Opinion
Osun’s Sallah scuffles and Abuja’s dog meat
Two issues engage this piece today. Each of them is reflected in animal imagery. The first has a dog as the totem of its analysis. The second too is better explained by the bestial engagement of rams. Let us begin with the latter.
Last Wednesday, Osun state witnessed a bestial ram fight. Children in, especially northern and western parts of Nigeria, grew up to see the perennial rituals of ram – called agbo in Yoruba – fight. By the way, ram flaunting during Id-el Kabir celebrations is more than part of the potpourri of a religious festival. They are a celebration of financial muzzles, a display of how well-off and wealthy the Islamic adherent is. The Quran makes it mandatory for adherents able to afford it to offer a ram for the sacrifice.
Here in Nigeria, however, rams at Eid are a signification of wealth. Now, it has transcended wealth to a blood sport organised between large-horned male sheep known as rams. The venue of the animal duel is always an open field. Ram owners, especially during this festival, as a way of reinforcing the sport, preparatory to the festival, make large investments in training the rams from their infancy, in readiness for these ram competitions. Grand prizes are even given for the most animalistic of the rams. During this Islamic festivity, young people gather at open fields to watch the fights as they exhibit brawns and animal superiority. It is a sport that is looked up to as an exciting feature of the festival. Pool betters rake money off the bestiality.
In Osun last Wednesday, two Moslems in high places – a senator of the 9th national assembly and indeed, former senate spokesperson – Bashiru Ajibola and governor of the state, Ademola Adeleke, chose to make a sport of their scuffle. Like rams preparatory to Eid-el-Kabir. The drama occurred at the Osogbo central prayer ground as the governor’s aides engaged in a clash with Senator Bashiru in a contest for space and I daresay political relevance. A rumpus ensued which ultimately prevented Governor Adeleke from observing the prayer rites as he stormed out of the place. Media reports said Bashiru sat at the front seat usually reserved for the governor. In the bid to ask the ex-senator to vacate the space, he flared up. The governor’s media team thereafter issued a release insinuating that Adeleke escaped assassination, with back-and-forth allegations flying about from the two parties.
By the way, for several years, I had sought to put the face of reality to a particular flesh-singeing track from Yoruba Apala music great, Ayinla Omowura. In the track, while attacking a traducer, Omowura had said that anyone he was older than their mother could not look down on him. In an interview on Rave FM in Osogbo, Alhaji Muniru Adebayo Raji, who had been at the centre of the Id-El-Kabir ruckus, explained his role in the crisis, connecting the dot of this song with Senator Bashiru. I enjoyed the physical unravelling of Omowura’s song in the ruckus.
For the first time in its entire bigotry pursuit, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) made sense in its intervention in the Osun Eid crisis. That was before MURIC then descended into its usual gutter of bigotry. In its call after the clash, its Executive Director, Prof Ishaq Akintola, pointedly told the two warring politicians to desist from desecrating a consecrated Muslim prayer ground. This was a necessary and profound call because in turning the praying ground into a tiff party, both leaders of the warmongers, themselves Muslims, behaved like rams in a blood fight. For them to turn an event as significant and sobering as an Eid prayer into an avenue to score cheap political point, to the extent of desecrating the holy ground, was an affront on its holiness.
Islam enjoins Muslims not to offer Allah a blemished ram. If in the process of using an Id-El-Kabir ram for a fight, its horns get broken or the ram sustains an injury, it is not worthy of being offered as a sacrifice. So, it stands to reason that the two “rams” fighting at the holy praying ground have injured their horns and as such, their sacrifice on that day was haram. These two political agbo “o wo’leya” as the lingo of Eid-El-Kabir says. Their blood fight vitiates whatever sacrifices they made.
Now, to the second issue. Ancient, non-science perception of the dog is that it is a very fatty animal. Even medicine confirms this. For a gourmet, a dog’s fatty drippings while being prepared for roast may be a put-off. A roasted dog meat meal called the ayangbe aja is a pain in the neck for a grillardin chef. This is because it requires a painstaking wait for the chef to get rid of its surplus fat. Like the proverbial patient ones who alone can extract milk from the mammary of a lioness, the wait for the fire to divest the dog meat of its fat could be very unsettling. It is similar to making an interminable walk through a long tunnel whose end is nowhere in sight. So, Yoruba elders pose a query to the chef who demands patience for the laborious process of grilling the dog meat of its fat to come to maturation. Yes, of a truth – gourmands angrily tell the chef – we are aware that if we are patient enough for you to defrost the dog meat of its fat, dog meat is a fascinating delicacy; but what if we starve to death between the long walk through roasting the dog and eventually getting fat off the meat?
The grilled dog meat anecdote is usually thrown up, not as a measure of the people’s unbelief in patience. It is usually a riposte to taskmasters who give their servants laborious tasks, declaring the times austere but cavorting in plenty.
The ayangbe aja anecdote may be an explainer of the painful time that Nigerians are passing through today. The Nigerian grillardin chef is in the kitchen, no doubt. His cap and apron speak to the tiresome process he is embroiled in. The smoke even oozes out of the rafters, heralding the reality of the meat we salivate for being on the hot gauze grill. But as the chef performs his culinary magic, the people’s palates are dry. These times are certainly not the best for the Nigerian.
