Chickens Come Home to Roost: Tinubu’s Own Word “Slaughter” Now Demands Justice -By Prof. John Egbeazien Oshodi

The Boomerang of Accountability

The designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) by the United States is not just a diplomatic judgment—it is a moral reckoning. It is the moment when, as the old saying goes, “the chickens have come home to roost.”

The most damning evidence against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not what others say about him, but what he once said himself. In 2014, during his years as a fiery opposition leader, Tinubu condemned then-President Goodluck Jonathan in words that now return to judge him:

“The slaughtering of Christian worshippers is strongly condemnable. It calls into question the competence of Jonathan to protect Nigerians.” — Bola Tinubu, 2014

By using the word “slaughter” — a term that borders on genocide — Tinubu set his own moral standard for leadership. Today, that same word is being echoed by President Donald Trump, turning Tinubu’s own language into an indictment. The man who once demanded accountability is now caught in the same moral storm he once helped create. He is not entirely silent — he is quietly anxious, watching, calculating, and worried that America’s rhetoric could become action. His calm posture conceals a deep private fear that the judgment of words may soon become the judgment of power.

And on Sunday, President Trump reiterated that his country could deploy troops to Nigeria or carry out airstrikes to stop the killings.

“They’re killing record numbers of Christians in Nigeria. They’re killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers. We’re not going to allow that to happen,” the U.S. President said.

In a post the previous day, Trump warned that he might send the military into Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” unless the Nigerian government intervened, adding that all aid to what he called “the now disgraced country” would be cut.

“If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet — just like the terrorist thugs attack our cherished Christians!” he declared.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth replied within hours:

“Yes, sir. The Department of War is preparing for action. Either the Nigerian government protects Christians, or we will kill the Islamic terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”

Trump’s words triggered alarm across Nigeria. Many citizens urged the government to take his statement seriously and step up its protection of Christians to avert a military or diplomatic escalation. Government spokesmen tried to downplay the threat, saying the U.S. President had “a unique way of communicating,” but that assurance did little to calm public anxiety.

The irony could not be greater: the very word Tinubu used to condemn his predecessor — slaughter — is now the word echoing from Washington back to him. History has repeated itself, not merely as irony, but as psychological judgment.

The Absolute Truth: A Domestic Failure, Not a Foreign War

The Nigerian government’s defensive plea to Washington for American ammunition exposes a painful irony. Abuja insists it does not want U.S. “intervention,” only arms — but weapons are not the problem. Nigeria is already one of the most heavily armed nations in West Africa. The crisis is not a shortage of bullets; it is a shortage of integrity.

Within the military and security establishment, troubling whispers have persisted for years. Some officers in the North — men sworn to defend the republic — have reportedly looked away, or worse, colluded with Fulani militias when Christian villages came under attack. Weapons meant to protect the nation are sometimes withheld or misused according to sectarian sympathies. It is a betrayal from within — a quiet alliance of conscience, politics, and fear — where religion is placed before citizenship, and tribe before Constitution.

That is why the request for U.S. ammunition rings hollow. What good are more guns in the hands of men who hesitate to act when the victims are Christians or ethnic minorities? The rot is not logistical; it is moral and psychological. The northern political elite and governors see what is happening — the killings, the burnings, the forced displacements — yet they respond with silence or denial. Their politics is calibrated around appeasement, not justice.

The contradiction is both tragic and public. The same leaders who claim “foreign Fulani” are to blame for Nigeria’s massacres also resist domestic prosecutions that would expose the networks of complicity. They demand weapons from America yet lack the courage to use the ones they already control with fairness and conscience. That is why the CPC designation is more than a diplomatic reprimand — it is a moral verdict. It exposes not just weak governance, but deep corruption: violence protected by identity, sustained by silence, and excused through religion.

This is not mere insecurity. It is destruction, displacement, and replacement — executed under the cover of official denial. Villages have been erased, worshippers slaughtered, and entire Christian families turned into refugees on their ancestral lands. This is not war; it is engineered impunity, carried out in the name of a nation that can no longer protect its own.

