Opinion
Emefiele the tortoise wants to marry the king’s daughter
As the melee I describe as the Godwin Emefiele malady gains traction, one anecdote that seems to capture it can be found in the song of late Ibadan, Oyo State-born Yoruba Awurebe music maestro, Alhaji Dauda Epo Akara. The malady is unexampled for its cunning. In it, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Emefiele, seeks to disadvantage others in the scramble for Nigeria’s Number One office, simply because he holds the key to the Nigerian vault and opens it at will to President Muhammadu Buhari, his home and a coterie of hangers-on.
Epo Akara, in one of his vinyl, had told the story of Tortoise, the Master of cunning, who wanted to marry the Princess of his town whose name nobody knew. As the contest for the heart of the Princess got hotter, the King announced that the man who would win his beautiful daughter’s heart must tell the world her name. After wracking his brain endlessly, one day, Tortoise devised a stratagem. So he woke up very early and scurried to the farm. He then headed for a mango tree which he climbed and hid himself. This was the tree the Princess and his sisters often went in search of its fruits. When he eventually sighted them at the feet of the tree, Tortoise, armed with mango fruits he had soaked in honey, threw the fruits down. As he did so, one of the sisters, picking the mango fruits up, quickly called on the Princess whose heart was being contested for, shouting, “Opobipobi, come and see a sweet mango!” Tortoise then quickly ran to the king’s palace with drummers and singers making a ring round him and asked the King to bring the Princess for betrothals.
As the circus of the Muhammadu Buhari presidential years winds to a close, a fitting descriptive image of the administration will likely be the mythical head of Medusa. In Greek mythology, the Medusa, also called Gorgon, was a monstrous winged female which, in place of hairs, had living venomous snakes. Anyone who was unlucky to gaze into the Medusa’s eyes would instantly turn into stone. Like the Medusa, virtually everything the Buhari government laid its hands upon in the last seven years lost its savour. A badly hit economy under Goodluck Jonathan is today comatose; security that was on the verge of hitting the canvass is gasping for life and society, under which politics is woven, is such that, in the words of Oscar Wilde, the gutter and the things that live in it fascinate.
In the last two weeks, politics, with Buhari superintending, has faced a major deconstruction in the jostle for presidential office. Though you will say that the shenanigan of political office is as old as Nigerian politics, what Nigerians have witnessed in the last few weeks is weird, grim and combined, have deconstructed the highest office in the land as a hub of dirty and petty intrigues.
First was the jerking up of expression of interest fee to N100 million by the Buhari party, the All Progressives Congress, (APC) in a way that has made fatal mockery of purity in politics, conferring jostling for office as exclusive preserve of those who have stolen huge sums from the Nigerian coffers. It is so bad that known malefactors who stole this country blind, rationalizing where they got the humongous money paid to collect forms, claim that some unnamed proxies paid on their behalf.
The second deconstruction of the highest office in the land is the scramble of all manner of Charlie Chaplin characters to become Nigeria’s Number One citizen. It is such that two reasons have been adduced for the scramble: One, that Buhari had cheapened the worth of the office of Nigeria’s president to such inconsequential level, through his tooth-picking, indolent, you-may-jump-inside-the-lagoon-disposition-to-Nigeria’s-travails-government he runs, so much that every chicken and cockerel feels that they could do better than him. Or that Buhari wanted to legitimize the coronation of his eventual candidate as successor and needed plural democratic contest as alibi. Nothing else seems capable of explaining this fervor for Aso Rock that is assuming the level of the scandalous.
The rat race to the Villa has provoked one of the most iconic comic reactions in Nigerian history, as well as the standing of democratic logic on its head. We began the circus with candidates whose emergence provoked mis-labeling. Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Yemi Osinbajo’s fans riled the public sphere with their very empty typecasts of who the duo were. One was qualified to aspire and the other disqualified by these partisans. Thereafter, the list began to metastasize. You would think it was an ensemble of the travelling company of acrobats, clowns, and other entertainers.
