The Lizard and the Wall: On the U.S. Designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern
By Sam Abbd Israel
“Ti ogiri o ba l’anu, alangba ko le ri ọna wọ inu ogiri.” (If there is no opening in the wall, lizards cannot crawl into it.) — A Yoruba Aphorism
The ancients did not speak in vain. Their words were the distillation of ages of wisdom, carved into proverbs that still pierce the illusions of our modern world. The lizard in the wall is a metaphor for intrusion, but the deeper truth lies in the wall itself: foreign interference is never possible without internal weakness.
The recent announcement by the United States of America designating Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) under its International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) has stirred debate and indignation across the nation. To many, it is an act of humiliation, a foreign rebuke disguised as moral concern. But before we clench our fists at the distant empire, we must inspect the cracks in our own walls — the fissures of unconscionable corruption, injustice, inequality, greed, selfishness, callousness and flagrant hypocrisy that have invited the lizard into our national home.
The Meaning of “Country of Particular Concern”
Under the IRFA, the U.S. government identifies nations it believes are responsible for or tolerant of severe violations of religious freedom — persecution, violence, or discrimination based on faith. Nations placed on this list face potential sanctions, diplomatic restrictions, and moral isolation.
On the surface, this may seem a noble cause — the defense of conscience and belief. But beneath this polished surface lies a centuries-old habit of power cloaked in virtue. The United States, self-appointed as global custodian of freedom, presumes the right to lecture sovereign nations on morality. The designation is less about protecting the oppressed than about performing a make-believe moral authority.
This act, though administrative in form, carries symbolic violence. It brands Nigeria before the world as spiritually delinquent — a nation incapable of safeguarding its own soul. And yet, as we shall see, while the finger of accusation may be heavy-handed, the wound it touches is real.
The Moralization of Power
Human history is a tale of power learning to disguise itself as virtue. The doctrine of “might is right,” born in the age of conquest, has evolved into a subtler creed: “right is might.” Where swords once enforced domination, now moral language does the work. The age of the crusader has given way to the age of the diplomat-preacher.
The United States, inheritor of empire, has refined this art to near perfection. In the modern theatre of geopolitics, sanctions have replaced siege engines, and policy statements have replaced papal bulls. Empires no longer conquer by colonizing land; they colonize conscience.
The language of human rights and religious liberty is sacred in intention but selective in application. History reveals that those who shout most loudly about freedom are often the first to trample it when it threatens their interests. From the colonizers’ “civilizing mission” to the Cold War’s “democratic crusade,” moral vocabulary has long been the perfumed veil of domination.
Today’s designations — “countries of concern,” “rogue states,” “axes of evil” — are simply the new catechisms of global power. The sermon has changed its accent, but not its purpose.
The American Paradox
Can a nation that still struggles with its own demons of injustice serve as the world’s confessor? This is the American paradox — a country wounded by internal contradiction yet audacious in moral proclamation.
Within its borders, religious polarization festers. Mosques are surveilled in the name of security. Churches are entangled with politics. Schools and courts wrestle over faith’s role in public life. Hate crimes scar communities, and inequality mocks the ideals of liberty.
Yet this same nation extends its hand abroad as judge and redeemer. It denounces persecution elsewhere while justifying its own hypocrisies as the collateral damage of freedom. The physician who smokes while prescribing abstinence remains the apt metaphor.
It is not that the United States should be silent about morality — for every nation must speak for justice — but that it speaks as though the world must listen in silence. When might grows weary, it seeks shelter in moral preaching. When power begins to decay, it baptizes itself in virtue.
Thus, moral arrogance becomes the final mask of empire. The missionary sword has been replaced by the diplomatic sermon.
The Cracks in Nigeria’s Wall
Yet Nigeria, before condemning the preacher, must examine the mirror. For the wall that allows intrusion is not built abroad but within.
The U.S. designation, while politically motivated, did not fall from a cloudless sky. It is the reflection of our own internal rot — the corruption, neglect, inequality, injustice, greed, materialism and hypocrisy that have eroded our national integrity.
Our land bleeds from the wounds of religious and ethnic violence. From Plateau to Kaduna, from Sokoto to Imo, human lives are traded for political advantage. Churches burn, mosques explode, communities in disarray under the siege of terrorists and neighbours turn on one another while leaders pontificate on unity. Justice is delayed, often denied, and sometimes sold.
Our moral decay is not only political but spiritual. Those entrusted with power have converted public office into personal altars. The temple of governance has become a marketplace for greed. The voice of conscience — the media, the pulpit, the school — too often sells its silence.
A nation that cannot protect its weakest citizens cannot claim moral sovereignty. A flag does not sanctify injustice. Sovereignty without righteousness is like a banner fluttering over a collapsing house — proud, yet hollow.
As the Yoruba wisdom reminds us: the lizard did not create the crack; it merely found it. The insult from abroad is the echo of our negligence at home.
Sovereignty and Moral Responsibility
Sovereignty is often misunderstood as the ability to defy criticism. In the ITSOT understanding, sovereignty is the discipline of a people and its political, economic and civic leaders to act justly — the moral maturity to govern oneself by truth rather than deception.