Since the month of May, hardship has walked leisurely into homes like an unwelcomed rapist. It is as if the biblical King Rehoboam had been sworn in to the throne of his forefathers. Nigerians’ yokes have proved heavier, even more than in the days of Muhammadu Buhari. In the subsidy removal, Nigerians are not only loaded with a heavy yoke, like whips and scorpions, but poverty-inducing policies of the last four weeks have also chastised Nigerians daily like whips and scorpions. Fewer cars are on the road, no thanks to the outrageous cost of fuel. We are told it is the tip of the iceberg. We will soon buy fuel at N700. The cost of living has risen agonisingly. If we were statistical people, we would have seen sharp rises on the curve of suicides, bludgeoning crime and violence rates as a result of the hopelessness in the land.
But, not to worry. The World Bank has asked Nigerians to lift up their cymbals and rejoice. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have lauded President Bola Tinubu’s decision to effect key economic reforms as “bold choices”. The two key reforms of foreign exchange unification and fuel subsidy removal to reset the economy were commended as bold moves that would jerk up the economy.
Nigerians are one of the most resilient people on earth, global statistics have said. They can walk through the thorns and briers of today, with blood dripping from their feet, in anticipation of a great tomorrow. They even do not care if they die in the process, once there is an assurance that their children won’t go through the deprivation that is their lot. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote on a thrust almost similar to today’s, invoking the spirit and song of late Yoruba Sakara music great, Yusuff Olatunji and his song, O ye ka ni’fura – we should be watchful. I called for us to adopt the strategic adultery attentiveness that Olatunji adumbrated in that song, using an adulterous man seeing off his married woman liaison as a motif.
My counsel was that, even in our infantile excitedness about the “new dawn” which we have opened our curtains to see, we should reserve a space in our hearts for critical thinking and dispassionate evaluation of the unfolding drama. We have trodden this road of titivating excitedness about a “new dawn” before, beginning from the military hijack of power in 1966. On each occasion, from Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Muhammed, Olusegun Obasanjo, Shehu Shagari, Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha to the present moment, we have always shown exhilaration and hope of “a new dawn” whenever there is a regime change. Yet, we are where we are, constantly struggling with, in the words of Prof Francis Egbokhare of the University of Ibadan, an exponential decay of bad and unreflective leadership whose cancerous afflictions ruin us from top to bottom. Only a foolish woman falls prey a second time to the wiles of a man who had earlier lured her to bed, the elders counsel. Some people said my counsel was borne out of a foundational disdain for the new men in power. My response is, the rainmaker who invokes downpour would himself go home drenched. The babalawo who proclaims famine in the town will partake of the drought too. It is in our interest that this “new dawn” brings purity and succour or we are all done for.
Even if times are harder than this, getting as hard as – God forbid – the biblical Samarian famine scenario where father and mother, in a consensus, agreed on which of their children to slaughter for dinner, the level of our fascination for this “new dawn” is such that we believe it cannot transform into thick darkness. Don’t the Yoruba say that eni aye nfe o l’arun kan lara – the one beloved of the world is beyond reproach? Great optimism. All I ask for is strategic thinking and not sheepish following.
While Nigerians are ready to be patient and starve, if possible, to see the interminable process of grilling this dog meat for dinner, they disdain the optics of the chef tossing huge chunks of meat into his mouth within the period of the long wait. Last week’s optics of the president in a convoy of hundreds of cars from the airport, even if most of the cars belonged to his well-wisher power apparatchiks as it is claimed, was nauseating and sickening. In a country where a peremptory decree of subsidy removal was made, off-the-cuff jerking prices of fuel to an all-time high of over N500, with threats that prices would soon hit N700, it was very absurd and inappropriate to see the president and his cabal junketing in such sickening flaunt of wealth and worth. Retiring service chiefs will coast home to billions of perks and officials of the exited government will smile home with trillions of Naira. But Nigerian people are to endure pain.
It is good that the president is embracing neo-liberalism as an economic policy. Neo-liberalism connotes market-oriented reform policies, such as eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers and reducing, especially through privatisation and austerity, state influence in the economy. To date, this “new dawn” is yet to pay the tiniest attention to the lowest rung of the ladder of society. What is in this for the poor? Or, don’t they matter? It will seem like putting the cart before the horse to remove fuel subsidy when no attempt is made to cater for the welfare of the people yet. In four weeks, Nigeria is said to have saved N400 billion from subsidy removal. Great news. Do we trust the new men in power enough to believe that the dividends will be invested in the lives of the people? Do their antecedents speak to the probability of doing so? Again, we must listen to the wise counsel of Baba Yusuff Olatunji.
In this “new dawn,” do we sincerely envisage a Nigeria of our dream coming out of this ensemble? My pessimism takes the best of me. I wish you good luck if your optimism is as fertile as to expect “a new dawn”. There are already allegations of political office seekers paying multiple of millions and even billions to surrogates of “new dawn” to clinch top ministerial positions. And these are the midwives of our optimism. Again, we should not throw Olatunji’s counsel on how to deal with an adulterous relationship like this out of the window. We will need it.
Dr. 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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