Article
Comment
Development
Politics
4 min read

Downsizing in DC undercuts the lives of millions in Nigeria

Nigeria’s Christian communities will bear the brunt of USAID’s demise.

Chris Wadibia is an academic advising on faith-based challenges. His research includes political Pentecostalism, global Christianity, and development. 

Patient wait in a street clinic beside a sign.
A health project clinic in Lagos, Nigeria.

Christendom, the global community of over 2.5 billion Christians living worldwide, has many geographical capitals. Nigeria, like the United States, is one of them. Upwards of 100 million people living in Nigeria identify as followers of the Christian religion. These Nigerians belong to Christian denominations like Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, Baptist Christianity, and Pentecostalism. On 6 February the Trump Administration announced plans to downsize USAID, the US government agency that administers foreign aid. In 2023 it managed over $40 billion, and has played a significant role in delivering aid and development support in Nigeria for decades.  

Nigeria has one of the world’s lowest levels when it comes to spending on social issues. Its government’s underspending has trapped tens of millions of Nigerians in horrific, inescapable mazes of poverty. The significant challenges Nigeria faces are well-documented -socioeconomic, geopolitical, and religious ones. The protracted and infamously bloodthirsty Boko Haram insurgency (headquartered in the northeastern corner of the country) has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Nigerians and displaced over two million people, disproportionately affecting vulnerable women and children.   

Abandoned by the government, many Nigerians look to their ethnic communities, religious groups, and even other state’s agencies and charities for the support and solutions they require to survive.  

In 2021 USAID commemorated 60 years of providing development assistance to Nigeria. Its historical activity has prioritised agriculture and food security, democracy, human rights, and governance, public health, and energy production. In just 2021, USAID provided Nigeria with more than $787 million in development and humanitarian assistance.  

Whilst USAID support for Nigeria has historically been blind to religion, the Trump-led downsizing of development and humanitarian assistance for millions of people living in Nigeria will especially impact tens of millions of Christians, They struggle to lead lives in a country rife with Christian suffering  that is ignored by powerful global actors with the financial, political, and military resources to intervene in substantive and peace-generating ways.  

Southern Nigeria is disproportionately developed compared to the North. Lagos, the economic capital responsible for a third of Nigeria's GDP, sits in the southwestern corner. The south contains a majority of the leading private universities, many of which are owned and funded by Christian churches, and is home to Nigeria's largest international airport. Literacy levels among Christians in Nigeria dwarf literacy levels among Muslims, especially when compared to Muslims living in the religiously archconservative northern states.   

The southern region of Nigeria has an appetite for development and the political will needed to implement an inclusive development vision that simply does not exist up north. Downsizing USAID activity in Nigeria will disproportionately affect Christians in Nigeria who for historical and contemporary reasons have been able to benefit from USAID assistance in ways developing themselves to help Nigeria compete in the global economy.    

In the current 21st century geopolitical climate US-Nigeria relations are far more likely to become more rather than less relevant. 

Muslims in Nigeria, if unbridled by extreme religious dogma, could just as easily undergo the processes of self-development needed to excel in 21st century economic marketplaces. However, as Nigeria's religious landscape stands today, tens of millions of Muslims simply lack access to opportunities to gain the education, training, and work experience that could unleash the full potential of the legendary Nigerian human capital famous globally.  

Millions of educationally and professionally ambitious Nigerian Christians view their work in vocational terms. Inspired by scripture and theological resources like Catholic Social Teaching and the Pentecostal Doctrine of Prosperity, these Christians intentionally seek out educational and professional opportunities because they believe their faith in Christ commands them to provide for their households and invest into their communities. They believe contributions to their homes and communities double as offerings to God himself. For over six decades, USAID has administered development and humanitarian assistance in Nigeria in ways hugely benefitting millions of Christians ignored by their government.  

Administering USAID aid in Nigeria has never been perfect. Bad actors, many of them government officials exploiting the authority of their offices, have stolen development funds intended for marginalized Nigerians and used it to fund their kleptocratic networks and lavish lifestyles. However, in the current 21st century geopolitical climate US-Nigeria relations are far more likely to become more rather than less relevant. USAID support provides a valuable source of American soft power able to win over the hearts of vulnerable Nigerians whose children might one day seize the reins of state power. It also continues the postcolonial project of assisting in the sociopolitical and economic development of the Giant of Africa.  

