Article

Comment

Development

Politics

25 February 2025

4 min read

Downsizing in DC undercuts the lives of millions in Nigeria

Nigeria’s Christian communities will bear the brunt of USAID’s demise.

Chris Wadibia

Chris Wadibia is an academic advising on faith-based challenges. His research includes political Pentecostalism, global Christianity, and development.

Patient wait in a street clinic beside a sign.

A health project clinic in Lagos, Nigeria.

Christendom, the global community of over 2.5 billion Christians living worldwide, has many geographical capitals. Nigeria, like the United States, is one of them. Upwards of 100 million people living in Nigeria identify as followers of the Christian religion. These Nigerians belong to Christian denominations like Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, Baptist Christianity, and Pentecostalism. On 6 February the Trump Administration announced plans to downsize USAID, the US government agency that administers foreign aid. In 2023 it managed over $40 billion, and has played a significant role in delivering aid and development support in Nigeria for decades.

Nigeria has one of the world’s lowest levels when it comes to spending on social issues. Its government’s underspending has trapped tens of millions of Nigerians in horrific, inescapable mazes of poverty. The significant challenges Nigeria faces are well-documented -socioeconomic, geopolitical, and religious ones. The protracted and infamously bloodthirsty Boko Haram insurgency (headquartered in the northeastern corner of the country) has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Nigerians and displaced over two million people, disproportionately affecting vulnerable women and children.

Abandoned by the government, many Nigerians look to their ethnic communities, religious groups, and even other state’s agencies and charities for the support and solutions they require to survive.

In 2021 USAID commemorated 60 years of providing development assistance to Nigeria. Its historical activity has prioritised agriculture and food security, democracy, human rights, and governance, public health, and energy production. In just 2021, USAID provided Nigeria with more than $787 million in development and humanitarian assistance.

Whilst USAID support for Nigeria has historically been blind to religion, the Trump-led downsizing of development and humanitarian assistance for millions of people living in Nigeria will especially impact tens of millions of Christians, They struggle to lead lives in a country rife with Christian suffering that is ignored by powerful global actors with the financial, political, and military resources to intervene in substantive and peace-generating ways.

Southern Nigeria is disproportionately developed compared to the North. Lagos, the economic capital responsible for a third of Nigeria's GDP, sits in the southwestern corner. The south contains a majority of the leading private universities, many of which are owned and funded by Christian churches, and is home to Nigeria's largest international airport. Literacy levels among Christians in Nigeria dwarf literacy levels among Muslims, especially when compared to Muslims living in the religiously archconservative northern states.

The southern region of Nigeria has an appetite for development and the political will needed to implement an inclusive development vision that simply does not exist up north. Downsizing USAID activity in Nigeria will disproportionately affect Christians in Nigeria who for historical and contemporary reasons have been able to benefit from USAID assistance in ways developing themselves to help Nigeria compete in the global economy.

In the current 21st century geopolitical climate US-Nigeria relations are far more likely to become more rather than less relevant.

Muslims in Nigeria, if unbridled by extreme religious dogma, could just as easily undergo the processes of self-development needed to excel in 21st century economic marketplaces. However, as Nigeria's religious landscape stands today, tens of millions of Muslims simply lack access to opportunities to gain the education, training, and work experience that could unleash the full potential of the legendary Nigerian human capital famous globally.

Millions of educationally and professionally ambitious Nigerian Christians view their work in vocational terms. Inspired by scripture and theological resources like Catholic Social Teaching and the Pentecostal Doctrine of Prosperity, these Christians intentionally seek out educational and professional opportunities because they believe their faith in Christ commands them to provide for their households and invest into their communities. They believe contributions to their homes and communities double as offerings to God himself. For over six decades, USAID has administered development and humanitarian assistance in Nigeria in ways hugely benefitting millions of Christians ignored by their government.

Administering USAID aid in Nigeria has never been perfect. Bad actors, many of them government officials exploiting the authority of their offices, have stolen development funds intended for marginalized Nigerians and used it to fund their kleptocratic networks and lavish lifestyles. However, in the current 21st century geopolitical climate US-Nigeria relations are far more likely to become more rather than less relevant. USAID support provides a valuable source of American soft power able to win over the hearts of vulnerable Nigerians whose children might one day seize the reins of state power. It also continues the postcolonial project of assisting in the sociopolitical and economic development of the Giant of Africa.

