Nigeria Says the U.S. Praised Them. It Didn’t.
On April 12th, Nigerian government media began circulating a claim: the United States had officially praised Nigeria for convicting 386 terrorism suspects, calling it “an important step toward accountability and justice.”
That’s not what happened.
What happened is that Massad Boulos posted something on X. Boulos is Trump’s Senior Advisor for Africa. He is also CEO of a heavy machinery and construction equipment company in Nigeria whose clients, by his own company’s account, include Hitech Construction — the Chagoury Group subsidiary currently building a $13 billion no-bid highway for President Tinubu. He operates under conflict-of-interest rules so loose they don’t require Senate confirmation. His financial interests are tangled directly with the government he was praising.
That is not the United States speaking. That is a businessman praising the government he does business with — and Abuja running it through every state media outlet as official American endorsement.
The statement deserves scrutiny on its own terms. Ten judges processed 508 cases in four days — with Attorney General Fagbemi praising them for “sacrificing their Easter holiday” to do it. Among those convicted: men jailed for giving cigarettes to terrorists. Amnesty International called earlier rounds of this same process “sham trials” built on coerced confessions. This was Phase Nine. Meanwhile the nine Fulani commanders who organized last June’s Benue massacre — more than 270 Christians dead — are still in preliminary proceedings ten months later. That’s not accountability. That’s a press release.
That same weekend, the Nigerian Air Force bombed a crowded market on the Borno-Yobe border. More than 100 civilians — shoppers, traders, children — confirmed dead by Amnesty International. The government called them legitimate targets. They were buying grain. Boulos said nothing about Jilli.
Here is what the actual record shows since Trump designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern last October: In March, Boko Haram overran an army base in Ngoshe, killed an estimated 200 people per survivor accounts, beheaded Christians in the streets, burned every church, and abducted more than 300 women and children. These were people who had just returned from twelve years as refugees. On Palm Sunday, gunmen killed more than 40 Christians in Jos. Nigeria’s terrorism death toll rose 46 percent in 2025 — the largest increase of any nation on earth. Trump acted. The killing didn’t stop. It got worse.
The talking points in Boulos’s statement aren’t American policy. They’re Abuja’s script — the same lines repeated verbatim by Nigerian government spokesmen for years, backed by nine million dollars a year in Washington lobbying. Now they have an American official’s name on them, and Nigerian state media is calling it US endorsement.
It isn’t. The Smith/Moore bill — HR 7457, backed by the chairmen of both the House Foreign Affairs and Appropriations Committees — represents far more legitimate congressional consensus on Nigeria than one conflicted advisor’s X post. That bill documents what Boulos’s statement obscures: Nigeria accounts for 72 percent of all Christians martyred worldwide. The atrocities haven’t slowed. They’ve accelerated.
Policymakers should know the difference between the United States speaking and one conflicted man posting.
Conflicted messenger. Abuja’s script. Not American policy.
EarthShaker
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