Shock and Awe: If America Comes, It’s for Nigeria’s Corrupt, Complicit, and Terrorist Leaders—Not Her People -By Psychologist Professor John Egbeazien Oshodi

A Man Who Loves to Travel, Not This Time—They May Come at Any Time

Every nation reaches a moment when laughter abroad becomes dangerous and travel loses its meaning. For President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that moment has come. His steady rhythm of flights, summits, and quiet retreats in Europe now mirrors Nigeria’s growing distance from its own suffering.

This is not the time for leisurely diplomacy or private medical care in London. These are rough, unpredictable times when global powers sharpen their moral weapons. From Washington to Brussels, Nigeria’s corruption, killings, and judicial silence are no longer internal affairs—they are seen as crimes against humanity.

Mr. President, this is the hour to stay home. When the unpredictable unfolds, nations are not saved by speeches—they are saved by presence.

The Calm Before a Reckoning

There are moments in a nation’s story when denial becomes its deepest form of death. Nigeria is living in that moment. The silence in Abuja and the indifference of the powerful have become louder than the cries of the murdered and displaced. For over a decade, the Middle Belt and the North have bled without end—churches burned, children kidnapped, entire families wiped out while leaders exchanged laughter in conference halls and pulpits.

Reverend Ezekiel Bwede Dachomo cried in the wilderness for years, warning of genocide, documenting the ruins of Christian villages, holding his phone like a prophet’s torch. He was mocked, dismissed, and ignored. But the wind carried his cry beyond Nigeria’s borders—past the politicians who profit from denial, past the editors who bury the truth, past the religious elites who dine with killers in disguise. His voice reached the conscience of a watching world.

Now, the silence that Nigeria cultivated is no longer silence—it is evidence. The blood that Abuja refused to account for has become a global conversation. The storm that approaches may not be one of bombs or missiles, but one of exposure, consequence, and shock.

The Disease Beneath the Violence

The killings of Christians, Muslims, and rural farmers are not isolated horrors—they are symptoms of a deeper infection: corruption, moral decay, and the complete psychological detachment of leadership from human pain. Nigeria’s leaders—across party, tribe, and faith—have long treated the nation as a private estate. The governors guard their empires. The senators guard their privileges. The ministers guard their access. The generals guard their bank accounts.

Meanwhile, the citizens guard graves.

This is the mental disorder of governance—a pathological indifference. Leaders steal funds meant for security and then hold press conferences to mourn the consequences. They speak of reform while looting the reform funds. They launch counterterrorism operations while negotiating with the terrorists they secretly sponsor.

From a psychological view, this is not ignorance—it is collective moral anesthesia. The mind of power has lost its empathy, and the soul of the state has died.

Guns in the Open, Eyes Closed in Government

The tragedy is not only that terrorism exists—it is that it thrives in the open. Across the northern states, armed men roam with AK-47s and machine guns as though they were farmers’ tools. They collect taxes from villages, impose curfews, and control farmlands. They move freely on highways and are known by name. Everyone sees them—governors, emirs, police chiefs, and soldiers—but nobody acts.

The hypocrisy is blinding. Peaceful protesters are arrested in hours, but mass murderers travel unchallenged. Insecurity has become an economy, a profitable chaos. The weapons that should defend the people now defend those who rule them. The Nigerian government is not failing to see the terror—it is choosing to live with it.

When President Tinubu’s government and his predecessors allowed militants to walk freely while clergymen are silenced for speaking truth, it revealed the soul of a system that protects everything but innocence.

The Awakening of America

When President Donald Trump declared that “Christians are being killed in very large numbers in Nigeria,” the world listened. His words tore through the global silence that had covered Nigeria’s tragedy for too long. Senator Ted Cruz, Representative Riley Moore, and other American lawmakers have since echoed that truth—calling for accountability not only against the terrorists who pull the triggers but against the Nigerian officials who fund, protect, or excuse them.

The message from America is unmistakable: If we come, it will not be for Nigerians—it will be for those who betrayed them.

America’s eyes are not on the villages of the poor but on the palaces of the powerful. The targets are not the citizens who suffer, but the architects of their suffering—the corrupt governors, the complicit generals, the hypocritical preachers, and the extremist warlords. The United States is watching those who turned Nigeria’s democracy into a business and its religion into a weapon.

Shock and Awe: Not of Bombs, But of Consequence

If America comes, the “shock and awe” will not just thunder in the sky—it will rumble through the world’s financial systems and diplomatic tables. It will expose what Nigeria’s own journalists, judges, and agencies refused to confront.

