Did Onitsha screwdriver trader really influence US military strike in Nigeria?

The New York Times published a story on January 18, claiming that a screwdriver trader in Onitsha, Emeka Umeagbalasi, is “an unlikely source of research cited by US Republican lawmakers promoting the narrative that Christians are being targeted for “mass slaughter” in Nigeria.

It said that 56-year-old Umeagbalasi, who also runs a small organisation called International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, otherwise known as Intersociety, in his home, published reports claiming that more than 125,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria since 2009.

According to the report, the figures in Umeagbalasi’s research works were referenced by prominent US Republicans, including Senator Ted Cruz, Representative Riley Moore, and Representative Chris Smith, triggering Trump to order airstrikes on parts of northern Nigeria on Christmas Day.

The US president vowed that his country would not tolerate what he described as “massacre of Christians by radical terrorists.”

The New York Times explained that Umeagbalasi admitted that he rarely verified his data and almost never travelled to the regions where most of the attacks occurred.

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However, one of the things the report did not demonstrate was to detail how Umeagbalasi’s claims influenced US decision-making.

The report did not show evidence of classified intelligence briefing, Pentagon or National Security Council memo based on Umeagbalasi’s data, or State Department official confirming that the screw driver’s reports informed operational planning of the strike.

The ICIR reported in October that Trump announced on Truth Social that he had designated Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern,” citing what he described as “an existential threat to Christianity,” even though the Nigerian government rejected his claim.

Days later, Trump threatened that the US Department of War would invade Nigeria “guns-a-blazing”, to completely wipe out the Islamic terrorists if the Nigerian government did nothing to curtail the alleged genocide.

Afterwards, the Nigerian Government revealed that it held a series of meetings with senior US officials resulting in improved security ties and new commitments aimed at protecting civilians and tackling violent extremism across Nigeria.

The delegation, led by National Security Adviser (NSA) Nuhu Ribadu, met officials from the US Congress, the White House Faith Office, the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Department of Defense in Washington, DC over the issue, until Trump issued a directive to strike on December 25 midnight.

In modern US foreign policy, military operations are typically authorised through a dense web of classified intelligence assessments, inter-agency reviews, diplomatic consultations, and security briefings. The absence of publicly demonstrated links between Umeagbalasi’s work and these processes leaves a critical gap at the centre of New York Times’ narrative.

To seek clarification on how the report established a direct cause-and-effect relationship between Umeagbalasi’s research and Trump’s decision to authorise the Christmas Day airstrikes in Nigeria, The ICIR sent an email to the New York Times on January 21 but have yet to receive a response as of press time, Jan 26.

The missing history

Findings show that the idea that Christians are being systematically targeted for extermination in Nigeria did not originate with Umeagbalasi, nor did it enter US politics through him or only him. There are also instances of advocacy that predates the current Trump’s government.

For more than a decade, American conservative and evangelical groups have lobbied Washington to designate Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern” over religious freedom.

Congressional hearings, petitions, policy briefings, and advocacy campaigns have repeatedly focused on attacks in the Middle Belt and the North-East, often framing Nigeria’s complex security crisis primarily as religious persecution.

US lawmakers including Chris Smith and organisations namely the US Commission on International Religious Freedom have consistently pushed this narrative across successive administrations.

Catholic leaders and Christian advocacy groups have also appeared before US committees over the years, testifying about violence against Christian communities in Nigeria.

Against that backdrop, Umeagbalasi’s publications did not enter a neutral policy space but entered an already active ecosystem of lobbying, ideology, and political interest.

Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly portrayed global conflicts as wars against Christians from the Middle East to Europe often without reference to the local complexities of those crises.

During his first term, his administration designated Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern,” a decision later reversed by his successor, Joe Biden.

Seen in that light, the Nigeria strike falls under the continuation of a narrative Trump has long deployed.

Nigerians’ reactions on NYT claim

Reacting to the NYT story, Former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, accused Western media of distorting Nigeria’s security crisis and feeding interventionist narratives. Others warned that exaggerations about religious genocide risk inflaming sectarian tensions in the country.

Similarly, Former chairman of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission, Chidi Odinkalu, questioned how any serious observer could conclude that a local activist’s reports, rather than classified security intelligence, drove a foreign military operation.

“States do not go to war based on Google searches,” he wrote, arguing that the framing trivialises both the complexity of US war-making structures and Nigeria’s security engagements.

Similarly, Kalu Aja claimed that the article was written by a Nigerian who later worked for the government, noting that “Remember ‘ineffectual buffon’? That was how the Economist magazine described the then-President of Nigeria, Goodluck Ebele Johnathan. Excerpt: Everyone in the know understood that the article was written by a Nigerian who later worked for the government.

‘This is international lobbying 101. A white liberal American lady does not know Nigerian dog whistles like “Igbo trader”. Once I read that @nytimes article, I knew a Nigerian wrote it,” he noted.

The Igbo socio-political group Ohanaeze Ndigbo strongly condemned the NYT article, describing it as dangerous, misleading and ethnically inflammatory. They argued that portraying an Igbo trader as a central figure in US military policy “resurrects old tropes” and is insulting to the Igbo community. The group demanded an apology and retraction from the newspaper.

Human rights lawyer and lead counsel to Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Aloy Ejimakor, lambasted the Nigerian government for shifting its messaging on intelligence sources, suggesting that previously, officials took credit for information later being attributed to the advocacy article. That, he said, was “a national embarrassment.”

Similarly, former presidential aide, Denge Josef Onoh, frowned at the NYT report as oversimplifying the factors that informed US military action and risked inflaming domestic tensions. He pointed to long-standing security intelligence cooperation between Nigeria and the US as the real driver behind counter-terrorism operations.

Experts have warned that narratives lacking robust empirical support can have real geopolitical consequences.

Intersociety reacts

Meanwhile, Intersociety in a statement released on January 23, rejected the New York Times report describing it as a “perfidy of lies” and a gross misrepresentation of a marathon interview held on December 16, 2025, at its facilities in Anambra State.

The organisation accused the New York Times of falsely attributing statements to its Executive Director, whom it described as a criminologist. It noted that the interview was conducted by Ruth Maclean, the West African Bureau Chief of the New York Times, who visited privately alongside a female photographer from Kwara State, and ThisDay Newspaper correspondent Dave Eleke.

Intersociety strongly objected to the New York Times’ decision to frame the interview around United States airstrikes in Sokoto State, nine days after the interview, describing the linkage as “mischievous and dangerous.”