From Africa is a Country
Why does the anti-Black racism of the US president have defenders in Africa’s largest Black nation?
Trump’s posting of racist images of the Obamas provoked condemnation across the world, though few outside Nigeria noticed what happened next. As the images spread, Nigerian timelines lit up. In Nigeria, the reactions were sharply divided. Some joined the global condemnation of this anti-Black vitriol, while others, worryingly, defended Trump, anchoring this in his newfound role as a (white) savior to many Nigerian Christians, especially following his allegation of a Christian genocide in the country.
The continuing strength of Trumpism in Nigeria is particularly striking given that Nigeria has been subject to discriminatory US anti-immigration policies, including travel bans that targeted the country directly. Why, then, would Nigerians—themselves targets of the same anti-Black racism—embrace degrading imagery of the first Black US president?
Granted, Trump thrives on the attention from provocation. Yet Trump’s racist imagery is not mere provocation: It is part of a deliberate geopolitical strategy to deepen racial capitalism and inflame religious tensions in Nigeria for his own imperial ends.
Nigeria’s Christian nationalism and religious conservatism are being exploited—Trump’s populist overtures are a convenient smokescreen for the fortification of US influence in West Africa and the Sahel region. Nigerians have consistently ranked among Trump’s most favorable international audiences. Trump uses Christian propaganda, which feeds off historical ties to the evangelical churches in the United States, to reinforce Nigerians’ deepening social conservatism across religions and ethnic groups, and feeds into the admiration for strongman politics, the distrust of the new liberal internationalism and radicalism, and Islamophobia. On the other hand, many Muslims condemned the bombings and rejected US interventions. These split reactions expose a widening chasm between Christians and Muslims, the North and the South, and demonstrate how imported culture‑war scripts, religious nationalism, and a stubborn white‑savior fantasy shape responses to anti‑Black imagery in the world’s most populous Black nation.
Nanre Nafziger is an assistant professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University.
Adam Khalid Muhammad is a sociology student at the University of Jos, a pan-Africanist, and a human rights activist.
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