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THE FIFTH COLUMN: How Nigeria’s Greatest Threat Comes From Within – Part 2

/ Sam Aderibigbe / Leave a comment

To catch up on Part 1

Why This Matters

A nation is the sum of its citizens.

When citizens normalize shortcuts, defend wrongdoing, celebrate false assertions, inflame divisions, or spread unverifiable information, they inadvertently strengthen the hands of those who deliberately undermine the nation. This is why the social saboteur is still part of the fifth column — not just the ones acting innocently, but also those who do it deliberately. Some citizens amplify misinformation, distort narratives, or stoke tensions not out of ignorance, but because outrage brings engagement. Views bring money. Sensationalism brings followers. And in today’s digital economy, trending has become a business model.

They know exactly what they are doing.

They know fear spreads faster than facts.

They know division generates more clicks than unity.

For them, national stability is a distant concern; virality is the goal.

So at the social level, the fifth column sits on a spectrum:

  • the genuinely misled,
  • the emotionally reactive,
  • the weary and disillusioned,
  • the social media influencers and wannabe activists chasing relevance,
  • and the fully conscious actors who weaponize outrage and misinformation for profit, engagement and virality.

And this is the painful truth: the collapse of nations is rarely caused by one great betrayal; more often, it is caused by millions of small compromises, some innocent, many intentional. Until we confront this truth, we will keep fighting external battles while the internal ones continue to multiply in broad daylight.

“The single biggest threat to our democracy is the notion that we don’t have to believe in facts.”
Barack Obama 

4. THE BUREAUCRATIC GATEKEEPERS — KILLERS OF POLICY AND PROGRESS

Every nation has its political class and its business elite, but there is a third layer that quietly determines whether a country works or fails, the bureaucracy. In Nigeria, this layer is often overlooked, yet it is one of the most powerful internal forces shaping national outcomes.

Here lie the people who do not run for office, do not appear at political rallies, do not court public attention, but who hold the levers that determine whether policies live or die. These bureaucratic gatekeepers are the custodians of files, processes, approvals, permissions, data, and institutional memory. And because they sit deep inside the engine room of government, their influence is rarely challenged and often underestimated. Their sabotage does not come through protests or open confrontation.

  • It comes through delays.
  • Through silence.
  • Through procedural ambush.
  • Through selective interpretation of policy.
  • Through “missing” documents that suddenly reappear after the price is right.
  • Through committees that never meet.
  • Through memos that “did not reach the table.”
  • They have mastered the art of slowing down progress until it suffocates.

We have seen this pattern repeatedly in Nigeria’s history.

During the post-oil boom reforms of the early 1980s, many of the modernisation efforts championed by technocrats were quietly frustrated by bureaucrats who feared losing control over existing systems. Records were withheld, processes disrupted, and key agencies resisted changes that threatened entrenched interests.

During the banking consolidation reforms of the mid-2000s, insiders repeatedly noted that some of the strongest resistance did not come from the banks themselves, but from within parts of the bureaucracy responsible for implementing the reforms. For many career civil-service actors, greater transparency and simplified oversight meant fewer opportunities for discretion, influence, and rent-seeking. As several analysts observed at the time, the challenge was not only technical, it was cultural and institutional.

Even today, across ministries and agencies, many well-intentioned reforms fail not because they lack political backing, but because mid-level and senior bureaucrats ensure they never fully take off. A contractor who refuses to “cooperate” suddenly discovers that his file has gone missing. A reform-minded appointee finds themselves stonewalled by staff who were in those offices before them, and who will remain long after they leave. Procurement becomes more complicated when transparency threatens established networks. Digital reforms struggle when manual processes are more profitable for those who control them.

This is not incompetence. It is a system of quiet self-preservation.

These actors operate beneath the political radar but influence everything from budget releases to project planning, licensing, customs clearance, recruitment, and regulatory enforcement. They know the bottlenecks because they built them. They know how to stall progress without ever appearing rebellious. They protect old structures because those structures protect them. In a sense, the bureaucracy becomes a nation within a nation, insulated from elections, public opinion, and, too often, accountability.

And this is what makes them part of the fifth column. Not because they are ideological enemies of Nigeria, but because they defend a system that slows down the country’s development. They are the custodians of the status quo — and the status quo is dysfunction. A visionary leader may come into office. A strong policy may be written. A budget may be approved. A reform may be announced with fanfare. Yet everything grinds to a halt in the hands of bureaucrats who have perfected one subtle but deadly skill: blocking progress without leaving fingerprints. They do not shout. They do not fight. They simply ensure things do not move.

