How a screwdriver trader in Onitsha influenced Trump’s missile strike in Nigeria – New York Times

Umeagbalasi

The United States relied on information and reports from Emeka Umeagbalasi, a screwdriver trader in Onitsha, Anambra state, to launch air strikes in Nigeria, according to a report by the New York Times.

In October, US President Donald Trump redesignated Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” in response to allegations of a Christian genocide in the country.

“Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed,” Trump said, blaming radical Islamists for the “mass slaughter”.

A month later, he 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.

On December 26, the US launched air strikes on ISIS terrorists in north-western Sokoto state “at the request of Nigerian authorities”.

According to the report, Umeagbalasi, founder of the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, otherwise called Intersociety, is “an unlikely source of research that U.S. Republican lawmakers have used to promote the misleading idea that Christians are being singled out for slaughter” in Nigeria.