Downsizing USAID assistance to Nigeria undercuts investment in the lives of millions of Nigerian Christians disproportionately positioned to drive the country in the direction of evolving into just the kind of capable ally in Africa the US wants to work with long term.

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Article

Ambition

Comment

Death & life

Economics

20 May 2025

4 min read

Forget the Rich List, wealth needs deeper foundations than money

Your neighbourhood might be cool or gentrified now, but where will you go when you die?

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

A red Ferrari parked on a posh London Street

Parked Ferrari off Belgrave Square, London.

John Cameron on Unsplash.

To drive from Clapham to north of the river in London, you go past a warning sign. It's not an LED flashing one, instead it's painted on a Victorian building in uneven serif lettering:

'For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'

It implies that the man (or the woman) on the Clapham omnibus, whatever their wealth, ignores it at their peril.

I recently made that same journey from living in Clapham – a place of relative wealth to one of alleged extreme wealth, in Belgravia. My initial reflections are that people are people, and that wealth doesn't resolve all our problems. There's actually far more poverty, both physical and spiritual, than meets the prejudice.

But that Victorian sign speaks to our aspirations, for those with a little, and those with a lot. We think that more is more. Cities feed the striver, and in that pursuit of wealth some argue that our cities are losing their souls. While South-West London might not be the most drippingly cool places in London, they have historically been places for those who are in professions that are cool-adjacent. Of those involved in academia or journalism, Josiah Gogarty wrote in the New Statesman:

'These professions never promised luxury, but they did deliver a respectable middle-class lifestyle for even the moderately successful. But try buying a house in centralish London today off an income that isn’t made in, or by servicing, the City.'

As it happens, this week I heard one journalist on the radio saying a comfortable amount to have in his bank would be £7 million. How much is enough?

But for grads in service professions with healthy cashflows and bonuses, you can still rent in ‘centralish’ London. No doubt the affluent who house-share have buoyed Clapham Common Westside into the position of having the highest average household wealth of anywhere in the UK, at over £100k. Gogarty continues:

'Call it Claphamisation, after the London neighbourhood of choice for graduates with dependable jobs and straightforward tastes. Gentrification took your money, or forced you to care about money more than you would’ve done otherwise. Now Claphamisation is coming for your cool.'

In other words, gaining the world means losing your soul.

Both riches and coolness are irrelevant as the casket is lowered into the ground.

But even those markers of mainstream wealth and its own version of cool are uncertain as the annual Sunday Times Rich List over the weekend reflected. Your heart mightn't bleed for those falling off their perches, with a threshold of £350 million. But economic turbulence also unsteadies the presumed foundations of wealth.

Wealth needs a deeper foundation than money. And soul needs a warmer foundation than cool. Harvard Professor Dr Arthur Brooks, says that love is

'what the human heart really, really wants. And a lot of people are thinking, you know, if I have the money, and I buy the stuff, then I'm going to get more love.'

Wealth, and I would argue coolness, are intermediaries to this love.

Tending to our souls means opening ourselves to a love that is far richer than what's on the surface. That's not to say that Christian theology denies the physical, however. It teaches an embodied understanding of our souls. I was all too aware of this standing by a coffin, taking a funeral this week. We are material beings and made of material. But our inner settled-ness in what drives us and what we are devoted to far outweighs the trappings of life.

I have seen people dazzled by their own wealth and others seriously unimpressed by it. And while most of us would quite like the chance to find out for ourselves that wealth is an imposter, both riches and coolness are irrelevant as the casket is lowered into the ground.

Those serif letters on that sign on the edge of Clapham are easily ignored. They seem out of place as the cars and Lime bikes zoom past. But the words aren't disembodied: they were spoken by someone. When a rich young man, sure in his own good living and upstandingness, turned his back on Jesus, he was sad, holding onto his wealth. The eyes that looked on him still loved him.

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