Introduction

One of the underlying forces shaping the United States’ interventionist discourses in Nigeria today is not intelligence, strategy, or local realities, but a haunted historical imaginary, featuring the Sokoto Caliphate as a living jihadist project against Nigerian Christians. The caliphate imaginary resonates with policy discussions in the U.S. through jaundiced narratives about Islam, terrorism, and Christian salvation. The danger of this framing is not in its fallacy but in its polarising and violent consequences. Nigeria is already suffering from the consequences of violent identity politics, which the ruling class has exploited in pursuit of its vested interests.

Scholars of violence highlight how symbolic violence legitimises and sustains other forms of violence.1 Mass atrocities– including imperial wars, civil wars, genocide, and xenophobia – require some form of justification, usually in the form of narratives authorizing violence. When the past is distorted and instrumentalised, it becomes another weapon of mass destruction.2 The central thesis of this essay is that the use of the Sokoto Caliphate and its legacies, as a metaphor of violence, in American evangelical discourses, is as lethal as the Tomahawk cruise missiles that were fired into a farming community in the historic heartland of the caliphate as a “Christmas Gift” by the Trump administration. Most commentaries have focused on the military and strategic impact of the US airstrikes, ignoring the epistemic violence that animated them.

This essay attempts to show how the caliphate imaginary animates US policy discussions. While it is difficult to demonstrate how this informed the military action on Sokoto, it is evident that the logic and attitudes of Trump’s admiration towards Nigeria’s security crises are premised on a haunted history of Islam and Muslim-Christian relations in the country. It is a dangerous misreading of the history and politics of violence in Nigeria that simplifies and projects complex existing realities and grievances into the past.

The Caliphate in History

The Sokoto Caliphate was a 19th-century Islamic reformist state that emerged from specific intellectual, social, and political conditions in what is now northern Nigeria. It was the largest single polity in 19th-century West Africa that brought together hitherto autonomous Hausa kingdoms into a loose confederacy. The caliphate was neither a monolithic polity nor a timeless jihadist project. Its authority was uneven, contested, and confronted stiff resistance from the non-Muslim communities in what is now Central Nigeria.3

By 1903, the Sokoto Caliphate had ceased to exist as a political entity following the British colonial invasion, which integrated its territories into Northern Nigeria, profoundly reshaping its institutions and legacies. The Caliphate is one of the most studied precolonial polities in Africa whose legacies have been repeatedly misrepresented in colonial and postcolonial historiographical and political discourses. This historical misrepresentation has the cumulative effect of manufacturing a caliphate imaginary as a living spectre of “Islamic jihad,” “terrorism,” and “Christian persecution” in contemporary northern Nigeria.

The Caliphate as a Metaphor of Violence

The rhetoric of Christian persecution in northern Nigeria did not begin with the Boko Haram insurgency, farmer-herder violence, and other communal clashes. It is the culmination of over two centuries of misrepresentations that have consistently framed the Caliphate as a site of violence against Christians. During the 19th century, American and European Christian missionaries crafted reports for home audiences depicting the Hausa-Fulani Muslim elite as oppressors who forbade the Gospel, while presenting themselves as saviours who needed the backing of British forces to “liberate” the land for Christ. Reverend Walter Miller, for instance, was fierce in his commentaries on Islam and the caliphate and its relations with the non-Muslim populations, insisting that only British rule could open the door of salvation in the region.4 Because missionary entry into the Caliphate was restricted, evangelists like Miller portrayed the Sokoto Caliphate as spiritually dark and hostile to Christianity. This religious framing of the Caliphate as a persecuting Islamic zone provided an important moral justification for the British conquest of the Caliphate.

The instrumentalization of the caliphate continued in Nigeria’s political and identity discourses, even after the British had left. While the legacies of the caliphate are cherished and treated as sacrosanct by Muslims in northern Nigeria, the identity of the non-Muslim communities in the region is deeply rooted in a narrative of resistance against the caliphate and all that it stood for.5

The recurring conflicts involving Fulani herders and local communities in Plateau, Benue, and Southern Kaduna have been narrated through the myth of “pastoral jihadism,” framed as the unfinished business of the 19th-century Sokoto Jihad. This narrative draws strength from generational histories of violence and dispossession, reinforcing deep suspicion of northern Muslims as bearers of a clandestine jihadist agenda.

