Something profoundly dangerous is happening beneath the surface of Nigeria. It is not happening in foreign policy circles or think tanks alone. It is happening in beer parlours, WhatsApp groups, diaspora forums, elite drawing rooms and street corners. Ordinary Nigerians and even sections of the educated elite have begun to openly fantasise about foreign intervention. Some now speak of Trump style shock therapy as salvation. Others whisper balkanisation as relief. This is not madness. It is despair.
When a people begin to pray for invasion, it is a sign that the social contract has collapsed.
Nigeria has been captured by an oligarchy that behaves like an occupying force. The state no longer mediates between citizens and power. It extracts from them. Elections no longer function as corrective mechanisms. They have become rituals to recycle the same elite under new slogans. Institutions that should restrain power have been converted into instruments of elite continuity.
INEC sits at the centre of this crisis. The argument that compromised elections must not hold because sovereignty matters rings hollow to people whose votes no longer count. For millions of Nigerians, sovereignty has already been stolen internally. When elections are predetermined, when results are manufactured, when courts launder fraud into legality, the moral authority of the state collapses. At that point, arguments about non interference sound like insults.
This is why some Nigerians now look outward. They have concluded that internal reform is impossible. That the oligarchy is too entrenched. That corruption is too deep. That violence is the only language power understands. And so the logic becomes warped but understandable. If foreign intervention can break elite capture, let it come. If dismemberment can end exploitation, let the country break.
The fantasy of a Trump style intervention is built on this desperation. The belief is that an external shock could dismantle the cartel that controls oil, gas, solid minerals, ports, power and security. That a disruptive outsider unconstrained by Nigerian elite consensus could reset the system. That fear of force could succeed where moral appeals failed.
There is also the balkanisation argument. Nigeria is too large, too artificial, too divided, too captured to be salvaged as one unit. Ethnic nationalities trapped inside a failed federal arrangement now see separation as liberation. Smaller states closer to their people. Control over local resources. Accountability rooted in shared identity. An end to subsidising parasitic centres.
These ideas are no longer fringe. They circulate openly because the centre has failed so catastrophically that imagination has turned destructive.
But here is the brutal truth. Foreign intervention never liberates nations. It reorders them for external benefit.
A Trump style invasion of Nigeria would not be designed to free Nigerians. It would be designed to secure assets. Oil and gas infrastructure. Strategic minerals. Shipping lanes. Military positioning. Financial leverage. The oligarchy might be weakened but it would not be replaced by popular sovereignty. It would be replaced by a new class of intermediaries loyal to foreign power.
Balkanisation under foreign supervision would not produce justice. It would produce client states. Fragmented territories competing for recognition, loans and security guarantees. Endless border disputes. Resource wars. Militarised identities. The same elites would reappear under new flags, now shielded by international patrons.
The cons are overwhelming. Massive civilian casualties. Infrastructure collapse. Capital flight. Permanent militarisation. Loss of true sovereignty. Long term instability. Once intervention begins, control never returns fully. The history is unambiguous.
Yet dismissing the clamour outright is also dishonest. The pros imagined by its supporters come from real pain. Ending elite impunity. Breaking the monopoly over resources. Dismantling a predatory federal structure. Restoring dignity to regions treated as internal colonies. These desires are legitimate. The methods proposed are the danger.
The deeper question Nigerians must confront is why they have been pushed to this psychological edge. Why a people with immense resources, intelligence and resilience now dream of collapse as escape.
The answer is elite betrayal.
A state that robs its citizens of voice will eventually lose their loyalty. A nation that rigs its future will find its people imagining its end. This is not treason. It is consequence.
INEC compromised elections must not hold not because Nigeria is sacred, but because once ballots are meaningless, every alternative becomes thinkable. Including invasion. Including division. Including chaos.
The path forward is not foreign bombs or imposed borders. It is the painful reconstruction of internal legitimacy. Electoral credibility. Real federalism. Resource justice. Elite accountability. These are harder than fantasy. Slower than destruction. But they are the only exits that do not lead to permanent ruin.
When a people begin to pray for invasion, the danger is not the invader. The danger is the state that left them with nothing else to pray for.
By Hon. Chima Nnadi-Oforgu
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
OBLONG MEDIA UNLIMITED 
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