Downsizing USAID assistance to Nigeria undercuts investment in the lives of millions of Nigerian Christians disproportionately positioned to drive the country in the direction of evolving into just the kind of capable ally in Africa the US wants to work with long term.  

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Article
Comment
Digital
Film & TV
Masculinity
1 min read

How our social media turns us against ourselves

We treat others differently when our eyes and hearts are forced inwards.
An unhappy father sits next to a scared son in a police interview room.
Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper star in Adolescence.
Netflix.

My wife turned to me this week whilst watching the compelling Netflix drama Adolescence and asked if it was based on a true story. That proves the quality of the acting, script, and storyline. But it also demonstrates the drama’s prophetic nature. Conceived two and a half years ago by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne, the perversion of Jamie’s underdeveloped brain and developing masculinity by social media forces has come to reflect real-life extreme violence by young men. With the sentencings of murderers Axel Radakubana and Nicholas Prosper in recent weeks, Jamie’s actions resonate deeply. Adolescence isn’t based on a specific true story, but that doesn’t prevent it from being true. 

What about the role of social media in these narratives? Radakubana and Prosper were radicalised by violent content they had accessed online. With social media, extreme content does well, particularly on sites with no filters on pornography and violence like Reddit and X. We are beginning to discover that content algorithms are not neutral, instead siloing us into echo chambers that are deliberately forming us into better consumers of content, advertising, and objects. Social media harvests our data and sells it on- meaning it cultivates us as the product. 

Yet these manipulations cover over the deepest issue. Social media depersonalises us, preventing us from making genuine human connection and perverting our view of anybody but us. The German philosopher Martin Buber differentiated between two different ways for humans to exist in the world. One was I-It; in a person treats everyone and everything they come into contact with as an ‘It’- something to be used or taken advantage of. 

The other was I-Thou, in which humans approach every other person as a unique being, with resources to offer the I which ensures that a mutual, open, present connection ensues. For Buber, the ultimate ‘Thou’ was God, with whom humans can have the deepest and most transformative connection. 

Social media ensures we see life in ‘I/It’ mode by removing genuine contact with others and providing curated, fake, existences that can never be open to genuine connection with others. Love and affection become commodified; likes, follows, reactions. Our presentation of ourselves becomes more extreme, more perfect, more beautified, to keep mining the commodities. Our eyes and our hearts are forced inwards, and we lose any sense of encountering a ‘Thou’ on the way. We just keep encountering the I: our own thoughts, needs, desires, self-radicalised by our own insular minds. 

This can be our contribution to the conversation on the culture our young people, and particularly young men, are growing up in. To live I/Thou lives.

The great St Augustine back in the fourth century developed the idea of ‘original sin.’ All humans are prone to destruction: it’s in our DNA. The evidence for such an idea is found in every human experience, as the destructor and the one destructed. Left unchecked without genuine connections with others to challenge and expand our hearts, an I/It life digs deeper and deeper into these destructive impulses until our humanity is twisted into violent obsessions. 

The I/It life focuses completely on self-glorification through any means, something amplified by social media. What if we don’t get enough likes, follows, reactions? What if we cannot achieve self-glory through the more banal mediums of attraction, attention, popularity?  

Both Radakubana and Prosper said they wanted to be notorious, attempting to find the most extreme channel for their violence as possible to ensure they are never forgotten. They will not be the last. Jamie continues to deny his crime but in episode three of Adolescence he states that he could do whatever he wanted to Katie, the young girl he murdered. The same impulses come through; others as objects to take advantage of in achieving self-satisfaction. 

The good intentions for human connection that some of those early social media sites were set up for has been largely lost. But the good intention can remain in our own resolution to live an I/Thou life. Putting down social media and picking up connections with humans in the real world by seeing the other with curiosity and openness will ensure that we are constantly turning our heart outwards, embracing genuine relationships, and finding space in our heart to think of the other before ourselves. These are the relationships that will make us more human. 

Ultimately, Buber was right that the ultimate ‘Thou’ connection we can make is with God. The Christian story is full of God’s desire to seek out relationship with humanity, to allow us to find a connection with God that surpasses our own human experience and transforms us to be people that slowly grow away from our destructive instincts.  

What might Christian faith have to contribute to the conversation on the culture young men are growing up in? To live I/Thou lives that are curious, open, and seeking truest divine and human connection. Such a life might even touch those who have been ravaged by social media and ignored by other I/It lives. It might even inspire them to compassion and curiosity that look beyond the content that turns them inwards, to turn outwards and find a healthier future. 

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