While on the list is Chris Ngige, a man whose fatal handling of the crisis in our health sector as Minister of Labour has led to doctors leaving federal clinics in droves, Emeka Nwajiuba, Minister of State for Education, under whom our children are idling on the streets and roaming about, also purchased the N100 million form. We also have Rotimi Amaechi, whose laughable but scornful ambition to administer Nigeria is as long as the huge debts his 19th century locomotives have excavated in the purse of Nigeria. The blood of those killed on the Kaduna-Abuja train had hardly coagulated when Amaechi, suddenly locating his consanguinity to the Igbo, began to run round the field of Abuja.
In saner societies, Buhari, with constitutional powers to sanction his ministers for unexampled lust for power, when they have had no cognizable track record of performance, should have been the first to wield the big stick against his appointees who filed out to contest for his office. Again, why didn’t Mr. Integrity see the absence of integrity in a minister under him pulling off N100 million like one pulling leaf off a tree and setting it alight in a barren presidential contest? Buhari could not and cannot, for some obvious reasons. The first is that, in seven years, the president has allowed his appointees to fester in their ignominious fare in office, without sanction. Reports of monumental corruption, rank indolence and wanton disrespect for rules fly about on these appointees with Buhari busy picking his teeth. By not replacing them in seven years, Buhari has lent official stamp to their ill performance and sleaze, basically adjudging them to have met his expectations. Armed with this presidential assent on their rot, it is no wonder that these ministers are proceeding to the next level by seeking to replace their effete boss in office.
To worsen matters, Buhari has been at the vanguard of seeking constitutional lacuna and alibi as shield for these appointees, so that they can eat their cake and have it. As we speak, none of these presidential contender ministers has resigned their appointments. This is in utter disregard for the immorality inherent in such gluttony. The norm in other democracies is that anyone with an eye on another office – except the presidency – should vacate the one he holds at the moment, in respect for equity and justice. Running a lax government exemplified by see-no-evil, say-no-evil, Buhari has played dumb to this moral assault.
Of all these aspirations, apparently funneled by greed and over-bloated estimation of selves, the one that has astounded Nigerians the most is that of Godwin Emefiele. Dubbing himself the ‘Development Central Banker,’ akin to that of Roberto Calvi, an Italian banker named “God’s Banker” by the Italian press due to his close affinity with the Holy See, Calvi, native of Milan, was Chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, a bank that collapsed under one of Italy’s hugest political scandals. He was murdered in London in June 1982.
Like Calvi, Emefiele has sat on a Nigerian monetary policy which is high in theory but an unmitigated disaster in practice. Beginning his apex bank round in 2014 after a career in commercial banking, he is said to have held the otherwise tribally bigoted mind of Buhari captive. Those who are in the know about this queer aspiration of his put it at the feet of an incongruously political management of the CBN institution and the reach of its policies in the past eight years of his being in the saddle. What Emefiele is about in the presidency is exemplified by a viral photograph of him groveling by one of Buhari’s Man Fridays. Emefiele is said to have acted as funnel to sieve Nigeria’s scarce forex inside the parachute of the cabal’s insatiable babanriga.
Outside of late Aba Kyari and in close contest with Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, no one in this government is said to have Emefiele’s access to Buhari. Considering Buhari’s renowned loath for the Igbo, it is one of the wonders of the world that a Delta Igbo at the apex of Nigeria’s cash cozens up to the Daura-born General with baffling closeness.
The reason why Buhari cannot wholly disclaim a vicarious responsibility for this flourishing of the worst of us aspiring for his office is that, virtually everyone who went to him to seek his consent to vie for Nigeria’s presidency got the retort, “you have my support.” This is either a gross inability to argue otherwise, the subsisting evil of his infamous taciturnity or a wily attempt to populate the traffic for the office by his successor. This will then ultimately obfuscate the process and give democratic legitimacy to his coronation of an anointed favourite.
On Friday, some proxies collected the N100 million expression of interest form of the APC for Emefiele. This audacity to contest for the Nigerian presidency by stealth has been effectively and robustly impugned by the governor of Ondo State, the indefatigable and fearless Rotimi Akeredolu. In a statement he posted on his Twitter handle on Friday, Akeredolu called on Buhari to sack the CBN governor, except he immediately resigns his office.