Testifying before the US Congress, a Bishop alleges that: “the quest to Islamize the land appears high on the agenda of some of the powerful and influential Muslims in Nigeria… Like in the past, many jihadists are motivated less by religion than by the spoils of war.”6

The same narrative has been openly promoted by influential political figures of Central Nigeria, such as the former Governor of Benue state, Samuel Ortom, who cast farmer-herder violence as vengeance for the failed 1804 jihad and as evidence of a coordinated, transnational Fulani invasion.7

In a similar vein, the political misrepresentation of the caliphate is extended further to historicise the Boko Haram insurgency as a continuation of the Sokoto Jihad. However, the two movements are more than a century apart. While Boko Haram leaders seek legitimacy through selective reading of jihadi narratives, scholarly and policy discourses that conflate these radically different historical events into a single jihadist genealogy distort history and sanctify terror. It is not an innocent misreading of the caliphate’s history, but a politically functional distortion that deepens conflict by turning the past into an instrument of present-day conflict. As rightly pointed out by Andrea Brigaglia, Boko Haram “captures all the stereotypes that have daily currency in Islamophobic discourses.”8 Other scholars have shown that even in terms of both ideology and strategy, the biggest influence on Boko Haram comes from the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.10

The Caliphate in the American Imaginary

The history of the Sokoto caliphate is one of the casualties of U.S. interventionist politics in Nigeria today. Decades of advocacy by sections of Nigerian politicians, intellectuals, activists, and evangelicals have exported the caliphate imaginary into the American discursive space, arming right-wing politicians and Christian nationalists with a convenient rhetorical device to push the genocide narrative. This alliance of local and international voices strengthened the image of Nigeria as a site of “Christian genocide,” culminating in U.S. efforts to place the country on the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern.

The relationship between U.S.-based evangelical advocacy groups and official policy circles is best understood as narrative convergence, not as a conspiracy or a form of coordination. Studies have shown how U.S. evangelical and conservative networks play a significant role in shaping how Islam and Muslim societies are framed within strategic debates often emphasizing threat and moral urgency in ways that influence public opinion and policy agendas in the U.S.  Segments of the American evangelical community contribute to imaginations of Islam as a civilizational threat, reinforcing narratives of moral and existential tension that intersect with calls for assertive foreign engagement.11 A U.S.-based Nigerian diaspora group even called for the declaration of the Sokoto caliphate as an “international terrorist organisation.”12

U.S. organizations such as the International Christians Concern (ICC), Family Research Council (FRC), and Christian Solidarity International–U.S.A.  have explicitly discussed violence in Nigeria using cliches like “Jihad”, “Caliphate”, and the “threat of Islam” in public forums while advocating for a robust U.S. global leadership.13 Although the Sokoto caliphate is hardly named explicitly in policy discussions, the language through which the violence is framed and debated as a struggle between Christianity and Islam mirrors a caliphate grammar—one that treats Islamic jihad in the region as a continuing religious project.

Even Sharia law in northern Nigeria has been framed by certain politicians not only as a legal issue but as a threat that dovetails with the broader Caliphate imaginary circulating in American political discourse. Several U.S. lawmakers and Christian advocacy voices have publicly urged Washington to pressure Nigeria to ban Sharia and disband institutions such as Hisbah Boards, asserting that the institutionalisation of Sharia law is linked to violence and the persecution of Christians. For instance, the recent legislation (the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act) introduced by U.S. Senator, Ted Cruz, proposed sanctions, such as visa bans and asset freezes, on government officials, governors, judges, and police authorities in the 12 northern states where Sharia law is implemented.14 Another Congressman, Marlin Stutzman, echoed this rhetoric by labelling such laws “barbaric.” The recurring policy debates over Sharia in Northern Nigeria are about more than constitutional or human-rights concerns. They are a deeper reflection of the caliphate imaginary that casts Sharia as the juridical arm of a resurrected caliphate, which serves as a vehicle for Islamisation and territorial conquest, instead of treating it as a historically contingent legal tradition operating within a plural constitutional order. In this way, the Sharia debate becomes another site where distorted history authorises political exclusion, securitisation, and interventionist thinking.

As ridiculous as the campaign for the declaration of the Sokoto caliphate as a terrorist organisation and the banning of Sharia sounds, they illustrate how bad history can haunt the imagination of policymakers to assume the status of conventional wisdom. One wonders what the Office of the Historian of the U.S. Department of State is doing. Perhaps the office has abandoned its noble mandate of ensuring that U.S. foreign policy choices are supported and grounded in sound historical knowledge.15

In December 2025, a U.S. congressional fact-finding delegation led by Republican Congressman Riley Moore visited Nigeria ostensibly to investigate allegations of a “Christian genocide,” but the mission’s limited scope and selective engagement raised questions about its evidentiary grounding and its contribution to a pre-existing policy narrative. The delegation, which spent much of its time in Abuja and Benue State interacting primarily with internally displaced persons, Christian leaders, and security officials, produced reports and public statements that reiterated claims of a systematic campaign against Christians and called for U.S. strategic action. Moore described his experiences in stark terms, recounting harrowing stories of Christian families killed and asserting a systematic campaign of violence by “genocidal Fulani”.16 Critics argue that such accounts, emanating from a fact-finding mission that did not meaningfully engage diverse communities or Nigeria’s multifaceted security context, risk validating the genocide narrative in U.S. policy debates without sufficient empirical balance. Stripped of historical context and nuance, these debates gradually transmogrified into a lethal instrument for a “messianic crusade to save Nigerian Christians,” leading to the U.S. military action in Nigeria.

