At a time when Nigeria is grappling with deepening insecurity, collapsing public trust, and severe fiscal strain, the Federal Government’s decision to spend $750,000 every month on a U.S. lobbying firm to counter “Christian genocide” claims raises troubling questions about priorities, optics, and effectiveness.
Rather than confront insecurity at home with decisive action, Abuja appears to have chosen an expensive public relations battle abroad, one that risks reinforcing the very narratives it seeks to discredit.
According to Africa Confidential, the government hired DCI Group, a Republican-linked lobbying firm, to shape opinion within conservative and evangelical circles close to U.S. President Donald Trump. The move followed Trump’s incendiary November remarks threatening possible U.S. intervention in Nigeria over alleged mass killings of Christians.
But if Nigeria’s response to allegations of religious violence is to outsource credibility to Washington lobbyists, then the problem is no longer just perception; it is governance.
No amount of lobbying can permanently counter a narrative that is continuously fuelled by events on the ground.
Communities across Nigeria, Christian, Muslim, and traditional, continue to face kidnappings, mass displacement, banditry, and terror attacks. The government insists, unbelievably, that insecurity in Nigeria is not religiously targeted. Yet that argument loses force when citizens themselves feel unsafe, unheard, and unprotected.
Spending $9 million annually to “explain” Nigeria’s position to the U.S. government may win short-term diplomatic breathing room, but it does nothing to address the underlying drivers of violence that international observers point to: weak policing, slow justice, poor intelligence coordination, and a lack of accountability for perpetrators.
In fact, the move risks validating critics who argue that Nigeria is more concerned with managing foreign opinion than protecting lives at home.
The optics are especially damaging.
Nigeria is battling a cost-of-living crisis. Subsidies have been removed. Social services are strained. Universities struggle for funding. Security agencies complain of inadequate equipment. Yet the government can find $750,000 every month for Washington lobbyists.
That figure dwarfs the monthly budgets of several federal agencies and exceeds what many states allocate to community policing, early-warning systems, or victim support.
Public diplomacy is important. But when it becomes more generously funded than domestic security reform, it sends the wrong signal to citizens and to the international community alike.
The lobbying war in Washington, pitting Nigeria’s government against pro-Biafra groups, also exposes the danger of allowing external actors to frame Nigeria’s internal complexities.
Lobbying materials portraying Nigeria as complicit in anti-Christian violence ignore inconvenient truths, including the fact that separatist violence in the southeast, largely among Christian communities, has claimed Christian lives. Christians killing Christians does not fit neatly into genocide narratives, but it is part of Nigeria’s painful reality.
By engaging in a lobbying arms race, Abuja risks legitimising these selective narratives rather than dismantling them through facts, transparency, and reform.
There were smarter, cheaper, and more credible alternatives.
First, the government could have invested aggressively in verifiable transparency, independent investigations, published security data, and open access for international observers and faith leaders. Facts backed by evidence travel further than talking points pushed by lobbyists.
Second, Abuja should have prioritised domestic confidence-building, especially in affected communities. Functional policing, swift prosecution of attackers, compensation for victims, and visible justice would do more to counter genocide claims than any Washington briefing.
Third, Nigeria could have deployed credible Nigerian voices, not foreign lobbyists: respected clerics, civil society leaders, security experts, and victims themselves, engaging multilaterally with U.S. institutions, the UN, and international media.
Finally, strengthening strategic communication capacity within government, rather than outsourcing it, would build long-term institutional credibility instead of dependency on foreign firms tied to shifting political fortunes in Washington.
Nigeria’s image problem is inseparable from its security problem.
Until Nigerians feel safe in their homes, farms, highways, and places of worship, no amount of lobbying will permanently silence accusations abroad. At best, it delays pressure. At worst, it confirms suspicion.
Governments earn credibility through action, not retainers.
Spending $750,000 a month to manage perception, while insecurity festers, is not strategic diplomacy; it is expensive denial.