It is difficult to build a nation when those who hold the administrative machinery are invested in keeping things exactly as they are. Until this layer is reformed, protected, and modernised, Nigeria will continue to drag its feet — not because of a lack of ideas, but because of an internal machinery designed to frustrate execution.

5. THE ROLE OF FOREIGN POWERS — BUT NOT WITHOUT INTERNAL ALLIES

It is tempting to place the weight of Nigeria’s troubles on foreign governments. But the truth is more complex. Nations, especially powerful ones, do not operate on morality. They operate on interest. They protect their strategic corridors, their economic leverage, their ideological reach. That is the real currency of geopolitics. The deeper danger lies elsewhere: in the local actors who willingly open the gates.

Foreign interference only becomes effective when internal collaborators, political actors, lobbyists, civil society influencers, social media influencers, wannabe activists, and even security insiders, create the cracks through which external influence flows. History is clear on this point: no nation collapses purely from external assault. Collapse begins from within. Weak institutions, fragmented societies, compromised leaders, and citizens who become foot soldiers for agendas they do not fully understand — these are the true entry points.

This is not theory. This is history.

Across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, we have watched powerful nations, the United States, France, Britain, Russia and others, quietly shape political outcomes in countries that refused to align with their interests, often under noble labels: “democracy promotion,” “counter-terrorism,” “protecting minorities,” “defending human rights.” From coups engineered during the Cold War, to destabilisation efforts masked as “support for civil society,” to covert alliances with rebel groups and armed factions, the playbook is well-established.

Nigeria is not exempt.

The Trump Threat — Compassion Wrapped Around a Loaded Gun

In November 2025, the U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he had ordered the Pentagon to prepare “options” for possible military action in Nigeria, citing an alleged “Christian genocide” and an “existential threat” to Christianity in our country. He coupled this with threats to cut off U.S. aid if Nigeria did not act the way Washington wanted. On paper, it sounded like a moral crusade: defend persecuted Christians; punish those who ignore their suffering.

In reality, the picture is more complicated.

Data from independent conflict monitors and reporting by global media have repeatedly shown that while Christians have suffered brutal violence in Nigeria, Muslims and other groups have also been killed in large numbers, especially in the northeast where Boko Haram and ISWAP have wiped out entire Muslim communities. The African Union, Nigerian officials, and several analysts have publicly rejected the “genocide” label as inaccurate, warning that this kind of simplification does more to inflame tensions than to solve them. Nigerians have not been silent either. Protests broke out in places like Kano with placards reading “There is no Christian genocide in Nigeria” and “America wants to control our resources,” rejecting both the label and the coercive tone of the threat.

Yet, instead of nuance, the world got a soundbite: “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. We may have to go in.”

In Washington, some lawmakers eagerly lined up behind this framing. A resolution was introduced in the U.S. Congress that not only condemned the persecution of Christians in Nigeria, but also explicitly declared readiness to “support President Donald J. Trump in taking decisive action”, language that many Nigerians read as political cover for some form of intervention. To many of us watching from here, it felt less like sober diplomacy and more like theatre: our trauma turned into talking points, our complexity reduced to a neat narrative that fits a domestic political script.

The Nicki Minaj Moment — When Celebrity Platforms Carry Lopsided Stories

Into this already charged atmosphere stepped an unlikely actor: Nicki Minaj. In November 2025, the American rapper addressed a United Nations event, speaking emotionally about what she described as “Christians being targeted” in Nigeria, churches burned, families displaced, communities living in fear. She thanked Trump for “prioritizing the issue” and used her huge platform to demand urgent action. On one level, her empathy is genuine and admirable. It is true that Christians in Nigeria have suffered massacres, kidnappings, church burning and terror attacks. Those lives matter. Their pain is not imaginary. But again, what was missing was the rest of the story.

The same conflict data and human-rights reports that document attacks on Christians also show that Muslims have been killed in even greater numbers in some regions, and that much of the violence is driven by a toxic mix of jihadist insurgency, banditry, land disputes, failed governance and criminal opportunism, not a single, neat campaign of one religion exterminating the other. Yet the global clip that trended was simple: “In Nigeria, Christians are being targeted.” Full stop.

To make matters worse, Nigerian officials were reportedly barred from the room during that UN event at the specific request of the organisers and their U.S. hosts, a move that fed the perception here that our country was being tried and sentenced in absentia. This is how modern fifth-column dynamics work in a globalized world:

  • Local actors feed selective or exaggerated narratives to foreign lawmakers, lobby groups and faith networks.
  • Those groups frame Nigeria to their audiences as a simple morality tale: righteous victims, evil persecutors, cowardly government.
  • Politicians and celebrities, some genuinely moved, others clearly responding to well-organized lobbying, amplify the story on platforms like Congress, the UN and cable news.
  • Before long, a foreign president is threatening to send troops “guns-a-blazing,” and our complex security crisis is reduced to a campaign slogan.