The Global Magnitsky Act will freeze the foreign assets of those implicated in corruption or human rights abuses. Their bank accounts in London, their mansions in Dubai, their secret investments in Washington—all can be locked overnight. The Leahy Law will cut off military aid to Nigerian security units linked to atrocities. The U.S. Department of Justice can pursue indictments for money laundering, using international treaties to seize stolen funds and prosecute officials in American courts.

The “shock” will be financial, and the “awe” will be moral.

When the truth becomes global currency, the guilty will have nowhere to spend their stolen wealth.

The Collapse of the Old Immunity

For decades, Nigeria’s ruling elite believed they were untouchable. They built their confidence on stolen billions, foreign passports, and the illusion of diplomatic safety. But the same global system they used for hiding wealth is now being weaponized for justice.

The same banks that once accepted their deposits now share their data with investigators. The same foreign governments that once hosted them now prepare sanctions lists. Their safe havens are collapsing. Their offshore kingdoms are burning under international scrutiny.

America and its allies are no longer separating terrorism from corruption. They now understand that terror in Nigeria is not just religious—it is financial. It survives because the corrupt feed it.

The immunity that once shielded the powerful is cracking, and this time, their titles will not save them.

The Pulpit and the Press Must Repent

No conversation about Nigeria’s moral crisis is complete without confronting its two greatest enablers: the pulpit and the press.

The pulpit, once a place of courage, has become a theater of compromise. Many of Nigeria’s richest pastors and imams are now silent shareholders in the nation’s decay. They preach peace to the oppressed and friendship to the oppressors. They baptize stolen money with prayer, dedicate mansions built on misery, and quote scripture to justify cowardice.

The press, meant to be the voice of the voiceless, has largely become the echo of the powerful. Editors bury stories that might offend sponsors. Television networks choose comfort over truth. Journalists who dare to write the full story are hunted, while others learn the art of selective blindness.

Both the pulpit and the press have blood on their hands—not because they killed, but because they looked away.

The True Enemy Is Within

Nigeria’s crisis is not fundamentally about Islam or Christianity, North or South. It is about the sickness of leadership—a moral cancer that cuts across faith and ethnicity. The real enemies of Nigeria are not only the terrorists who bomb villages but the governors and generals who have turned corruption into a culture.

When a state cannot protect its people, it has no moral right to its sovereignty. When the military sells weapons to the enemy, when police extort citizens they are meant to protect, when judges sell verdicts to the highest bidder—what remains of the nation?

Nigeria has become a wounded body with its organs fighting each other while the disease spreads. The tragedy is not that the people are poor—it is that the leaders are rich in arrogance and poor in conscience.

The Coming Judgment

America is not coming for Nigeria’s children, women, or farmers. It is coming for the men who turned their suffering into contracts. It is coming for the officials who feed on the chaos, for the senators who legislate greed, for the governors who pretend blindness, and for the terrorist leaders who mistake fear for faith.

The reckoning will be international, and it will be public. When names begin to appear on sanction lists, when stolen assets are traced to foreign banks, when visa bans start to include entire families, Nigeria’s ruling class will understand that the world has changed.

The day of quiet diplomacy is over. The day of shock and awe has arrived—not for destruction, but for revelation.

A Psychological Prescription: Pain Before Healing

I do not call for war. I call for awakening.

The coming global pressure may feel like punishment, but it is therapy. It may begin with humiliation, but it will end with purification. Sometimes, a wound must be cleaned before it heals, even if the cleaning burns.

Nigeria’s pain must be faced, not avoided. Its leaders must finally realize that every stolen dollar, every ignored killing, every silenced truth, has a cost. If foreign exposure is the medicine that cures this moral paralysis, then let it come. Let the pain become prophecy.

Because nations, like people, cannot heal from what they refuse to acknowledge.

Final Reflection: The Shock Before the Resurrection

Nigeria is not the enemy. The Nigerian people are not the target. The target is the rot that destroyed their lives—the corrupt officials, complicit elites, hypocritical clerics, and violent extremists.

If America comes, it will not be to conquer; it will be to cleanse. It will not come for domination but for accountability. It will not bomb villages; it will expose villas. It will not silence Nigeria; it will unmask those who silenced her people.

And when that shock comes—when the world finally holds up a mirror to this nation’s conscience—may it not be the end, but the beginning. The beginning of truth. The beginning of reform. The beginning of healing.

Because the greatest tragedy is not that Nigeria is bleeding—it is that her leaders have learned to live with the blood. And the greatest hope is that even through shock and pain, a nation can still rise again.

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.