When the World Finally Listened: From Plateau to Washington to Hollywood

For years, Reverend Ezekiel Bwede Dachomo cried in the wilderness, warning and documenting the slow extermination of Christians in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. His trembling phone videos, often dismissed by local authorities as alarmist, circulated through diaspora networks until they reached hearts abroad. By late 2025, his voice had crossed three powerful frontiers: political, spiritual, and secular conscience.

On the political front, President Donald Trump’s renewed CPC designation for Nigeria, and Senator Ted Cruz’s October 31 press release supporting it, transformed Dachomo’s anguish into policy language. Cruz’s accompanying bill proposing sanctions on Nigerian officials who enforce blasphemy laws or shield extremist actors gave legislative weight to what Nigerian victims had long cried for — official recognition that persecution of Christians is not random violence but a deliberate campaign.

Then came an unexpected witness. Bill Maher, an outspoken atheist and critic of organized religion, used his September 26, 2025 broadcast of Real Time to call Nigeria’s killings “a genocide attempt,” citing more than 100,000 deaths and 18,000 burned churches. Quoting data later amplified by the Catholic News Agency and the Religious Freedom Institute, Maher achieved what government statements rarely do: he made global audiences feel the magnitude of the tragedy.

When a secular satirist who mocks Christianity calls the slaughter of Christians “the real genocide,” the world finally senses how abnormal its silence has been.

What unites Dachomo’s raw recordings, Cruz’s legislation, and Maher’s monologue is a single psychological moment — the collapse of denial. The pastor revealed the wound, the senator built the policy frame, and the comedian, paradoxically, gave the suffering a global stage. Together they form an unlikely trinity of conscience — the prophet, the policymaker, and the provocateur — forcing the Western mind to confront what Nigerian elites still pretend not to see: that the blood of the faithful is both a testimony of endurance and an indictment of power.

The Truth Abuja Fears to Face

The time for denial is over. The CPC designation is not a foreign insult but a mirror of Nigeria’s refusal to confront its moral collapse. The massacres in Plateau, Benue, Kaduna, and Niger States are not accidents of poverty or politics; they are the outcome of selective justice and spiritual blindness.

This is not a matter for Washington. The world only echoes what Nigerians themselves whisper—that impunity has become institutionalized. The remedy must come from within: a fearless judiciary, a professional police service, and a presidency willing to face its own words.

The Constitution remains secular and supreme. It recognizes no faith above another and commands equality before the law. Therefore, no offender should ever be tried under a religious code that excuses bias or selective mercy. The Hisbah, state attorneys, and Sharia-state judges must stop pretending neutrality while victims die under their jurisdiction.

Nigeria’s military may defend borders, but only the law can defend the nation’s soul. Until the courts reclaim conscience from politics, the CPC label will remain the world’s obituary for Nigerian justice.

The Silence of the Lawmakers: Sovereignty as a Shield for Failure

During a recent Senate session, a moment of diplomatic theater revealed the deeper illness within Nigeria’s political class. When Senate President Godswill Akpabio remarked that he could not respond directly to the President of the United States, Deputy Senate President Barau I. Jibrin of Kano State rose sharply, his voice full of defiance.

“I said I’m not scared of Trump. I will say my mind. I’m a Nigerian. Nigeria is a sovereign nation. I’m a parliamentarian. I’m the Deputy Senate President — I can speak. I’m not scared of Trump. Don’t be scared of Trump. Say your mind about Trump. We are a sovereign nation.”

The scene drew applause from some quarters — a show of patriotic courage on the surface, but beneath it, a revealing contradiction. The Deputy Senate President was not confronting American interference; he was performing independence before a silent chamber that has failed to defend the very citizens whose blood defines this crisis. In truth, he made a grave mistake with America — mistaking moral rebuke for political insult.

This is the irony: lawmakers who cannot summon equal passion for justice suddenly find their voices when shouting “sovereignty.” They claim Nigeria is independent, yet remain dependent on foreign ammunition and international diplomacy to explain away domestic collapse. They wave the flag of sovereignty not to defend the people, but to defend their pride.

