By Adamu Lawal Toro,
The recent communication from the United States Congress, conveyed through Congressman Riley Moore, outlining an eighteen-point pathway for Nigeria’s removal from Washington’s religious-freedom watchlist, has triggered predictable reactions at home. Some view it as helpful international pressure to address insecurity. Others see it as an unacceptable intrusion into Nigeria’s sovereign affairs. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in between but one thing is certain; Nigeria must respond with calm strength, not emotional defensiveness or silent compliance.
No honest observer can deny that Nigeria faces serious internal security challenges. From the remnants of insurgency in the Northeast to rural banditry in the Northwest and recurring farmer–herder conflicts in the Middle Belt, too many communities still live with fear, displacement and economic collapse. Churches, mosques, villages and markets have all suffered. Any global concern for civilian protection, religious freedom and humanitarian access is therefore not entirely misplaced. Protecting Nigerians of every faith is first and foremost the responsibility of the Nigerian state, not a concession to foreign governments.
Yet while the concerns may be legitimate, the structure and tone of the American document raise troubling questions. Rather than reading like the framework of a strategic partnership between two sovereign democracies, the recommendations resemble a compliance checklist drafted for a dependent territory. Nigeria is not a client state. It is Africa’s largest population centre, one of its biggest economies, and a critical stabilising power in West Africa. Diplomatic engagement must reflect that reality.
The most controversial aspect of the proposal is its attempt to tie security cooperation to geopolitical alignment. One recommendation links deeper cooperation to divesting from Russian military platforms in favour of American procurement, while urging stronger positioning against rivals such as the Chinese Communist Party. This shifts the discussion away from protecting vulnerable communities and into the realm of global power competition. Nigeria’s defence procurement cannot be dictated by external legislative committees. Our military purchases must depend on operational suitability, affordability, maintenance logistics and national strategic independence not ideological alignment in Washington.
Equally sensitive are suggestions touching Nigeria’s domestic legal and religious architecture. Calls for the repeal of sharia-related criminal provisions and blasphemy statutes ignore the delicate constitutional balance of a multi-religious federation where legal pluralism exists within a democratic framework. These are issues Nigerians themselves debate intensely in courts, legislatures, universities and the media. Reform, where necessary, must emerge from domestic consensus, not foreign instruction. External pressure on religiously sensitive laws risks hardening positions, empowering extremists on all sides, and portraying internal reformers as agents of foreign agendas.
Some recommendations also betray a misunderstanding of the socio-economic roots of Nigeria’s rural conflicts. Proposals suggesting restrictions on beef exports to pressure pastoralist communities into disarmament could devastate legitimate livestock economies while worsening poverty in already fragile regions. Economic suffocation is rarely a path to disarmament; more often, it becomes a recruitment tool for criminal networks. Likewise, framing the farmer–herder crisis simply as the eviction of armed groups from farmland ignores the deeper drivers: desertification, population growth, migration pressure, shrinking grazing corridors and decades of unregulated land competition. Policing alone cannot solve what is fundamentally an ecological and developmental crisis.
That said, dismissing the entire American proposal would be equally unwise. Some elements deserve serious engagement. Strengthening investigative policing, improving prosecution capacity, enhancing financial tracking of terror networks, and ensuring transparent use of security assistance are reforms Nigeria itself urgently needs — regardless of foreign pressure. Expanded intelligence cooperation, technology transfer, and humanitarian coordination could genuinely help stabilise vulnerable regions if pursued within a respectful partnership framework.
The diplomatic challenge for the administration of President Bola Tinubu is therefore not whether to accept or reject the recommendations wholesale. It is how to separate partnership from prescription. Blanket rejection risks portraying Nigeria as defensive or indifferent to civilian suffering. Blind acceptance risks signalling that major national security and legal policies can be externally scripted.
Nigeria’s response must instead be strategic and selective.
First, Abuja should publicly reaffirm its constitutional obligation to protect all Nigerians regardless of religion or ethnicity, framing civilian protection as a sovereign duty rather than an externally imposed demand.
Second, Nigeria should welcome cooperation in areas that strengthen institutional capacity, intelligence sharing, border surveillance, counter-terror financing, forensic training and judicial reform while making clear that defence procurement decisions remain exclusively national.
Third, the government must intensify its own long-delayed rural security and livestock modernisation programmes. Structured ranching systems, animal identification frameworks, climate-adaptation investments and community-based dispute resolution mechanisms are not foreign impositions; they are overdue domestic necessities. If Nigeria visibly advances these reforms on its own terms, external pressure automatically loses force.
Ultimately, the long-term answer to Nigeria’s rural insecurity will not be found in foreign policy memos but in domestic structural reform , especially in the transformation of the livestock economy. Northern stability depends on moving pastoral production from vulnerable open-migration survival systems into secure, modern, commercially viable ranching and traceability frameworks that reduce conflict, improve productivity, and restore lawful land relations between farmers and herders. Institutions such as the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria and government livestock agencies must therefore be empowered to drive animal identification, grazing settlement development, veterinary infrastructure, and climate-adaptation programmes that turn pastoralism from a security flashpoint into a national economic asset.
If Nigeria leads this transition decisively, the narrative will shift from crisis management to rural economic renewal and no external checklist will be needed to validate the country’s commitment to peace, stability, and responsible governance. The United States has the right to frame its foreign policy expectations. Nigeria has the equal right to secure its future through reforms designed at home, implemented at home, and owned by its people. True partnership strengthens nations; prescription weakens them. Nigeria must choose the path of sovereign reform and confident engagement.
Toro is the Director strategic planning at MACBAN Headquarters Abuja
