A former United States mayor, Mike Arnold, has criticised Nigeria’s handling of security and justice issues, contrasting the detention of Nnamdi Kanu with what he described as inaction over a public bounty threat against a Christian cleric.
Arnold, founder and chairman of Africa Arise International (Nigeria) and Africa Arise USA, made the remarks during a presentation at a US Congress hearing, where he declared that Nigeria is at a crossroads.
According to him, the country faces two possible futures — “America’s greatest African ally, innovative, peaceful and prosperous — or the greatest security threat of our lifetime, a sharia-exporting giant.”
Tracing Nigeria’s history from pre-colonial times to the present, Arnold expressed concern that Nigerian authorities are not doing enough to address what he described as the spread of radical Islamic insurgency.
He also pointed to a recent upsurge in attacks, rejecting what he called the “false narrative” of farmer-herder clashes, insisting instead that “Nigeria is in the throes of an Islamic conquest.”
Listing what he termed “examples of ongoing failures and impunity,” Arnold cited the case of Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a British-Nigerian dual national.
He said Kanu was “abducted from Kenya in June 2021 in what international human rights organizations have characterized as an extraordinary rendition,” and later returned to Nigeria where he was convicted in November 2025 on terrorism-related charges and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Arnold added that portions of the law under which Kanu was convicted had earlier been nullified by an Enugu High Court in 2023, and that within 24 hours of sentencing, he was transferred about 800 kilometres to Sokoto, far from his family and legal counsel.
In contrast, Arnold cited a viral video showing a northern-based Islamic cleric placing a ₦1 million bounty on a Jos-based pastor, Emmanuel Sunday Garba, accused of insulting Prophet Muhammad.
He said the cleric later doubled the bounty to ₦2 million in a Hausa-language video, openly daring the Department of State Services (DSS) to arrest him.
“No charges filed, no arrest executed, no formal government condemnation issued,” Arnold said.
He argued that the situation reflects selective enforcement of the law, where southern self-determination activists are prosecuted while alleged extremist threats in the North are not addressed with equal urgency.
Arnold further alleged that the Nigerian government spends resources to “rehabilitate” perpetrators of violence while “millions of innocent displaced victims are denied, neglected, and dying.”
He urged the US Congress to demand the release of Kanu and other detainees he described as prisoners of conscience, and to consider offering them asylum protection.
The former mayor also criticised the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, accusing him of failing to call for an end to killings and of supporting the expansion of Sharia.
He referenced a 2015 fatwa discouraging Boko Haram recruitment, but said no similar action has been taken against other armed groups despite continued violence.
Arnold further claimed that in January 2025, the Sultan publicly supported the establishment of Sharia arbitration panels in southern states, including Ekiti and Oyo, describing it as an expansion of Islamic legal structures into non-Sharia regions.
He maintained that Nigeria’s current trajectory requires urgent international attention, urging US lawmakers to take action.
