By Scott Graber
In December 2005, my wife and I went to northwest Nigeria to make a movie about a man named Attahiru Dalhatu Baffarawa — then the Governor of Sokoto State.
Our small crew was housed at the Hotel Giginya and I was unhappy because I could not swim in its huge pool — appearing in a Speedo was forbidden by Sharia law; and the only beverage served at the hotel bar was Fanta.
Nonetheless, I came to love the open, rolling, thinly vegetated Muslim Caliphate on the edge of the Sahara. I came to love the grazing camels, the big horned cattle, the mud-made huts that came in shades of red, brown, burnt sienna and yellow ochre.
Yesterday, as I walked through Publix I saw headlines — in the New York Times — saying the United States had fired 16 Tomahawk cruise missiles “from the Gulf of Guinea aimed at insurgents in two ISIS camps in northwestern Nigeria’s Sokoto State.”
These strikes came after accusations by Christian evangelicals that Christians (in Nigeria) are being targeted in widespread violence. Donald Trump said, on Truth Social, that the vicious killing of innocent civilians has not been seen for many years, “even centuries.”
When my wife and I went to Nigeria we were vaguely aware of an organization called Boko Haram that had been founded by Muhammed Yusef in 2002. There had been some violence but the abduction of 276 girls from the Town of Chibok would not happen until April 2014.
In re-reading my journal, I see there was some worry on my part about this assignment.
“Before we left the United States we read about the roadblocks in West Africa. Indeed we knew it was the worst place on earth for this bribe-taking practice and it was the one thing that made me reluctant to take my wife, Susan. Regardless of the experiential value of a trip to Africa; one doesn’t want to end one’s life at a roadblock arguing with a teenager over 200 naira.
“When we took our first trip out of the City (of Sokoto) there were periodic checkpoints manned by young men who appeared to be real soldiers. We never stopped. We barreled past these rifle-toting men standing in the heat and dust. After awhile we were no longer apprehensive.
“I was intrigued by the emirs, sultans and clerics who are the most distinctive part of this culture. In every small village there is a “palace” where the emir lives, a mosque where the men pray; and there are harsh and unforgiving rules that govern conduct.”
One morning, I had Fanta with an Igbo businessman in the hotel lobby. He explained to me that Nigeria is made up of three tribes, but power tends to be concentrated in southern, urban areas where the Igbo (and Yoruba) dominate; while the northern, desert-like regions dominated by the Hausa remain dirt poor. And yes, he said, the Igbo are mostly Christian and the Hausa are exclusively Muslim and there is tension between these tribes — even killing.
But even when the violence is clearly religious, experts acknowledge that more Muslims die than Christians.
This internal tribal tension should not be confused or conflated with a larger archipelago of violence that begins much further north in Senegal and extends southerly through Ivory Coast, Burkino Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and eventually into Nigeria itself.
This killing — widespread on the edge of the Sahara — is a response to “weak governance, characterized by corruption, democratic backsliding, legitimacy deficits, and human rights violations.” (Center for Preventive Action, September 4, 2025.)
This killing, once bankrolled by Muammar Gaddafi, usually involves unpaid or unhappy soldiers; kleptocrats; and the fact that these governments simply cannot deliver representative government to large parts of their pastoral population who call this arid, desiccated, goat and camel-accessorized landscape home.
The French, who once colonized most of Central Africa (but not Nigeria) tried to root out these Muslim terrorists in Chad, Mali, Burkino Faso and Niger; but France just didn’t have the manpower and would always be suspect for their past colonizing.
When France left, the Russians, seeing an opportunity, took over in Mali, Central African Republic and wherever the Chinese were not.
Now Mr. Trump believes that two ISIS camps based near Sokoto are somehow connected to an alleged Muslim-based slaughter that targets Christians in other parts of this complicated country that has Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa peoples mashed together.
Notwithstanding Donald Trump’s decisiveness, I don’t think the Navy Tomahawks can fix this problem.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
