By Vershima Orkuma Hemen
Dr. Shima Gyoh, Sir,
With utmost respect to your age, intellect, and contribution to public discourse, I wish to humbly present another angle to this deeply complex issue, not as one intoxicated by emotion, but as one speaking from the ashes of lived reality.
When you say that many people excitedly support Donald Trump’s threat without understanding the real underpinning issues, you are right in part, because the true underpinning issues are not just political, but existential. The truth is that what is happening in Nigeria today transcends mere governance failure; it is a humanitarian collapse rooted in greed, foreign exploitation, and deliberate state negligence.
Let’s look closely. The same communities that have been under perpetual attacks by Fulani terrorists: Benue, Plateau, Southern Kaduna, Taraba, and parts of Niger and Nasarawa are the same territories sitting on untapped gold, lithium, uranium, and other critical minerals.
Coincidence? Not at all.
Investigations, including those by Global Witness, Tom Burgis in “The Looting Machine,” and Nigerian security insiders have shown that illegal mining in these regions is being run by Chinese networks, protected by local militias and enabled by corrupt political and military actors. While our people are being slaughtered and displaced into IDP camps, Chinese contractors and their Fulani collaborators are digging up our wealth under military escort.
Our fathers and mothers, once proud farmers, now line up for relief materials in IDP camps that have become permanent settlements of sorrow. Their ancestral lands, soaked with blood, have been quietly handed over to foreign miners. The same government that cannot secure our villages is quick to sign “mining partnerships” in Beijing and Dubai, while pretending ignorance of the ongoing genocide in the fields.
So, when we support Trump’s threat, it is not out of hatred for Nigeria, it is a cry of desperation from the forgotten, those who have lost everything while the state protects the perpetrators. The truth is bitter. Our so-called sovereignty has long been mortgaged by the political elite who invite foreign companies to loot our minerals and bankroll terror in the process.
We have watched our soldiers look the other way as herders invade villages with AK-47s. We have seen security budgets rise while insecurity worsens. We have watched those who should defend us dine with the killers of our people, calling them “repentant bandits.”
If a foreign power now says “we will hunt down the terrorists destroying your nation,” should the displaced, the widowed, the orphaned, the voiceless not sigh in relief?
Dr. Shima, Sir, we understand the dangers of foreign intervention; history teaches caution. But we are also living through a nightmare where those who swore to protect us have turned their weapons inward, using the military and police as political tools to shield killers and silence truth.
At this point, it is not about Trump’s personality or America’s foreign policy, it is about a people gasping for life. To us, if peace will come at the cost of exposing the networks of terror, illegal mining, and state complicity, then so be it. Better a foreign power that takes our minerals and restores peace than domestic actors who steal both our wealth and our future, while bathing our fields in blood.
We honor your wisdom, Sir, but we beg you to see that for many Nigerians, this is not about “supporting invasion,” it is about choosing life over slow annihilation.
Respectfully,
Vershima Orkuma Hemen
