Report By David Obi
For a brief, incandescent moment, hope arrived in Nigeria wearing a congressional pin and an American accent.
Across the South-East, South-South, the Middle Belt—and anywhere history has learned to bruise people quietly—the news travelled fast: U.S. President Donald Trump had dispatched a delegation to Nigeria, led by Congressman Riley Moore. In some quarters, this was interpreted not as diplomacy but destiny. At last, many whispered, the 1914 British experiment called “Nigeria” might be gently escorted to its logical conclusion: separate ways, separate futures, separate pain.
Prayers were reportedly answered. Prophecies dusted off. Group chats went into overdrive. The forced marriage engineered by colonial cartographers, critics insisted, was finally up for annulment.
Then Congressman Moore tweeted.
On Saturday, February 7, 2026, the American lawmaker took to his verified X account with a message that landed like cold water on a revival altar. Yes, he had travelled across Nigeria. Yes, he had met high-level officials, church leaders, aid groups and internally displaced persons. Yes, Christian persecution was real, widespread, and deeply troubling.
But no—capital N no—the idea of dividing Nigeria, Moore said, “has not come up in any serious way.”
Worse still (depending on where you sit), he argued that emboldening separatists would hurt Christians, particularly in the North and Middle Belt. A destabilized Nigeria, Moore warned, would be a gift to terrorists, not salvation for the faithful. The solution, he concluded, lay not in dismantling the country but in security cooperation—conveniently noting a fresh U.S.–Nigeria security agreement as proof of progress.
God bless you all, he signed off.
Twitter did not return the blessing.
Within minutes, the Nigerian digital public square combusted. Keyboards were unsheathed. Timelines burned. Hope curdled into fury.
“If the Democrats get back into the White House, all your efforts would be in vain,” one user, Macdon Francis, fired back, reminding Moore that American messiahs are term-limited. “Trump won’t be in power forever to protect Nigerian Christians.”
Others were less diplomatic, more existential.
“The honest truth,” one respondent declared, “is that Nigeria is not a nation and can never be united.” The country, they argued, is merely a crowded waiting room of incompatible histories—Arewa, Oduduwa, Biafra—held together by inertia, soldiers, and the memory of a flag. The continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, was cited not as an isolated injustice but as proof that unity is enforced, not chosen.
Some replies, in a surreal twist, simply reposted Moore’s entire statement back at him—perhaps as protest, perhaps as parody, perhaps as digital screaming into the void.
Others went further, darker, more weary.
“Dividing Nigeria is the permanent solution,” one user wrote flatly. Everything else, they argued, is temporary relief—bandages on a wound that keeps reopening. Recalling experiences of violence dating back to Jos in 2001, the commenter insisted that coexistence, as currently structured, only postpones the next killing. Plateau and Benue, they warned, were the final buffers. After that, the march south would be inevitable.
Amid the noise, a quieter despair emerged.
Inalegwu Okpe offered a reflection that cut through the outrage like a tired sigh: people, he wrote, make careers out of politics, advocacy, and crisis management. Whether victims ever find peace is almost incidental. “Who will save us?” he asked, turning from Washington and Abuja toward heaven. “Lord, send us a deliverer…”
And there it was—the real headline beneath the satire.
Congressman Moore arrived as a symbol onto which millions projected their deepest frustrations: with history, with borders, with a state that feels permanent only in its failure. His refusal to validate the breakup fantasy did not merely disappoint—it exposed a brutal truth. Nigeria’s crisis is no longer just about security, religion, or governance. It is about belief: belief in the idea of the country itself.
America came, listened, took notes, and left Nigeria intact.
Twitter, meanwhile, conducted its own referendum—loud, furious, inconclusive.
And somewhere between a security agreement and a prayer for deliverance, Nigeria remains what it has always been: a question no one agrees how to answer, but everyone is tired of living inside.
