Nelson Ugwuagbo

Dear Festus Keyamo

I read through your to @realDonaldTrump . You said your appointment as a Christian minister proves there is no persecution. But when bandits and Fulani militias attack villages in Benue, Plateau, Nasarawa, or Southern Kaduna, do they stop to ask if the Minister of Aviation is a Christian? Do they check the president’s cabinet list before burning homes and killing farmers? The dead do not care who was appointed. Political appointments cannot replace justice for those who have been slaughtered.

Donald Trump did not accuse President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of killing Christians. There is nowhere in Trump’s statement where he made such a claim. He only said that Christians are being killed in Nigeria and called on the government to go after the killers. That is the same thing Nigerians have been crying about for years.

If Trump is saying the same thing that citizens, pastors, and victims have been shouting for years, why respond with a long political essay instead of a plan of action? Why not tell the world plainly that Nigeria has a problem and needs help to go after the killers (both Fulani militias and terrorist groups) killing people of all faiths? Why pretend that because the president’s wife is a pastor and his children are Christians, the country has no crisis? This is not a family issue. This is a national tragedy.

You wrote that President Tinubu is a moderate Muslim who prays with pastors. That is fine, but being a moderate does not make the killings disappear. Quoting the president’s family’s faith to defend state inaction is meaningless. Nigeria needs leadership, not family testimony.

This is not PDP versus APC. This is not about who supports or opposes the president. This is about human lives. It is about farmers murdered on their land, children burned in their homes, and families forced to flee to IDP camps.

Look at Benue, Plateau, Nasarawa, and Southern Kaduna. Every week brings a new attack. In Yelwata, Benue, over two hundred Christians were killed. Bokkos and Barkin Ladi have become mass graveyards. If there is no Christian genocide, what was Governor Ortom crying about in Benue? What did President Tinubu go to Benue for after the Yelwata massacre? If there are no killings, why are Christian communities living like refugees in their own country?

You completely denied the massacre of Christians. WOW! The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and Amnesty International both report that Christian farming communities in the Middle Belt face repeated and organized attacks. These are not random crimes but a clear pattern of targeted violence. A UK Parliament report recorded over 12,700 Christians killed and 7,900 abducted between 2019 and 2022. Recent reports by Reuters and The Guardian show that in 2025 alone, more than tens of Christians were massacred in Yelwata, Benue, while dozens were killed in Bokkos and Barkin Ladi. Human Rights Watch confirms that such killings are coordinated and often ignored. The evidence is overwhelming: Christians in Nigeria’s Middle Belt are being disproportionately targeted, and the violence is systematic, not equal.

The truth is that there has been no political will to stop them. Each time Nigerians cry out, government officials treat it as an attack on the government rather than a cry for help. Every report, every video, every outcry is dismissed as propaganda. That is why nothing changes. The killers move freely because those in power prefer silence to truth. When the world begins to notice, the government rushes to deny instead of act.

You, of all people, should remember that when the APC was in opposition, it ran to Washington to tell the Obama administration the same genocide in the North under Goodluck Jonathan. Even Bola Tinubu once tweeted about it. Back then, you called it genocide. So what changed? Did the killings stop because you came to power? Or is it only called genocide when another party is in charge?

If your goal was honesty, your letter to Trump would have been short and sincere. You could have simply said that there are terrorist attacks affecting both Christians and Muslims and that Nigeria needs help, intelligence, and technology to go after the killers. That would have shown leadership, not weakness. That would have shown truth, not propaganda.

Nobody said Tinubu is killing Christians. The point is that he must do more to stop those who are. Because if the killings continue and the government keeps denying them, history will not remember who was president. It will remember who stayed silent.

Nigeria does not need denial. Nigeria needs truth, accountability, and courage. Every time you deny the pain of your people, you give strength to those who kill them. And when that happens, the blood no longer cries only from the ground. It cries against those who refused to act.

This is not about politics, Mr. Keyamo. This is about truth. And no government can win peace by denying pain.