We may know the origins of the genocide narrative, but we have no idea where the missiles fired in the name of defending Nigerian Christians may land.

Trump’s “Christmas Gift” of the American Invasion of Sokoto

On 25 December 2025, the Trump administration, following repeated calls by evangelicals and right-wing politicians, carried out what it described as “powerful and deadly” precision airstrikes targeting ISIS camps in Sokoto State, Northwestern Nigeria.17 Within the discursive formation described in the previous section, the decision to strike Sokoto acquires a kind of symbolic meaning—even when it appears strategically anomalous. Many have wondered why Sokoto, of all places, since it is neither the operational base of Boko Haram nor the main theatre of banditry and farmer-herder violence.18 For Nigerian Muslims, Sokoto is more than a place name —it is a symbol of their heritage and history, much as Oyo is to the Yoruba or Benin to the Edo people.19 The strikes were therefore not just tactical responses to terrorism, but a demonstration of the power of symbolism over strategy. Whether intended or not, the invasion suggests a military strike on a place imagined as the heart of Islam in Nigeria.

The Muslims are not opposed to America decimating the terrorists that have been terrorising them for more than a decade. The problem, however, is the language in which the intervention has been framed as “Christian genocide” prevention, and the choice of Sokoto as the target of the airstrikes.  Apart from discrediting the genocide narrative, it has eroded the honesty and legitimacy of the U.S. interventionist politics by polarising Nigerians and rendering the Muslim victims invisible. The fact that Nigerian Christians fail to see this as a classic instance of neo-imperial geopolitical social engineering at work is baffling and disturbing.

Genocide studies show how the label “genocide” is strategically employed to advance geopolitical and economic interests. Atrocities committed by U.S. allies are often downplayed, while those by designated adversaries are amplified to justify intervention, influence public opinion, and advance strategic objectives. Just as the term was used in Bosnia and Kosovo to prepare the ground for NATO intervention, it now circulates in Nigeria, generating moral panic while diverting attention from structural and governance failures that allow violence to thrive. Nigeria is now presented as the next Rwanda, even when evidence overwhelmingly shows that both Christians and Muslims are equally persecuted, regardless of the identities of perpetrators.

The governance failure creates both the conditions and incentives for political elites to weaponize the history of the caliphate as a tool of political mobilisation, while avoiding responsibility and accountability for their failures.  The distortion of the caliphate history is driven by politicians, traditional elites, and conflict entrepreneurs at the federal, state, and local levels. They deploy this narrative to mobilize ethnic and religious constituencies, justify access to security votes, and deflect accountability for failed development and protection. Similarly, media figures, clerics, and social influencers further radicalize these framings through sermons, radio programs, and viral content that convert historical symbols into moral accusations against entire communities. In this context, distorted caliphate history becomes a locally produced technology of power.

The recent U.S. invasion of Venezuela and abduction of its President, Nicholas Maduro, illustrates how U.S. interventionist politics follows geopolitical logic and regime-change calculations under the cover of war against narco-terrorism, which violate international law and the sovereignty of Venezuela—much like the moralised “Christian genocide” narrative now used to legitimise U.S. action in Nigeria. Although the Nigerian government claims that the strike in Sokoto was carried out jointly with the U.S., which does not, in itself, resolve the question of sovereignty. Nigeria may have formally consented to the military action under duress, especially when that consent is shaped by asymmetrical power relations. Decisions about where to strike, how to justify it, and what narrative circulates internationally were not made on equal footing. This is especially salient when the strike aligns more closely with external discursive priorities—such as caliphate imaginaries or religious-security narratives—than with Nigeria’s own empirically grounded theatres of violence.

From a peacebuilding perspective, the issue is not whether Abuja signed off on the operation, but whether Nigerians exercised meaningful agency over the framing, targeting, and consequences of the U.S. strikes. The military action occurred within the asymmetry of the U.S. narrative ecosystem—one shaped by claims of “Christian genocide” and the symbolic targeting of Sokoto.