A UN podium carries moral weight. A viral celebrity clip carries emotional weight. A congressional resolution carries diplomatic weight. When all three are built on a partial picture, truth struggles to breathe. The real tragedy is that while these narratives trend, many of the actual victims of Nigeria’s violence, Muslim communities erased in the northeast, Christians attacked in largely Christian southeast states, farmers and herders killed in reprisal cycles in the Middle Belt, become invisible if they don’t fit the script. Once again, the point is not to deny suffering. The point is to insist that our story will not be told for us, around us, and against us.

Foreign Powers, Local Mouthpieces

Foreign powers have always behaved like foreign powers. That is not new. The tragedy is when citizens become the mouthpieces of external ambitions, knowingly or unknowingly. Some internal actors:

  • feed foreign agencies distorted data,
  • exaggerate local conflicts to attract funding or asylum,
  • curate “genocide” language for Western ears while downplaying the suffering of groups that do not fit their chosen narrative,
  • lobby against their own country in foreign capitals because personal victory matters more than collective peace.

Foreign politicians and influencers, while sometimes sincerely moved, are not neutral. Some are clearly being courted and lobbied to press a particular line, as we have seen with prominent U.S. legislators pushing “Christian genocide” resolutions and publicly cheering Trump’s threats of military action.

This is what fifth-column activity looks like in the age of soft power: not just bombs and spies, but reports, hearings, think-tank papers, NGO briefings, faith-based lobbying, celebrity speeches and emotionally charged narratives tailored for Western consumption.

Nigeria must be alert.

In a world where narratives move faster than facts, misinformation is the new weapon of intervention , and influencers, lawmakers and even pastors can become instruments of a fifth column that begins inside our borders.

To be continued

Featured

THE FIFTH COLUMN: How Nigeria’s Greatest Threat Comes From Within

/ Sam Aderibigbe / 1 Comment

Part 1

Every nation knows its enemies. Some stand at the borders with guns. Others manipulate markets from abroad. But the deadliest ones are not always the loudest — they are the ones who wear our colours, speak our language, attend our churches and mosques, and pledge loyalty in broad daylight while quietly weakening the very foundations of the country they claim to love. These are the fifth columnists — the enemies within.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT: WHERE THE IDEA CAME FROM

The term “fifth column” was first used during the Spanish Civil War. General Emilio Mola, advancing on Madrid with four columns of troops, boasted that he had a “fifth column” already inside the city — sympathisers whose sabotage, propaganda, and betrayal would weaken Madrid before a single bullet was fired. Since then, the phrase has described people who undermine a nation from within — not with open confrontation, but with quiet collaboration, deceit, and subterfuge. In a modern context, we might add: sometimes, this sabotage is even carried out unknowingly.

NIGERIA’S PRESENT REALITY: A NATION UNDER STRAIN

We are in a moment of deep national vulnerability. Economic hardship is biting. Politicians are having a field day of their own wantonness. Trust in institutions is low. Insecurity remains a dire threat across the length and breadth of the nation. Hope flickers on and off like unstable power supply. Everyone feels the weight, and in such moments, real enemies do not need to invade — they simply need to influence, corrupt, divide, mislead, and sabotage. And this is where the fifth columnists thrive.

THE FIFTH COLUMNISTS IN NIGERIA TODAY

1. THE POLITICAL CLASS — POWER WITHOUT PATRIOTISM

In every nation, politics is supposed to be the arena where ideas compete for the good of the people. In Nigeria, it too often feels like a battlefield where survival, revenge, and self-preservation take precedence over nation-building.

Many in our political class did not come to serve — they came to secure relevance, to guarantee a life of

opulent retirement. They came to fortify networks. They came to protect old loyalties and cultivate new ones. Nigeria becomes secondary. The people become expendable. National interest becomes negotiable. So instead of building the country, they perfect the craft of undermining it. They sabotage reforms the moment those reforms threaten their influence and affluence. They weaponise tribe and religion because a divided country is easier to manipulate. They leak sensitive information — not out of principle, but to weaken whoever is in power or to negotiate their own political escape route. They prefer chaos over accountability, because chaos is profitable. And they treat public office like a dynasty, a birthright, an inheritance — anything but a responsibility.

