicted for drug trafficking in Chicago, is positioned to rise and remain president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Except where Nigerians, at home and abroad, are expected to wake subdued—politically slackened, emasculated, hands lowered, resistance discouraged from contesting this arrangement.
In this respect, the United States resembles Nigeria more than it admits.
President Trump himself has been publicly associated with the Lolita Express, an aircraft described as transporting underage girls between the United States and various islands to serve the interests of elderly European men holding official positions, under the management of Jeffrey Epstein, identified as an Israeli intelligence asset. The Lolita was not built for its itinerary alone, but for what it represents: power in motion, indulgence insulated from consequence, appetite disguised as logistics. When Americans speak of criminal governance abroad, they are often rehearsing familiar lines.
The details are less important than the pattern. An ocean separates the United States and Nigeria. Dysfunction bridges it.
Nigeria’s troubles are regularly framed as crises of disorder—armed men, religious banners, noise in the night. Whether these conditions require restraint or force is not the present concern. What is notable is the eagerness with which America’s Lolita elites lean forward when Nigeria enters the frame. The interest sharpens. The language warms. The pulse quickens.
And then Nicki Minaj spoke.
She spoke in the language she knows best: spectacle. She executed “chastity” in broad daylight and raised her grandmothers from the dead by shaking her backside so hard that they fainted and died a second death; Nicki is a woman who looks like she was born on the Lolita mid-flight. In that way, she represents power in motion in the United States. She spoke in the idiom of attention—provocation wrapped as concern, performance presented as urgency. She named violence a “genocide” against Christians. She praised Donald Trump. She lingered on him. She reminded him, publicly, that he was still seen. She flirted with the aging myth by calling the nearly eighty-year-old man “hot.” It was a familiar ritual—attention offered, ego fluffed and stimulated.
And then came the release. “Bang-bang.” Fast, sweet, and elsewhere.
The President of the United States of America—custodian of the so-called Exceptional Nation, the Shining City on the Hill—authorized ordnance from ships lounging in the Gulf of Guinea. Force was discharged. Satisfaction was implied. Purpose was announced. Not debate. Not deliberation. Just another American discharge. A Lolita discharge.
Accuracy was optional. Precision was secondary.
The missiles did not land where Nicki opened her mouth about. They landed elsewhere—near Niger, a country that has since turned its back on Western supervision and has banned France’s own version of the Lolita, on which the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, and his husband, some twenty years older than him, shuttle in and out of the former French colony. Niger escorted France out of the room. France, accustomed to moving in and out of former colonies with practiced intimacy, now observed from the wings as President Trump released elsewhere, near Niger.
The act and the explanation did not align.
According to ACLED, an American conflict-monitoring organization, Nigeria recorded roughly twenty thousand civilian deaths from twelve thousand attacks between 2020 and 2025. Of these, 385 attacks—producing about 317 deaths—were identified as targeting Christians. In the same span, 196 attacks produced approximately 417 Muslim deaths.
Numbers, unlike performances, do not blush.
Why, then, the fixation? Why this particular grief, and not the others? What logic persuades the President of the United States—once styled a Lolita king and perhaps still inclined toward the role—to deploy naval muscle under the banner of rescuing Christian girls from Islamic villains? The emphasis is persistent. The imagery repeats. The fascination with girls lingers.
On November 1st, Donald Trump announced he would intervene in Nigeria. He called Nigeria “that now disgraced country.” The phrasing is on record. It reads less like policy than promise. He made sure to include that when he released the bombs on that “disgraced country,” he would make it “fast… and sweet.” I kid you not! Donald Trump fails to muster the same hard-on for Christian girls in Palestine murdered by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
A comparable ardor has not appeared for Christian deaths in Palestine, where tens of thousands of girls have died during Israeli military operations in Gaza. There, the appetite cools.
Some decent men in America—and believe me, there are still some decent men left in America worth rescuing by boat—think that all this Freudian anger and chest-thumping is not about the girls after all. They argue it is theater: a rehearsal designed to reassign blame, to rehearse punishment, to reassure an audience hungry for dominance. Nigeria becomes the stage. Gaza provides the script. The applause comes from the evangelical balcony of the White House.
Whether this reading convinces is beside the point.
What the United States and Israel share is not only AIPAC. More tellingly, they share a taste for movement without consequence, for power exercised as pleasure, for intervention dressed as virtue. The Lolita Express keeps its schedule. Nigeria now appears on that route.
Ok oo ! We hear ! So the ” giant ” of Africa is incapable of dealing with Islamism in his country, except aided by imperialists ?
es, the “giant” in the laps of the USA.
It just does not add up, few days ago Nigeria was the one using their airpower to stop coups and now look at the statement
It doesn’t add up. But Nigeria is a strange type of arithmetic.
Narmer Amenuti looking at the on site videos, it’s barns that were attacked. And Africans clamoring on unexploded ordinances
Narmer Amenuti you will not die me Prof hahah
Seen the above.
ECOWAS’ silence on these happenings is troubling.
All is not well.
Well, well, well. The Lolita Express has finally arrived in the Gulf of Guinea, discharging at the slightest stroking. What a way to frame this mess. So enjoyable. (I mean, enjoyable reading).
ou had to catch yourself there, dintchu?