While referring to it as “a joke taken too far,” the governor said it was difficult to imagine that Emefiele, who occupied such “exalted and sensitive office,” would undertake the brazenness of using proxies to aspire for Nigeria’s No 1 office while at the same time occupying Nigeria’s No 1 Banker’s office. The SAN reeled into the Public Service Rules, CBN Act and the 1999 Constitution to show the insult and assault on society that Emefiele’s rumoured presidential aspiration constitutes.
In March, in an unexampled instance of public office impunity, Emefiele’s supporters swarmed the APC convention, openly campaigning that he be elected Nigeria’s next president. Earlier, photographs of hundreds of branded vehicles being prepared for the presidential contest flooded the social media, bearing Emefiele’s name. Multiple of millions of Naira-worth advertorials have also been sponsored in newspapers which were attributed to some nameless fronts. In all this, Emefiele has refused to distance himself from the campaigns.
On Saturday, Emefiele, basking in the time-worn Nigerian politicians’ belief that the rest of the people are dunderheads, put out a wonky and spineless rebuttal thus: “I have not come to that decision (italics mine). I note and salute the sacrifices of those farmers and patriots going as far as raising personal funds and offering me Presidential Nomination Forms: I thank them most profusely. However, Should I answer their calls (italics mine again) and decide to seek presidential nomination, I will use my own hard-earned savings from over 35 years of banking leadership (simulating the image of a public-spirited official) to buy my own Nomination Forms, without proxies…” He then added a caveat that is unequivocally the language of those who think the rest of us are simpletons: “This is a serious decision that requires God’s Divine intervention: in the next few days, (my italics) the Almighty will so direct.”
The greatest responsibility for the festering of Emefiele and the army of funny characters aspiring for the office of the Nigerian president lies with Buhari. He is either too timid to publicly stand on the path of normalcy or his Tortoise cunning, similar to Emefiele’s, has overwhelmed his sense of probity. Emefiele and Buhari will definitely know that the end of Tortoise and his cunning is always fatal. Or, don’t they know?
Dr. Festus Adedayo, a journalist, lawyer and columnist writes from Ibadan, Oyo State
As the road to 2027 gradually unfolds across Oyo State, political conversations are shifting from routine permutations to deeper questions about competence, generational leadership, and measurable impact. In Ibarapa East, that conversation has found a new voice in Yusuf Abiodun Ramon — a Lanlate-born technocrat whose entry into the race for the State House of Assembly is redefining what representation could mean for the constituency.
In a political environment often dominated by familiar faces and conventional calculations, Ramon presents a profile shaped by technical discipline, structured thinking, and solution-driven engagement. His professional background, anchored in analytical precision and systems management, forms the foundation of his public service aspiration.
For him, representation must move beyond ceremonial presence to practical responsiveness — laws that reflect local realities, oversight that protects public resources, and advocacy that translates into visible development.
Ramon argues that the future of Ibarapa East lies in leadership that listens deliberately, plans strategically, and delivers measurably. He speaks of strengthening rural infrastructure, expanding youth-driven economic opportunities, and institutionalising transparency as core pillars of his agenda. In his view, governance must not merely be symbolic; it must be structured, accountable, and people-centred.
Rooted in Ile Odede, Isale Alubata Compound, Ward Seven of Ibarapa East Local Government, and maternally linked to Ile Sobaloju, Isale Ajidun Compound, Eruwa, Ramon’s story is not one of distant ambition but of lived experience. He is, in every sense, a son of the soil — shaped by the same roads, schools, and economic realities that define daily life in Ibarapa East.
“I was born here. I grew up here. I understand our struggles, our strengths, and our untapped potential,” he says. “Representation must go beyond occupying a seat; it must translate into preparation, competence, and genuine commitment to development.”
His academic journey mirrors that philosophy of steady growth. He began at Islamic Primary School, Lanlate (1995–2001), proceeded to Baptist Grammar School, Orita Eruwa (2001–2007), and later earned a National Diploma in Mechanical Engineering Technology from Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro, between 2009 and 2011. Refusing to plateau, he advanced his intellectual horizon and is now completing a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration at the University of Lagos. “Education,” he reflects, “is continuous capacity building. Leadership today requires both technical knowledge and administrative insight.”