True sovereignty is not defiance; it is responsibility. It is the courage to prosecute killers, not the ego to outshout Washington. The same senators who roar against America’s concern for Nigerian lives are silent when those lives are taken in their own constituencies. They see, but they do not act.

The tragedy is not that the world calls Nigeria to account — it is that Nigeria’s own parliament refuses to do so. Sovereignty without justice is nothing but a shout into the void.

The Therapeutic Ending: Healing Through Truth and Accountability

Every nation that has walked through moral darkness must one day confront its reflection. Nigeria is now standing before that mirror. The CPC designation is not a curse from America — it is a diagnosis from conscience. It tells us that justice, the most essential therapy for a wounded society, has been postponed for too long.

For far too long, presidents after presidents have been afraid to shake the North — the region where Fulani militias and terrorist groups keep insecurity alive, where Sharia systems and Islamic courts hold sway, where Hisbah policing and huge political vote blocs make accountability politically dangerous. That fear has cost lives. If Nigeria’s leaders cannot break the pact of protection that shields killers because of politics or sectarian loyalty, the consequence will be decided elsewhere. If you will not enforce your own law, do not be surprised when others do.

The American president and leading conservative figures are not intimidated by Nigeria’s northern political class or the cautious silence of southern leaders. Where our own officials fear to offend power, Washington’s conscience is moved by blood. They will do what Nigeria’s rulers have failed to do — and they will do it quickly. The response will not come as dialogue but as consequence: sanctions, travel bans, frozen assets, and international embarrassment. It will be fast, public, and painful — because moral patience has expired.

What Nigeria needs now is not more speeches, denials, or borrowed weapons. It needs psychological repair through truth and accountability. Healing begins the moment leaders stop defending failure and start defending life. Justice is not vengeance; it is national therapy — a moral medicine that restores the mind of a country numbed by repeated violence.

The President, the National Assembly, the governors, the Hisbah, the police, and the courts must all undergo this therapy of truth. They must admit that silence has become complicity, and complicity has become policy. The blood of Deborah Samuel, of the worshippers in Plateau and Benue, and of the nameless thousands across the North will continue to stain the conscience of this republic until justice is done openly and fairly.

Nigeria’s sickness is not military but moral, not logistical but psychological. The cure is not in Washington, China or Moscow; it is in Abuja’s courage to face itself. Justice is the only antidepressant left for a traumatized nation.

Only when truth is spoken, prosecutions are real, and victims are restored will Nigeria breathe again as one nation under God and under law.

About the Author

Prof. John Egbeazien Oshodi is an American psychologist and educator specializing in forensic, legal, clinical, cross-cultural psychology, public ethical policy, police, and prison science.

Born in Uromi, Edo State, Nigeria, and the son of a 37-year veteran of the Nigeria Police Force, he has devoted his career to linking psychology with justice, education, and governance. In 2011, he pioneered the introduction of advanced forensic psychology in Nigeria through the National Universities Commission and Nasarawa State University, where he served as Associate Professor of Psychology.

He currently serves as contributing faculty in the Doctorate in Clinical and School Psychology at Nova Southeastern University; teaches in the Doctorate Clinical Psychology, BS Psychology, and BS Tempo Criminal Justice programs at Walden University; and is a virtual professor of Management and Leadership Studies at Weldios University and ISCOM University. He is President and Chief Psychologist at the Oshodi Foundation, Center for Psychological and Forensic Services, United States.

Prof. Oshodi is a Black Republican in the United States but belongs to no party in Nigeria—he stands only for justice. This writer knows no one on this issue but writes solely for the sake of justice, good governance, democracy, and African development. He is the founder of Psychoafricalysis (Psychoafricalytic Psychology)—a culturally grounded framework centering African sociocultural realities, historical consciousness, and future-oriented identity. A prolific scholar, he has authored more than 500 articles, several books, and numerous peer-reviewed works on Africentric psychology, higher education reform, forensic and correctional psychology, African democracy, and decolonized therapeutic models.