Downsizing in DC undercuts the lives of millions in Nigeria

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

Chris Wadibia

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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9 April 2025

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Is it OK to pray for the death of a dictator?

What happens when the mighty lose their thrones.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

Bullet holes on a wall and white paint outlines mark the site of an execution

The wall where Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were executed.

NPR.

The end, when it comes, can be nasty, brutish and filmed.

Muammar Gaddafi, self-styled Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution, spent the last moments of his life cowering in a Libyan sewer after an air strike on his convoy. On discovery, a mob subjected him to some ghastly final abuses before death – the kind of ending he had mercilessly condemned thousands to. It was almost biblical in its parabola, and it was recorded on a wobbly camera.

But it was not the first of its kind in this generation. On Christmas Day 1989, the disfigured face of Nicolae Ceausescu was broadcast on TV following his summary execution by hastily assembled opposition forces in Romania. Only days previously, he had been an unassailable dictator.

Vladimir Putin has spoken about Gaddafi’s ending, and it clearly troubles him, but perhaps Ceausescu’s death is lodged in the dark recesses of his mind because it was the one bloody end of all the communist leaders of eastern Europe.

Being a dictator is an all-consuming job. Too many domestic and foreign enemies are made along the way for the dictator to drop their vigilance. And their downfall often comes at the hands of those closest to them; by definition, these people know the dictator’s movements and weaknesses better than others and are best placed to exploit them. The military must be equipped to suppress dissent, but give it too much power and the generals pose a risk to the dictator. Yet if the military lacks the hardware, control of the population becomes harder. Many dictators surround themselves with specially trained loyal guards to defend against the military, but the rule of terror means no-one speaks the honest truth and so risks appear everywhere. No wonder dictators are usually paranoid and themselves racked with the fear that a culture of capricious violence induces in everyone.

These and other theories are explored by Marcel Dirsus in his compelling book How Tyrants Fall (John Murray, 2025). Dirsus notes how dictators require money, weapons and people to survive in office and for the elites around them to believe these goods will remain in place. They also need to immerse the surrounding elites in blood guilt, so that their fate becomes entwined with the dictator’s; Saddam Hussein compelled others to join him in the murder and execution of opponents.

For Dirsus, there are two ways to topple a tyrant. The most direct is to take them out, but this is rarely straightforward. Coup attempts are often shambolic in their planning and even well-orchestrated ones usually fail; the consequences for those implicated are always horrendous. The second route is patient and pragmatic, looking to weaken the tyrant, strengthen alternative elites and empower the masses. External powers often have minimal influence unless, like the US in Iraq, the country is invaded and the tyrant deposed. Sanctions often fail to hurt the elites; a state’s geographic proximity to the tyrant’s nation can be useful, as it gives a base from which opponents of the regime can work.

Modern technology is changing the face of political action, making it easier for large groups to mobilise against regimes, as seen in the short-lived Arab Spring. It also enables dictators to track opponents more successfully than even the feared Stasi in East Germany. Right now, it feels like the tyrants are ahead in this game.

Shortly after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a friend said to me that he was praying for Putin’s death or downfall. I asked him how sure he was that the person who replaced Putin would be better. If the pragmatic route for toppling a dictator involves strengthening different elites and empowering the masses, the likelihood is that the elites will take over, not the masses. Dictators never allow the components of civil society to form; democratic institutions take decades to build. And they rarely anoint successors in advance, for fear alternative power bases are created. When dictators fall, it usually leads to initial chaos and violence before another elite can establish itself from which a new dictator will emerge.

In her inspired song of praise at the news she would give birth to the long-awaited Messiah, Mary observes how God ‘has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly’. It is a role reversal typical of St Luke, recorder of Mary’s song, a gift of eschatology many want realised today, not just in the world to come. When the powerful are brought down from their throne today, they are typically replaced by the next most powerful person, and if the throne remains vacant or is contested, what follows often feels like the spirit that went out of a person in Matthew Gospel returning with seven other spirits more evil than itself, meaning ‘the last state of person is worse than the first’.

This need not be a counsel of despair, but a call to informed intercessory prayer which is short on controlling advice for God’s geo-political strategy, and long on the wisdom and patience of the one throne that endures.

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