A responsible engagement with Nigeria would recognise the complexities of the country’s security conditions and the Sokoto Caliphate in its specific historical context: a 19th-century state, long dissolved by colonial conquest, bearing no organic continuity with contemporary violence apart from the political instrumentalization of its legacies by the political class. Terrorist violence must be treated as a threat to all Nigerians, not interpreted exclusively as “Christian persecution.” Anything less is injustice and epistemic violence against Nigerian Muslims. Haunted history does not merely misinform—it kills. This is why history should be treated as a human right.

The views and opinions expressed in articles published on Kujenga Amani are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the African Peacebuilding and Developmental Dynamics Program or the Social Science Research Council, unless directly stated otherwise.

Endnotes

  1. Sherry Hamby, “The Sec­ond Wave of Violence Scholarship: Integrating and Broadening Theories of Violence,” Psycholo­gy of Violence 1, No. 3 (2011): 163-165, https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0024121; Víctor Sampedro Blanco, “The Media Politics of Protest: Social Movements, Political and Discursive Power,” The International Journal of Theory and Research in Social Movements 20 1997: 185-205; John Langshaw Aus­tin, How to Do Things with Words, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. See also Pierre Bourdieu, “Symbolic Violence,” Critique of Anthropology 4 (1979): 13-14; Pierre Bourdieu, “Social Space and Symbolic Power,” Sociological Theory 7, No. 1 (1989): 14-25, https://doi.org/10.2307/202060.
  2. Samaila Suleiman, “The dangers of History: Another Culture of Violence in Central Nigeria,” Práticas da História, No. 18 (2024): 343-375.
  3. Samaila Suleiman, “The dangers of History: Another Culture of Violence in Central Nigeria,” Práticas da História, No. 18 (2024): 343-375.
  4. Murray Last, The Sokoto Caliphate, Ibadan: Longman, 1967.
  5. Walter Miller, Reelections of a Pioneer, London: Church Missionary Society, 1936.
  6. Samaila Suleiman, “The dangers of History…”
  7. Wilfred C. Anagbe, “Conflict and Persecution in Nigeria: the Case for the CPC Designation,” presented before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs,” March 2025, p. 2.
  8. News Express, “Fulani herdsmen fighting us because Benue frustrated 1804 Jihad,” 19 February 2018.
  9. Andrea Brigaglia, “Ja‘far Mahmoud Adam, Mohammed Yusuf and Al-Muntada Islamic Trust: Reflections on the Genesis of the Boko Haram Phenomenon in Nigeria,” Annual Review of Islam in Africa 11, 2012: 35.
  10.  Daniel Atzori, “Boko Haram’s Global Jihadism,” Abo Newsletter, 3 March 2016.
  11. Roger Baumann, “American Evangelicals, Islam and Defining the Other”, SSRC, 2023, https://tif.ssrc.org/2023/11/02/american-evangelicals-islam-and-defining-the-other/
  12. “U.S. Diaspora Rally Sparks International Debate on Nigeria’s Security and Sokoto Caliphate Classification”, https://web.facebook.com/groups/651919153150786/posts/1190026272673402/?_rdc=1&_rdr
  13. Persecuation.Org/International Christian Concern, “Inside the Genocide: Nigerian Security Forces Show Caliphate Trend” https://persecution.org/2019/02/14/inside-the-genocide-nigerian-security-forces-show-caliphate-trend/ ;  “CSI condemns Holy Week massacre of Christians in Nigeria”, https://www.csi-int.org/news/csi-condemns-holy-week-massacre-of-christians-in-nigeria/
  14. [“Sen. Cruz Introduces Bill against Persecution of Nigerian Christians”, https://www.cruz.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sen-cruz-introduces-bill-against-persecution-of-nigerian-christians
  15. U.S. Department of State, “Office of the Historian”, https://www.state.gov/bureaus-offices/under-secretary-for-management/foreign-service-institute/office-of-the-historian/
  16. https://x.com/reprileymoore/status/1998576724003475725?s=12&t=uTHy9jxUbhp2CedJzr_gKg
  17. Aljazeera News, “Trump says US launched strike against ISIL in northwest Nigeria”, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/25/trump-says-us-launched-strikes-against-isil-in-northwest-nigeria
  18. Financial Times, “Why bomb Sokoto? Trump’s strikes baffle Nigerians”, https://www.ft.com/content/99d23e21-1ca4-4dbc-819d-90449d0040ba
  19.  Although the precolonial pollical formations were dismantled by colonialism and postcolonial administrative reorganisation, ultimately subordinating them to the authority of the modern Nigerian state, marking a decisive rupture in their sovereignty. What survived colonialism were depoliticized institutions like the emirates, chieftaincy titles, and other rituals that retained their symbolic  utility with little to no power.