The way some Nigerians react to global geopolitics leaves one in no doubt of their poor, dangerously ignorant, apprehension of what it means for an African country to survive in today's world. They see but cannot understand the brazen determination of certain leaders they perceive as saviours of the world, particularly the black man, to return us to a colonial world order in which Africans and people from other poorer regions of the world exist only to serve the interest of the world's powerful nations.
This set of Nigerians cannot see President Donald Trump for who he is, a racial triumphalist whose main goal is the pursuit of America's interest first through his might-is-right ideology and thereafter, the interest of the white world. Which is to say that there is a racist dimension to his power games and claims of saving or protecting the interest of Christians around the world, including Nigeria.
The reactions of this set of Nigerians who are so full of self-loathing they cannot see anything good about Nigeria, especially any action of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led government, to the abduction of a sitting President Nicholas Maduro and his wife, and their summary extradition to America in chains, says so much about their hate-driven ignorance of our changing world order in which powerful nations impose their will on others against the accepted norms of international law that governs relations between countries. All the willful humiliation of another country's president, and by extension, its people, elicit in these Nigerians, many of who are apparently supporters of a failed presidential candidate who derives joy from sharing bad news about Nigeria, is the demand that the same treatment be extended to the president of their own country.
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Suddenly some Nigerians are exhibiting their preference for colonial rule under the guise of championing democratic tenets that they obviously do not believe in all because of their loss of an election. Their latest gambit is of the same tenor as their call for military rule in the wake of their principal's loss of the last presidential election. For some strange reason that is steeped in ignorance, they see Donald Trump as not just an ally but also a major force in the realisation of their separatist agenda for a future nation of their dream. Any action of the American president is hailed and celebrated as the right move for the world, including Nigeria. They distrust any government action as efforts in propaganda while being blind to the mix of misinformation and disinformation that propels the separatist goals of their erstwhile leader. A man who was able to convince them of the existence of a Nigerian president who was a clone of the actual individual that they claimed had died in office.
They have of late been appointing Ministers and Prime Ministers of their self-declared nation following the incarceration of their content creator leader in Finland and his boastful where-is-the-law counterpart now serving time in a Correctional Centre in Sokoto. Amid all of this, their long-forgotten leader, the one who had the first inkling of how financially rewarding is the trade in a people's trauma, the man whose divisive rhetoric gave rise to the work of nostalgia to return to a defeated republic, is again warming up to retake his throne now that his younger successors have got their comeuppance. But the agitators will do anything to get what they could not achieve through the ballot, including the enslavement of their own people by an American president that cares nothing about their existence. They widen every faultline and amplify both the real and perceived errors of the present government.
They, like some of their disaffected counterparts up north, had hoped to exploit the genuine cry of the people of the Middlebelt for help from the genocidal activities of Fulani terrorists. They had tried to turn the involvement of Donald Trump in the matter into an opportunity to spark off a diplomatic war between America and Nigeria that could lead to attempts at regime change. They were thrilled by Trump's tirade against a so-called 'now disgraced country', a quote that has been appropriated by their beatified leader, the purveyor of false statistics, from China and Bangladesh. It was his hope, as that of his new friends in the hastily constructed political house of strange bedfellows, as well as their followers- they had hoped to see the situation degenerate into the threatened use of 'gun-a-blazing' force.
But when the guns finally blazed it was not in the manner they had anticipated. They blazed over the nests that have been the safe havens of career terrorists that have been the useful tools of criminal politicians. Not satisfied with how things played out, they continued to call for regime change, sowing seeds of doubt just about every policy of government. In the last hours of 2025, they were still peddling stories of discrepancies between so-called versions of a tax law they had opposed from the moment it was mooted and that had been in operation for six months. They wanted the whole thing thrown out. After Trump placed Nigeria under a visa ban, probably for the forward-looking policies of the Tinubu administration that is achieving a better trade balance between Nigeria and America, rather than praise Abuja, they chose to attack it.
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They saw Trump's action as evidence of Tinubu's failure. Even the tragic accident that claimed the lives of two friends of boxing champion, Anthony Joshua, was another opportunity for them to slam their country before the rest of the world. The self-hatred and attacks could not have been worse, had the accident been orchestrated by the government. The government knew their game and pressed ahead with the implementation of the sections of the tax reforms that are yet to go into operation. Then came the ouster of Nicholas Maduro over last weekend and this same group of Nigerians went agog, celebrating and salivating about the same treatment being extended to the president of their own country. The name-calling kicked in again and ignorance wore the garb of confidence. While the noise from that was yet to subside, then came the ruckus over a so-called AI-generated photograph taken across a dinner table between President Bola Tinubu and President Paul Kagame.
For critics of Abuja, it was again another opportunity to let out bile. They fumed and sweated over nothing. They offered insights about the health of the President, his whereabouts and the state of the country he had left behind to travel abroad. They worry in vain. So much soap and lather over nothing. Is this the quality of opposition that hopes to defeat an incumbent president they claim has failed? What are we turning Nigeria into?