That blend of engineering precision and managerial training has defined a professional career spanning more than a decade. Shortly after his diploma, Yusuf joined Mikano International Limited as a generator installer, gaining hands-on experience in industrial power systems — a sector central to Nigeria’s infrastructural backbone. He later transitioned into telecommunications at Safari Telecoms Nigeria Limited, where he received specialized training in Industrial, Scientific, and Medical radio bands, strengthening his expertise in network operations.
In 2013, he became a Field Support Engineer at Netrux Global Concepts Ltd., then a leading ISM service provider in Nigeria. Over four formative years, he immersed himself in telecom infrastructure deployment and maintenance, mastering field coordination, logistics management, and real-time technical problem-solving.
Since July 2017, he has served as a Field Support Engineer with Specific Tools and Techniques Ltd., a power solutions firm providing services to major operators including MTN Nigeria and Airtel Nigeria. In that capacity, he operates at the frontline of ensuring energy reliability and network uptime — responsibilities that demand discipline, accountability, and systems thinking.
For political observers in Ibarapa East, this trajectory matters. It reflects more than résumé credentials; it speaks to a mindset anchored in efficiency, coordination, and measurable outcomes — qualities increasingly demanded in legislative representation.
Beyond the private sector, Ramon’s political exposure is neither sudden nor superficial. A loyal member of the progressive political family in Lagos, he once served as a personal assistant to a former lawmaker, gaining practical insight into legislative procedure and constituency engagement. Within his community, he has quietly extended financial support to small-scale entrepreneurs and students — modest but consistent interventions rooted in personal responsibility.
“My interest is my people,” he states firmly. “Ibarapa East deserves strategic, responsive, and capable leadership at the State Assembly. We must move from rhetoric to results.”
Across the constituency — from Lanlate to Eruwa — development priorities remain clear: youth employment, vocational empowerment, rural road rehabilitation, stable power supply, agricultural value-chain expansion, improved educational standards, and stronger lawmaking that directly reflects community needs.
Political analysts argue that Ramon’s technocratic background positions him uniquely at the intersection of policy formulation and practical implementation. At a time when national discourse increasingly favours competence over grandstanding, his profile resonates with a broader generational shift toward performance-driven governance. His engineering discipline reinforces problem-solving; his business training strengthens administrative understanding; his grassroots roots anchor his empathy.
For Ibarapa East, the 2027 election cycle may represent more than a routine democratic exercise. It may mark a recalibration of expectations — a demand for representation that understands both the soil beneath its feet and the systems that drive modern development. As political alignments gradually crystallize in Oyo State, Yusuf Abiodun Ramon’s declaration signals the arrival of a candidate seeking to translate private-sector structure into public-sector impact.
One thing is clear: the conversation about the future of Ibarapa East has begun — and it is now framed around competence, credibility, and capacity.
Oluwasegun Idowu sent in this piece from Eruwa, Ibarapa East LG, Oyo State
“In a sky where delays are normal, one airline flies with precision and trust. Ibom Air shows that reliability can be a strategy”.
In Nigeria’s skies, where flight delays and cancellations are often taken as routine, Ibom Air has quietly rewritten the rules. From the moment it launched in June 2019, the Akwa Ibom State–owned carrier has treated reliability not as a bonus, but as a core strategy—turning punctuality, discipline, and operational excellence into a competitive edge that passengers can count on.
While most airlines chase rapid expansion or flashy promotions, Ibom Air has chosen consistency. Flights depart on schedule, disruptions are minimal, and communication with passengers is clear and timely. This predictability has quickly earned the airline a loyal following among business travellers, professionals, government officials, and families for whom time is invaluable.
The airline’s approach is methodical. Every flight is treated as a commitment, and operational decisions are guided by structured planning, not improvisation. This discipline underpins everything from scheduling to fleet management, ensuring passengers experience flying without surprises.