Listen! Ain’t trynna be on the Lolita express. 😂
Such witty metaphors!🤭
Nwanne, can ranting with epistles stop the ISLAMIZATION and ARABIZATION of Africa?
It didn’t stop it in the Northern African countries of Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morroco and Tunisia. It can’t stop it in Nigeria, Sudan and other parts of Africa.
Always remember that.
The only way you stop something is to have something. We have nothing. Inviting other men with bombs to stop ideas is a futile exercise. Epistles can however counter ideas we don’t like.
you IDEALISTS are not countering the bloodiest idea called JIHAD or ISLAMIZATION.
But are always jumping out to counter anything that will help us stop JIHADISTS or ISLAMIZERS.
Make it make sense biko.
They’re bombing north Cameroon too.
Thank you for the reminder. That one is so frustrating, it deserves an entire book.
If Nigeria had competent governments over the decades there would have been no need for the Lolita express to fly over her. While others have been raping Lolitas, Nigeria’s leaders have been raping their own people.
Jonas Paga Bu I can’t disagree with that.
ECOWAS regional state of emergency? The US came in and dropped bombs in Nigeria. Where is the ECOWAS statement?
But what statement do you want from ECOWAS when from all indications Nigeria worked with the US to implement the air strikes?
Jonas Paga Bu Good question. I think coordination explains the strikes, but it does not excuse ECOWAS from responding to the regional consequences of a world super power (of which there are two or three) striking targets within an ECOWAS nation. ECOWAS has issued statements in many cases despite government consent when broader regional implications were at stake. When the region’s largest military power normalizes foreign airstrikes on its own territory, through coordination or not that decision reshapes regional security doctrine. That is precisely when ECOWAS is expected to speak since its mandate is to set and defend regional norms, especially when a member state’s actions introduce extra-regional military force into West Africa especially after the super power had threatened Nigeria itself on a number of occasions.
Narmer Amenuti Which ECOWAS country is without foreign troops on its soil? When the French were bombing and shooting insurgents in the Sahel why didn’t any body call on ECOWAS for comment?
So Nigeria shouldn’t act to rid herself of these terror groups because of regional consequences? If ECOWAS is aware of regional consequences then what are her plans to counter them? So I’m wrong to shoot at an armed robber in my house simply because he may jump into your courtyard instead? Is that the argument sir?
Jonas Paga Bu You make I laugh seff—but not because your point is wrong. You are not wrong to defend yourself in your house. That is not in dispute. What I am saying is something far more basic: you must answer for shooting the armed robber and killing him. There has to be an investigation so that the shooting is maintained, on record, as self-defense. Otherwise the category collapses. We have to verify that you shot an armed robber, and not that you planned to murder (Taflatse) your spouse in broad daylight and later branded her an armed robber for convenience.
That is exactly the issue here.
Saying that other ECOWAS countries host foreign troops is correct; you are not wrong. Still, that does not settle anything. Frequency does not equal legitimacy. If anything, it explains how regional norms eroded, not why they should be immune from scrutiny now. Past silence by ECOWAS is not a defense; it is part of the institutional failure under discussion.
I am not arguing that Nigeria should not act to rid itself of armed groups. That is a straw man. The question is not whether Nigeria may act, but how that action is exercised, recorded, and normalized. When a state introduces extra-regional air power into what it describes as a domestic affair, the issue ceases to be purely internal. It becomes a regional precedent, whether Nigeria intends it or not.
Calling for ECOWAS to speak is not the same as telling Nigeria to stand still while violence continues. A statement is not paralysis. It is the equivalent of an investigation after a shooting: it clarifies, distinguishes, and preserves legitimacy. Without that clarification, self-defense becomes indistinguishable from pretext, and sovereignty becomes a word that means whatever power says it means at the moment.
Narmer Amenuti Ok so why not then wait for a fact-finding mission to ascertain the truth before condemning Nigeria?
Secondly, the standard to which you hold the Nigerian government seems not to be the standard to which you hold the insurgents. When they kill do they follow any laid down international rules? They kill innocent lives while the military targets the insurgents. It is as if you suggest the insurgents are using rubber bullets while the military is using live ammunition.
The US isn’t the problem in this Sahel debacle. At the root lies decades of poor leadership and corruption throughout ECOWAS. The chickens have simply come home to roost for west Africa.
Jonas Paga Bu I have not condemned Nigeria yet. You should see my condemnation once the fact-finding mission is completed and my suspicions have materialized. I will send you a copy. I am merely scrutinizing Nigeria. There is no contradiction between calling for scrutiny and awaiting fact-finding.
You compare standards applied to insurgents and standards applied to governments. I would say this: Non-state armed groups are not held to the same legal responsibilities as states because they do not possess sovereignty, treaty obligations, or monopoly over lawful force.
The thing is, I am not necessarily allocating blame; I am scrutinizing process and precedent. When a powerful external state like the USA operates militarily inside an ECOWAS member, inside the largest member for that matter, with a documented history (especially from President Trump) of pressure and leverage on Nigeria, that fact becomes analytically relevant regardless of internal governance failures.