THIS DAWN — A media and management consultant, teacher, and chairman of the Board of BusinessDay Newspaper, Dr. Richard Ikiebe, has condemned what he referred to as “drowning out solutions to Nigeria’s security crises” by social media warriors.
Dr. Ikiebe noted that Nigeria’s response to international criticism of its human-rights record has degenerated into a social-media spectacle that substitutes hashtags for policy.
Instead of addressing mounting insecurity and allegations of religious persecution, government-aligned commentators have turned cyberspace into a battlefield of rhetoric, obscuring facts when clarity is most needed.
What should be a sober national conversation on violence, justice and governance has become a cacophony that protects no one and solves nothing.
From Diplomacy to Digital Defensiveness
Ikiebe also noted that the immediate trigger for the uproar was criticism by U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and other international voices accusing Nigeria of failing to protect Christians from persecution.
Rather than respond through diplomatic channels or factual briefings, Abuja appeared to mobilise online surrogates whose task was to attack critics and flood timelines with patriotic slogans.
The result has been predictable: a torrent of misinformation that drowns substantive debate and deepens polarisation.
Public reaction now falls into four broad camps.
The first is the army of “keyboard warriors” who rage online without understanding the diplomatic or historical context.
Their inflammatory posts spread falsehoods faster than government can correct them.
The second group—reflexive nationalists—opposes any American statement simply because it is American, overlooking the nuances of bilateral diplomacy.
The third bloc—official apologists—invoke sovereignty as a shield against scrutiny, insisting Nigeria needs no external counsel even as the crises worsen.
The fourth and smallest group—genuine experts such as conflict scholars and seasoned diplomats—struggle to be heard amid the noise.
Their measured analyses are quickly buried under waves of emotional commentary.
The Convenient Confusion
According to Ikiebe, this orchestrated confusion benefits those who thrive on denial.
When everyone is shouting, truth becomes indistinguishable from propaganda, granting impunity to perpetrators and paralysis to policymakers.
The U.S. critic, Senator Cruz, is not the architect of Nigeria’s troubles; he is merely a canary in the coal mine, signalling dangers Nigerians themselves have long documented.
Two Nigerian organisations illustrate the point.
The Hausa Native Advancement and Development Initiative has petitioned the International Criminal Court, alleging ethnic cleansing by Fulani militias across the North.
Its dossier includes photographs of mass graves and survivor testimonies.
Similarly, the NGO Intersociety filed an ICC complaint in June 2023, documenting over 31,000 Christian deaths since 2015 and naming specific officials allegedly complicit through inaction.
These submissions are not foreign conspiracies but home-grown pleas for justice when domestic remedies have failed.
To dismiss such petitions as “politically motivated” reveals a disturbing disconnect from citizens’ experiences.
When Hausa groups accuse Fulani militias of mass killings, while Christian communities allege religious persecution, the official response cannot be blanket denial wrapped in nationalist rhetoric.
The government’s duty is to investigate impartially and act decisively.
A Nation Under Siege
Ikiebe further observed that Nigeria’s security emergencies span every geopolitical zone and require tailored solutions, not slogans.
The Northeast remains under assault from Boko Haram and ISWAP, whose ideology targets the Nigerian state, Christians, and dissenting Muslims alike.
Their atrocities—church burnings, abductions, executions—display a deliberate campaign of terror.
The Northwest has collapsed into banditry and kidnappings, driven by poverty, extortion, and an unspoken Hausa–Fulani ethnic tension.
Criminal networks exploit governance vacuums and weak policing.
The Middle Belt endures the worst religiously framed violence.
Well-armed jihadist militias launch midnight raids on Christian farming villages, torch churches, and destroy livelihoods.
Entire communities now live in displacement camps, evidence of a creeping humanitarian disaster.
Officials admit that the military is deployed in 33 of Nigeria’s 36 states, an astonishing statistic for a nation not formally at war.
Such militarisation underscores how civil governance has yielded to security emergency.
It should alarm every policymaker who values democratic stability, for when citizens lose faith in government’s ability to protect them, the very foundation of the Republic trembles.
The Perils of Denial
Official insistence that Nigeria faces no ethnic or religious crisis is not mere spin; it is a form of policy paralysis, Ikiebe insists.
Denial guarantees deterioration. Violence does not vanish because it is unacknowledged—it metastasises.
International concern will only intensify as casualties rise and displaced populations swell, he opined.
A credible response must replace defensive posturing.
Nigeria should establish a National Commission on Religious Freedom, independent of partisan politics and composed of respected figures from all six geopolitical zones.
Business leaders, retired jurists, and security professionals known for neutrality could serve as commissioners.
Their mandate:
- Investigate specific incidents and overall patterns of violence linked to faith or ethnicity.
- Distinguish ordinary criminality from ideologically motivated persecution.
- Apply international legal standards to assess claims of genocide.
The commission should also audit the internal-displacement crisis, one of Africa’s largest.
It must evaluate whether security forces are effectively protecting civilians and whether perpetrators are ever prosecuted.
Public hearings with victims, community leaders, and security experts would build trust and transparency.
Toward Real Solutions
In Ikiebe’s proffered solutions, such an initiative would demonstrate genuine governmental commitment to truth-seeking and reform, not digital theatrics.
It would craft a fact-based roadmap for peace and reassure both citizens and international observers that Nigeria takes religious freedom seriously.
Sovereignty is not undermined by self-examination; it is strengthened by it.
Nigeria stands today at a moral crossroads. The choice is not between bowing to foreign pressure or asserting independence.
It is between honest self-assessment and continued decay.
Every hour spent mobilising Twitter defenders instead of protecting villages cedes ground to extremists and hands propaganda victory to critics abroad.
Until leadership chooses introspection over denial, Nigeria’s “social-media warriors” will keep trending while communities burn in silence.
The world is watching—not the hashtags, but the human cost they conceal, concludes Ikiebe.
