In the Strife of Truth With Falsehood: A Nigerian Reflection

Searing call to moral reckoning — Boney Akaeze exposes Sharia states, jihadist terror, state complicity and warns against Trump’s foreign intervention in powerful op-ed.

Atlantic Post

November 8, 2025

6–9 minutes

Boney Akaeze, Constitutional Crisis, Human Rights, Jihadist Violence, Moral Reckoning, Religious Freedom, Sharia States, State Complicity, Trump Intervention, Truth Versus Falsehood

By Boney Akaeze

“We cannot command veracity at will; the power of seeing and reporting truly is a form of health that has to be delicately guarded, and as an ancient rabbi has solemnly said, ‘The penalty of untruth is untruth.’”

— George Eliot

Nigeria stands at a moment of testing–a crucible for our national conscience, our commitment to truth, and our democratic aspiration. As citizens of this State, we face not only political and economic challenges but a moral reckoning that will define the character of our nationhood. Recent international reactions, including the controversial pronouncements of the U.S. President Donald Trump, have jolted us into self-examination. Yet this is a moment to respond with moral clarity, not borrowed anger.

At such a time, we would do well to remember that ancient prayer:

From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth,

From the laziness that is content with half truth,

From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,

O God of truth, deliver us.

This prayer is both a confession and a plea — a reminder that truth must be pursued with courage, humility, and discipline. It calls us to confront not only the lies of others but the convenient falsehoods we tell ourselves as a people.

In the context of religious freedom and systematic violence, we must speak with circumspection and avoid careless language, yet we must not evade hard truth. Let us therefore ask, in intent and in action, whether there has been systematic violence against Christians and Christianity in Nigeria. The honest answer, sadly, is yes.

In defiance of our Constitution, twelve states in the federation have institutionalised Sharia law, extending its jurisdiction even to non-Muslims. This imposition contradicts the principles of religious freedom and equality enshrined in our national charter. It represents a manifestation of intolerance — a breach of the secular covenant that should unite all Nigerians, regardless of creed or conviction.

Compounding this distortion, radical Islamist extremists have unleashed waves of violence, largely concentrated in these same regions. Their attacks have targeted Christians, but they have also murdered Muslims considered too tolerant or sympathetic to Christian communities. Others have been accused of blasphemy against Islam and met with barbaric reprisals. Thus, the blood of both Christians and Muslims now cries from the same soil — victims of a shared tragedy born of the same perverted ideology.

Yet honesty compels us to admit that fanaticism is not confined to one faith alone. There are zealots within some Christian sects who, in their religious fervour, disregard the rights and sensitivities of others. Their methods may sometimes offend public decency or infringe on communal peace. However, there is no moral or factual equivalence between such excesses and the organized campaigns of terror that have claimed thousands of innocent lives. Still, we must not excuse or romanticise any form of intolerance, for silence or bias in judging wrongdoing, wherever it originates, only deepens our collective wound.

In defiance of our Constitution, twelve states in the federation have institutionalised Sharia law, binding even non-Muslims under its authority. This imposition contradicts the principles of religious freedom and equality enshrined in our national charter. It is a manifestation of intolerance; a breach of the secular covenant that should unite all Nigerians, regardless of creed..

Addressing State complicity and governance failure, one should ask–are our political leaders and the governments they oversee complicit in this tragic phenomenon? The evidence suggests so. The patterns of electoral outcomes (especially the Presidential Elections), the rhetoric of political actors, and the selective silence of institutions all point to a moral failure at the highest levels. In the face of such carnage, indifference becomes complicity.

Yes, there exist other forms of terrorism in Nigeria i.e. those driven by ethnic, economic, or criminal motives. But these do not erase the ideological and faith-based nature of jihadist violence. To deny this is to diminish the pain of those who have suffered for their faith, and to obscure the urgent need for a truthful reckoning.

On Trump’s Measures and the temptation of foreign intervention, should Nigeria welcome or embrace the measures proposed by President Trump and others who claim to act in defense of persecuted Christians? The answer is an unequivocal no. Neither America nor Trump himself would tolerate similar interference in U.S. domestic affairs. History reminds us that America’s own civil war, fought nearly two centuries ago, was rooted in the sin of racial discrimination, a wound that continues to shape its democracy today.

As Jeremi Suri observes in his book; Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy, the struggle for equality and justice in the United States remains incomplete. We would be naïve to believe that foreign powers, especially those led by deeply divisive figures, act solely from moral concern. Their measures often conceal ulterior motives — cloaked agendas more self-serving than salvific.

Those Nigerians, who view such interventions as reasonable, perhaps out of frustration with our government’s inadequate response to terrorism, must understand that foreign “solutions” are rarely disinterested. More often than not, they serve as pretexts for deeper exploitation.

This moment should therefore serve as a call to moral awakening. Nigeria’s challenge is not merely political or security-based, it is moral and spiritual. We must recover the health of truth, that “form of health” George Eliot described, without which, no nation can stand. Truth demands courage; democracy demands integrity; and peace demands justice.

Our task as citizens is to refuse both despair and denial but rather, to stand against cowardice, laziness, and arrogance in all their forms. Only by confronting falsehood with truth can we begin the slow, painful work of healing our land.

“Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God’s new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right;

And the choice goes by forever ’twixt that darkness and that light.”

— James Russell Lowell

Nigeria now stands before such a moment, and our preference for the light, remains our wisest path-way. Therefore in making this choice, we must weave together moral theology, political commentary, and social critique to call for a renewal of Nigeria’s moral and civic integrity. It behooves on us to accept truth as a moral and civic imperative, not just a factual correctness, but as a moral discipline and a national duty.

As a people, we have arrived at defining juncture in our national journey on the basis democratic principles; one that compels men of conscience to pause and ponder how truth and untruth shape moral wellbeing of nations.

Truth is a fragile virtue; one that must be cultivated and guarded. There exists a divine nexus between truth and moral health; and when a nation tolerates lies, it falls ill—spiritually, socially, and politically. Make no mistake about it: truth is both an ethical pursuit and a test of character. It demands courage, humility, and discipline. The refusal to tell the truth about violence, governance, and complicity can only lead to collective decay.

Nigeria’s religious crisis, in many ways, reflects a betrayal of our constitutional and ethical foundations. Yet as we confront this complexity, our moral vision must go beyond sectarian victimhood and the perversion of faith by extremists. This is not a time for mere indictments or blame games—of asking who is guilty of moral cowardice, compromise, or selective silence. We must ask, instead, whether indifference in the face of violence amounts to complicity, and who bears responsibility for the culture of leadership that avoids uncomfortable truths.

This is not a moment for passing the buck. It is a moment for honest introspection, to understand our political instability and crisis of coexistence as a moral battle between truth and falsehood, justice and hypocrisy. Only through such sincere self-evaluation can Nigeria’s renewal begin—from within, through the awakened conscience of its citizens.

As we situate Nigeria’s challenges within the global context, and argue that there are no perfect nations on earth. We can, and should correctly critique President Donald Trump’s rhetoric as emblematic of the hypocrisy of nations that preach human rights while wrestling with their own injustices. Yet our own national imperative at this critical juncture is honest self-reflection, not defensive nationalism.

When leaders refuse to speak or act truthfully, governance becomes a mask for impunity—a theatre of corruption that perpetuates violence and internal decay. It is in our best interest then to acknowledge that truth is not a luxury of morality; it is the foundation of national survival.

Boney Akaeze, a political historian and development expert, writes from Asaba.