A nation truly free is one that holds itself accountable before it is judged by others. Independence is not measured by the absence of foreign interference but by the presence of internal integrity.
When leaders become merchants of corruption, when tribes replace principles, when religion becomes a mask for power, sovereignty collapses from within. The external condemnation we face is only a symptom; the disease lies in the soul.
True sovereignty is ethical, not territorial. A people who govern with righteousness are immune to immoral condemnation from outsiders. A people who trade truth for convenience and lies for public optics invite foreign sermons upon their shame.
The Dual Hypocrisy of Power and Silence
The United States must understand that moral authority cannot be self-appointed. The very act of designating others as “countries of concern” carries the arrogance of unilateral priesthood. It is the echo of an older imperial tone — the White Man’s burden rewritten in diplomatic prose.
But Nigeria must also face her own hypocrisy — the coldheartedness of the Nigeria State to the violent internal displacement of its citizens by armed religious militants, Fulani cattle herders, bandits, terrorists and kidnappers; the silence of the Church when its members exploit the poor; the cowardice of the Mosque in the face of Islamic fanatics and tyranny; and the overwhelming apathy of the state toward the deplorable human suffering across the country. Both the preacher and the sinner are trapped in the same play of moral theatre: one speaks without purity, the other listens without repentance.
In this dance of hypocrisy, neither can claim innocence. America preaches democratic virtue while practicing economic domination. Nigeria defends sovereign rights while betraying its own citizens. Between them lies a shared guilt: one of supremacist power without charity for the oppressed, the other of baseless pride without empathy for the vulnerable.
Until nations learn to reform themselves before condemning others, humanity will remain chained to its ancient curse — the curse of the unexamined conscience and its attendant spiritual death.
The Path of Reformation
The ITSOT philosophy teaches that liberation begins in the mind of the individual long before it manifests in the polity. Nigeria’s deliverance will not arrive through Washington’s self-serving threat or Abuja’s choleric defiance. It will begin with a moral reawakening — a revolution of conscience among her people.
We must rebuild not only the infrastructure of our moral values, religious beliefs, political philosophies but our spiritual integrity needs serious attention too. We must restore faith in institutions by cleansing them of corruption. We must learn again that leadership is a sacred call to serve the people, not an entitlement for obscene personal aggrandisement; that justice is the foundation and strength of a nation, not injustice that weakens and corrupts a nation; that the diversity of humanity is natural and a blessing, which needs to be cherished, nurtured and managed rationally, not a human ideological construct that breeds irrational racial, ethnic and religious divisions.
Let this public humiliation become a sacred opportunity for introspection. Let us mend the cracks in our national wall — through truth in governance, equality before the law, and compassion across divides. Let every citizen see that the moral architecture of a nation is built not by foreign aid or decrees but by each Nigerian after accepting to nurture the ethos of personal responsibility and to uphold the virtues of personal integrity in all societal affairs.
We need to understand that no decree or diktat from abroad can shame a people who walk upright in truth. But no diplomacy or propaganda can protect a people who live comfortably with lies and self deception.
Rebuilding the Wall
The U.S. designation of Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” is both an insult and a mirror. It wounds our pride, but it also exposes our negligence, ignorance and stupidity. We can choose to curse the lizard or to repair the wall.
History will judge us not by the words of ‘Mighty’ Washington DC but by the works of Common Nigerians. If we seal our moral cracks with truth, justice, compassion, and wisdom, no foreign arrogant pronouncements can stain our dignity. But if we persist in corruption, delusion and hypocrisy, the lizards of the world will forever crawl through our self-made openings.
We must rebuild our nation — not with anger but with honour; not with puerile defiance but with rational, knowledge-based discipline. Let sovereignty become not a mere flag of pride but a covenant of reformed and restructured conscience. For a righteous nation needs no defence from the world political and economic lizards — its walls are forever guarded by truth itself.
Epilogue
Every generation receives a mirror. Ours has been handed to us by both fate and folly. The reflection we see today is not flattering, but it is necessary. Let us not shatter the mirror in anger; let us cleanse it with repentance from our age long stupidity and resolve to change for a better tomorrow.
If there were no gaps in our walls, the lizards of the world could not crawl in.
May the indigenous people of Nigeria, at last, become fully awakened, become fully remorseful and become fully repentant in order for us to become passionately emboldened with the spirit of truth and a strengthened political will to rebuild the fallen walls of Nigeria.
In the Spirit of Truth
SAM ABBD ISRAEL
PS
This essay was born from a conversation with my daughter. I told her that I was reflecting to write an essay on the U.S. decision to label Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern.” She asked what truth I hoped to explore. I shared a few opening thoughts, which she entered into ChatGPT — and within minutes, an essay emerged.
This essay should remind us that artificial intelligence tools have the mechanical proficiency to write and compose beautiful prose. But what the tools produced are useless unless human comprehension and reflection are applied to give the words meaning, purpose and power. It is in the overall clarity and understanding of the existential predicaments facing humanity today that we shall find the divine impulse to act rationally and wisely in resolving the social and spiritual problems of our time.
References: Countries of Particular Concern, Special Watch List Countries, Entities of Particular Concern
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