Central to this model is Ibom Air’s modern fleet. Its Airbus A220-300 and Bombardier CRJ-900 aircraft are fuel-efficient, comfortable, and rigorously maintained to meet both manufacturers’ specifications and the regulatory standards of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority and international aviation bodies. Safety here is a culture, not a compliance exercise.
Cabin cleanliness and aircraft health are equally prioritized. Passengers consistently step into neat, hygienic, and professionally maintained cabins, reinforcing confidence and comfort even before take-off. In a sector where small details signal operational quality, Ibom Air’s standards speak volumes.
Technology quietly drives reliability across operations. From booking and check-in to flight coordination and customer service, modern systems enhance efficiency, reduce disruptions, and ensure smooth communication. These tools allow the airline to anticipate challenges rather than merely react.
R–L: Dr. Solomon Oroge, a consultant, and Mr. Idowu Ayodele, journalist and media practitioner, aboard an Ibom Air flight.
Service delivery follows the same disciplined pattern. Pilots, cabin crew, engineers, and ground staff operate under strict professional standards. Courtesy is paired with efficiency, and calm, structured service ensures passengers feel confident throughout their journey.
The Ibom Flyer loyalty programme reflects this structured approach, rewarding consistent passengers and fostering long-term engagement. It turns reliability into a tangible benefit for frequent flyers.
From its hub at Victor Attah International Airport, Uyo, Ibom Air serves major Nigerian cities including Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Calabar, and Enugu, while extending its reach to West Africa with flights to Accra, Ghana. Expansion is deliberate, prioritizing sustainability over rapid growth that could compromise service quality.
Measured growth allows the airline to maintain operational excellence and service consistency even as demand increases—a strategy that contrasts sharply with competitors whose rapid expansion often strains resources.
Mr. Idowu Ayodele, journalist and media practitioner, pictured inside an Ibom Air aircraft.
Beyond commercial success, Ibom Air has become a national example. It has created employment, stimulated tourism, and strengthened regional connectivity, projecting a positive image of Nigerian aviation at a time when confidence in the sector is often fragile.
The airline has also challenged assumptions about government-owned enterprises. By combining professional management with operational autonomy, it demonstrates that public investment can achieve efficiency, accountability, and competitiveness.
Reliability, in the case of Ibom Air, is than a promise—it is a deliberate business philosophy. It shapes operations, informs decisions, and builds passenger trust consistently.
Technology, discipline, and attention to detail converge to produce an airline that works. Every element, from fleet maintenance to cabin service, supports the promise that Ibom Air delivers what it advertises—without surprises.
In a market where uncertainty has been the norm, Ibom Air has shown that consistency can be a strategic advantage. Passengers no longer fly with anxiety; they fly with confidence, knowing their schedules will hold and service will meet expectations.
Ultimately, Ibom Air is not just an airline—it is a model of operational excellence in Nigerian aviation. By prioritizing reliability over spectacle, discipline over improvisation, and planning over shortcuts, it sets a benchmark for the industry and a standard for passengers: in the skies, predictability is priceless
Idowu Ayodele – Journalist, Ibadan, Oyo State
0805 889 3736 | megaiconpress@gmail.com
In Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, the concept of the “Greek gift” was invented. The Trojan Horse became the undoing of Troy, ending a decade-long war in which many Greeks had perished, including the mighty Achilles. The Trojans accepted the Greeks’ gift, and the rest, as they say, is history.
In the past few days, both social and conventional media have been agog with reactions to President Donald J. Trump’s threat to the Nigerian government regarding terrorism. In his words, Nigeria must “address the genocide against Christians in the North and Middle Belt, or else the U.S. will cut aid to the country and, in addition, come into the country guns blazing in an attempt to flush out the terrorists.”
Sincerely speaking, the tweet made by the U.S. President sounded a bit comical to me, as did many other commentaries that followed. Comical not in a ridiculous sense, but in a comedic sense.
This piece is not written to support or oppose any particular view, but to lay down facts in the most succinct and objective manner, thereby allowing for the independence of a balanced position.