The tragedy is that this isn’t new. Nigeria’s political class has long known how to manufacture crisis as a political strategy. From the First Republic through the military era and into our present civil rule, scholars and observers have documented the same pattern: crisis is rarely just an “accident”; it is often a tool. Leaders allow tensions to fester, sometimes even stoke them, only to later arrive as “saviours” offering stability on their own terms. Seasoned voices — from public intellectuals to clerics — have warned repeatedly that politicians in Nigeria habitually inflame divisions, not as a last resort, but as a deliberate method of control.

These are not exaggerations; they are lived experiences. Even in recent months, civil society groups have accused political actors of fermenting internal disorder to weaken incumbents and make the country ungovernable. It is one of the oldest tricks in our political playbook: if you cannot win power, destabilise the one who has it. A political class that should be the custodian of stability often becomes the architect of instability. And this is why they belong at the centre of any conversation about the fifth columnists in Nigeria. Because the fifth column is not always made up of foreign agents or shadowy figures.

Sometimes, it is those who sit in parliament by day and conspire in the dark by night. Sometimes, it is those who swear allegiance to Nigeria with one hand raised, while the other hand signs away her future. They are the ones who use our divisions as bargaining chips, who fan the flames of insecurity so that elections can be postponed or opponents weakened, who sabotage reforms so that the rot remains beneficial, who cannot imagine a Nigeria that works because a working Nigeria exposes their emptiness.

These are not “opposition” figures or “ruling party” figures — they exist on all sides. Their loyalty is not to APC or PDP or Labour or any movement. Their loyalty is to power — raw, unfiltered, and self-serving. This is why Nigeria has suffered more from this enemy within than from any threat abroad. Betrayal from inside the house is always more devastating than an attack from outside.

It is so easy to break down and destroy. The heroes are those who make peace and build.
Nelson Mandela

2. THE ECONOMIC SABOTEURS — MERCHANTS OF MISERY

Nigeria’s economic troubles are often discussed as though they are the product of fate or bad luck — global oil shocks, currency weakness, supply chain disruptions, inflationary cycles. But beneath these broad explanations lies a quieter, more uncomfortable truth: a portion of our economic pain is engineered, curated, and sustained by people who understand how to profit from a fragile system.

These saboteurs are not necessarily dramatic figures. They are not insurgents or political arsonists. They are businesspeople, importers, brokers, middlemen, market actors, and institutional insiders who operate in the grey zones where regulation meets opportunity. Their power does not come from ideology. It comes from access, information, relationships, and from an intimate understanding of where the cracks in our economy lie — and how to widen those cracks when necessary. They know how dependent the country is on imported fuel, foreign exchange, staple foods, pharmaceuticals, spare parts, construction materials, and even basic household items. And instead of strengthening these supply lines, they exploit them.

A minor policy announcement can trigger a “scarcity” that did not exist 48 hours earlier. A rumour of price review can empty warehouses overnight. A shift in the exchange rate can become a justification for arbitrarily inflated commodities. Goods that passed through porous borders suddenly flood the market and undercut genuine manufacturers already battling high production costs. And in this same network sit the importers and distributors of fake and substandard products, individuals whose decisions quietly compromise public safety and national competitiveness. The expired drugs, adulterated fuel, counterfeit vehicle parts, substandard electrical cables, weak building materials, and diluted industrial chemicals that circulate in our markets are not accidents; they are the outcome of deliberate choices made by people who have weighed profit against consequence and chosen profit.

Their actions affect everything — from the number of road accidents caused by fake tyres, to the cost of healthcare inflated by counterfeit pharmaceuticals, to the tragedies of building collapses caused by inferior materials. These are not “mistakes” or unfortunate oversights. They are forms of economic behaviour that weaken a nation from the inside. What makes these actors part of the fifth column is not merely the harm they cause, but the fact that they depend on a malfunctioning system to thrive. Stability does not serve them. Efficiency does not serve them. Transparent markets do not serve them. A functional regulatory ecosystem threatens their business model.

So scarcity becomes a tool, distortion becomes strategy, weak enforcement becomes an asset, and the suffering of millions becomes an acceptable cost. This is why a country with refineries cannot keep fuel on its streets. Why a nation with fertile land imports food at levels that make no economic sense. Why even after an appreciating naira, prices remain stubbornly high — because the market is not responding to fundamentals; it is responding to incentives.

Nigeria operates a political economy where some actors benefit when things do not work. And when that happens, national progress becomes an inconvenience. These saboteurs do not need to appear in newspapers or on television. They do not need to threaten government publicly. They simply operate behind closed doors — in ports, in approval offices, in procurement chains, in supply routes, in warehouses, and in networks that have perfected the quiet art of extracting value from dysfunction.

