US aid deals with religious element risk ‘fanning flames’ of division, senior Nigerian minister says

Foreign aid arrangements with a religion-dependent focus risks “fanning the flames” of division, a senior Nigerian government minister has said

Mohammed Idris, Nigeria’s minister for information and chief government spokesperson, spoke to The Independent to mark Nigeria’s first state visit to the UK in 37 years.

In December, Nigeria was one of 14 countries that signed bilateral aid agreements with the US – known as health compacts – which included new stipulations about data sharing and restrictions on how the money should be spent.

The $2.1 billion (£1.6bn) agreement with Nigeria included “significant dedicated funding to support Christian health care facilities”, the US State Department said, and was “negotiated in connection with reforms the Nigerian government has made to prioritise protecting Christian populations”.

The religious make-up of the Western African country, which is split around almost equally between Muslims and Christians, had been under scrutiny by Washington for a number of months now, with US President Donald Trump having warned on several occasions that Christians are being killed by “radical Islamists”. On Christmas day last year Trump attempted to bomb camps run by militants linked to Isis in the country’s northwest – with mixed reports around the efficacy of the strikes.

Mr Idris told The Independent that Nigeria would prefer if foreign interventions on aid had no such religious stipulations.

“If the aid is going to benefit people, that’s good. But we don’t want the classification of Nigeria along these religious lines. It’s not very helpful. It risks creating more problems for us,” he said, adding that Nigeria will accept the new deal out of “pragmatism”, but it would be preferable if the aid approach of foreign countries did not risk “fanning the flames”.

“We are a country of 230 million people of different religions and backgrounds, all tolerating each other,” he continued. “We really want to discourage any talk of Christians versus Muslims, as this is exactly what the terrorists want: they want to divide us along religious lines.”

Idris’s comments came just two days after a suspected suicide blast in Maiduguri – the capital of Borno State, which is the northeastern region long-plagued by Islamic terror group Boko Haram – killed 23 people and injured more than 100 more.

Mr Idris was in London as part of the delegation for Nigerian President Tinubu’s state visit, which has included meetings with politicians as well as several engagements with the royal family, including a State Banquet at Windsor Castle on Wednesday.

With UK-Nigeria trade now worth £8.1 billion, the state visit has also seen the signing of a number of major business deals, which will result in hundreds of jobs being created in both countries, according to the UK government.

The visit comes after a period in which Nigeria – like many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa – has has suffered significantly from foreign aid cuts, particularly from the US and its sudden closure of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) at the start of last year.

But while he acknowledged that aid cuts have had an impact, particularly for the health sector, Mr Idris said that Nigeria was now looking towards new kinds of economic partnerships with Global North countries.

“Aid has many admirable and desirable goals, but ultimately it is not what we need for sustainable development of our country and society,” he said. “What we need now is more economic partnerships, and new types of cooperation.”

Speaking of the Nigerian-UK relationship, he added: “Our relationship has had many faces, originating with colonialism, through to aid, which has been important in the past, to one that is now of partnership and trade.”

As well as developing new trade relationships, a key priority for Nigeria going forward is adapting to climate change, Mr Idris said.

The climate crisis is “up there with the major threats facing our country”, acting as both a key driver of the serious food insecurity faced by many parts of the country, as well as the resource-based conflict between farmers and herders – which also tends to split across Muslim-Christian religious lines – in the country’s Middle Belt.

“Climate change is a major driver of our country’s problems, resulting in desertification in some areas, and increasing pressure on the land,” Mr Idris said. “We cannot live in denial. We need to accept the fact that it is happening, and work to mitigate its impact on our people.”

This article was produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project