In 2009, a terror group named Jama’at Ahl al-Sunna li al-Da’wa wa al-Jihad (popularly referred to as Boko Haram) emerged with the aim of establishing Islamic rule across Nigeria. According to the group, Sharia was the only path to true progress, and any faith other than Islam was haram (forbidden).
Soon after, this group began launching vicious attacks against Christians and Christian places of worship. From singularly attacking Christians, their targets shifted to government institutions and facilities, and on 28 November 2014, one of the greatest attacks against fellow Muslims occurred with the bombing and mass shooting of Juma’at worshippers at the Kano Central Mosque. Over 120 worshippers were killed and another 260 critically injured.
The point here is to underscore the fact that Boko Haram—and indeed all other extremist groups in Nigeria—are not targeting Christians alone, as earlier claimed, but are pursuing a more sinister agenda of land grabbing with the colouration of economic, psychological and socio-political domination of conquered territories, with intentions of spreading across the country.
From the Northeast, the activities of wanton killing and destruction perpetrated by terrorists spread to the North Central region, particularly Plateau and Benue States. What originally began as farmer–herder clashes metamorphosed into full-blown village and community sackings, where Fulani invaders razed entire communities, leaving hundreds dead or wounded while survivors were displaced and left with harrowing experiences in IDP camps.
This wave of destruction continued, with one of the bloodiest in recent times occurring in Yelwata, Guma Local Government Area of Benue State, on the night of 13–14 June 2025. According to Amnesty/CE/UN/NGO, over 200 people were gruesomely massacred, several houses burnt to ashes, and about 3,000 people displaced and rendered homeless. In 2025 alone, Amnesty reported more than 10,000 additional people displaced in Benue across several local governments, ranging from Gwer West to Agatu, Ukum/Gbagir, Logo, Kwande and Guma.
From the North Central, terrorism—or better still, banditry—also found its way to the North West. The activities of bandits, kidnappers and other criminal elements were consistently reported in Zamfara, Kaduna, Kebbi, Sokoto, Kano, and even Katsina, which was once regarded as the true home of hospitality, as its state slogan depicts, and as I can also attest considering how much I enjoyed the peace and serenity of the state during my days therein as a Youth Corps member. Reuters.ng reports that as of 2025, approximately 2,456 people had been killed in the North West region across multiple states. In addition to this, about 7,260 people, including schoolchildren and commuters on highways, had been abducted, with several millions of naira collected by kidnappers as ransom payments. Some parts of the South West, South East and South South have not been spared the atrocities of terrorists and bandits.
Therefore, it is safe to say that the entire country has, at one time or the other, experienced the activities of bandits, terrorists and kidnappers. The intensity of attack, however, differs from region to region.
Late General Sani Abacha once said that “if any insurgency lasts for more than 24 hours, a government official has a hand in it.” This saying more or less amplifies the complexity of the terrorism–banditry–kidnapping problem in Nigeria. Nigeria is a country abundantly blessed with all manners of rich mineral resources. Apart from the vast arable land required for productive agriculture, there is virtually no region of the country that does not possess one valuable solid mineral or another.
From iron ore in Zamfara, Kogi and Enugu; gold in Kaduna, Kebbi and Osun; lithium in Nasarawa, Kwara, Oyo and the FCT; bitumen in Ondo, Edo and Ogun; plus other industrial minerals like gypsum, kaolin and limestone, with deposits of over one billion tonnes across many states—Nigeria is sitting on an incredibly underutilised treasure worth billions of dollars. The government’s inability to adequately manage these vast potentials provides fertile grounds for opportunistic scrambling, illegal mining, chaos and its attendant conflicts.
One can therefore boldly say that the chaos and violence camouflaged as terrorism and banditry is indeed a calculated campaign driven not just by Islamic extremism but by land grabbing and occupation for the purpose of blood mineral extraction and illicit mining.
Thus, a sophisticatedly armed radical Islamic Fulani ethnic militia, often operating under political protection, carries out multiple killings, displacements and kidnappings across the Northeast, North Central and North West, after which reports reveal that foreign miners appear following the death and displacement of indigenes to exploit the lands.