Their weapon is not violence; their weapon is influence, and in many cases, their impact is far more damaging than that of those who carry arms. They form a critical part of the fifth column — the internal actors for whom Nigeria’s fragility is a source of personal stability. Until the incentive structure that empowers them is dismantled, the nation will continue to bleed from wounds inflicted not by external enemies, but by those who operate comfortably within its economic bloodstream.

3. THE SOCIAL SABOTEURS — HOW SOCIETY BECOMES AN UNWITTING ACCOMPLICE

A nation’s strength is not measured only by the competence of its leaders. It is also measured by the attitudes, values, and everyday decisions of its people. And in Nigeria, one of the most uncomfortable truths is that some of the sabotage undermining our progress is not orchestrated by politicians or economic elites alone — it is reinforced by ordinary citizens who mean no real harm, but whose choices slowly weaken the national fabric.

These social saboteurs are not “enemies” in the dramatic sense. They are neighbours, colleagues, influencers, commentators, kinfolk — people who love Nigeria in sentiment, but undermine her in practice. They don’t collapse nations in one big act; they weaken them in a thousand small ways.

a. The Normalisation of Wrongdoing — “Our Own” Syndrome

Nigeria has a long history of excusing corruption or incompetence when it benefits our tribe, our kin, or our political family. We have seen this pattern across decades. When a major financial crime is exposed, reactions split along ethnic and partisan lines. Some condemn the act, others defend the actor, and many retreat into “this is an attack on our people.”

This response pattern is not new.

In the 1970s, during the military era, several probes into public institutions were dismissed in many regions as “political witch-hunts,” even when the evidence was overwhelming. This moral flexibility — this willingness to defend wrongdoing when it favours “our side” — is part of what weakens the national conscience.

It creates an environment where:

                  •  Truth becomes negotiable,

                  •  Accountability becomes selective, and

                  •  Justice becomes a tribal conversation.

A country cannot grow when its citizens defend wrong instead of confronting it.

b. The Social Media Battalions — The New Agents of Confusion

Today, social media has become the largest amplifier of national tension. A rumour from a WhatsApp group can spark panic, a misleading tweet can inflame ethnic tempers, wreck companies, careers, lives and communities, a sensationalised video, often stripped of context, can trend nationwide in hours.

We experienced this during: COVID-19, when false cures circulated faster than official warnings, the cash redesign policy, where misinformation created fear and long queues, multiple election cycles, where unverified “results” and provocative audio clips travelled across the country before INEC could speak, several security incidents, where old videos resurfaced and were misinterpreted as fresh attacks and many more of such. In these moments, many citizens acted as accidental saboteurs — not out of malice, but out of emotion, fear, frustration, or stark ignorance. Yet the result was the same: confusion, division, and the erosion of trust in institutions.

Throughout Nigeria’s history — from the 1966 coup rumours, to the June 12 crisis, to post-2000 ethno-religious tensions — misinformation has played a central role in stoking national anxiety. Social media has simply accelerated a pattern that has always existed: the rapid spread of unverified narratives, often weaponised by those who understand the psychology of a divided society.

c. The Merchants of Division — When Identity Becomes a Tool

Nigeria has always struggled with ethnic and religious rhetoric being used to frame national issues. In the 1940s and 50s, even colonial intelligence reports noted that emerging political leaders were building followership along ethnic lines rather than ideological clarity — often in ways that served colonial interests. That legacy never truly disappeared. Whenever a national debate arises:

                  •  Analysts interpret it through ethnic allegiance,

                  •  Commentators redefine it through religious identity,

                  •  Public figures speak to “their people,” not to the nation.

We saw this play out during controversies around: Resource control, security appointments, protests and agitations, constitutional amendments, even sports and cultural representation.

This habit of segmenting national issues into ethnic grievances slowly erodes unity and strengthens the hands of those who profit from division. It is subtle sabotage — death by a thousand cuts to the very idea of Nigeria.

d. The Culture of Impunity — A Society That Outsources Responsibility

Every time a citizen jumps a queue, evades a duty, pays bribes, throws trash into the gutter, or circumvents due process, a piece of the national system breaks.

We saw this during; fuel scarcity periods, when people with “connections” bypass queues, port congestion, worsened by informal payments, exam registrations where shortcuts are celebrated, building construction where regulations are ignored for speed and cost-saving, passport processing, where “agents” thrive on citizens’ impatience.

These acts seem like survival tactics, but collectively they create an environment where rule of law becomes optional. From the 1980s economic crisis onward, we saw the rise of “alternative systems” to get things done because official systems were too slow or corrupt. Over time, the workaround became the culture, and the culture became a form of self-sabotage.

Why This Matters

To be continued…