Amnesty International has also reported that Nigeria loses over $9 billion annually to illicit mining of gold, tin and lithium, with a significant portion—estimated at 10%—funding violence and corruption. The report further revealed that the involvement of some government elements in this corruption is not in doubt, as eyewitness reports of survivors and satellite surveillance footage revealed the connivance of certain government personnel. Some survivors have also repeatedly claimed that they witnessed helicopters in the middle of the night dropping weapons and ammunition for the bandits—a disclosure corroborated by Professor Bolaji Akinyemi in an interview on African Stream earlier this year.
So, it is right to say that the violence and carnage are just a smokescreen and a catalyst to a far-reaching economic, psychological and socio-political agenda of certain influential elements in the country. This is part of the reason why the billions of naira spent on security to equip the military to better fight insurgency have not yielded much result to date.
In addressing the threat of President Donald Trump, I would like to start by recounting a little history about the 47th President of the United States and his previous antecedents. In January 2018, at a news conference in the White House, President Trump referred to Haiti and some African countries—including Nigeria—as “shithole countries” that should not be accorded immigrant status in the U.S.
Furthermore, his government’s stern immigration policies and visa restrictions clearly reflect a hostile stance towards Africa and some other Global South countries. In light of this, it is hard to understand where the sudden genuine concern for Nigerian Christians is coming from—more so when a U.S. congressman earlier this year revealed that USAID played a significant role in the funding of Boko Haram and other terrorist groups. This concern was never mentioned when Late President Muhammadu Buhari visited the White House a few months after the “shithole” saga and was praised by the same Trump for his valiant efforts in fighting Boko Haram and ISWAP, despite staggering reports of attacks and killings in the Northeast and North Central during that period.
Under the erudite scholarship of Professor Kunle Ajayi, I learnt several years ago, in one of our Politics of Global Economic Relations lectures, that in world politics and global socio-economic relations, the overriding determinant of states’ decisions and actions is strategic interest. Altruism is hardly ever a factor.
Present realities of Nigeria’s economic relations are fast approaching self-sufficiency—particularly in the oil sector, where Nigeria was once a major importer of finished petroleum products from the U.S. The Dangote refinery, having begun domestic refining and production of petroleum products, is fast taking over a market once dominated by imports from the U.S. This shift, no doubt, is taking jobs away from American oil workers—no cheering news for the country’s oil conglomerates. Secondly, China has since replaced the United States as Nigeria’s foremost trading partner.
According to Nairametrics (2025), the value of trade between Nigeria and China between 2023–2025 totals approximately $50 billion compared to an estimated $30 billion with the U.S. This paradigm shift would certainly not be palatable to the U.S. or her president, who happens to be a dogged businessman that hates the word “no”. From this perspective, it is not difficult to see where President Trump is coming from.
Be that as it may, I think Nigeria needs to employ shrewd diplomacy in dealing with the U.S. under a president like Donald Trump. Regardless of international law and conventions, the U.S. has repeatedly proven itself willing to take unilateral military action against countries, defying the rule of law and popular global opinion. So those hinging on Nigeria’s sovereignty as a deterrent to the U.S. are not good students of history.
What is, however, more important in all of this is that global attention is once again drawn to the horrible atrocities of these criminal elements in Nigeria. The country cannot continue to behave as though it is normal headline news when people are slaughtered daily, and families and homes are torn apart.
I believe this is an opportunity for the government to rejig the entire security architecture of the country, with the needed political will, to once and for all end these killings. Strategic partnership with the United States in this regard is not a bad idea. With its extensive experience in counter-terrorism operations and access to sophisticated military technology and intelligence, the U.S. can assist in identifying and eradicating the major financiers and enablers of terrorism and banditry. It is not rocket science that when the financing of terrorists ends, terrorism ceases to exist.
However, this should be done only on the basis of shared interest, mutual respect, trust, and understanding reflective of a healthy and balanced foreign policy relationship. By prioritising constructive diplomacy, dialogue and partnership, Nigeria can work with the United States in a strategic alliance to restore peace, security and confidence across the nation. That is the way to go.
Olusegun Hassan, Ph.D
Public Policy Analyst and Social Commentator
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