On Trump’s Declaration of Nigeria as a CPC, Recent Changes of Military Chiefs, etc: Sunday Independent Interview (23/11/25)

What is your take on Donald Trump's declaration of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) over alleged killing of Christians?

Donald Trump is playing a political card laced in hypocrisy, deceit, arrogance and imperialist interests. One cannot but laugh when he talks of wanting to come to the aid of “cherished Christians”. Three percent of the Christians in Gaza are amongst the sixty-nine thousand people that were killed in that strip in the course of two years of Israel’s genocidal campaign. But he has not only not been concerned about them, he has stood firmly against calling the war on Gaza the genocide it is. Trump and other politicians like Ted Cruz and Riley are just playing politics with this matter. On one hand, they are appealing to their white evangelical base. On the other hand Trump and indeed the American state as a whole are playing a card that Western imperialism has played time and again for centuries now, under the guise of what the British poet Rudyard Kipling described as “the white man’s burden” at the end of the nineteenth century. We should not be deceived.

 

The Nigerian government has been criticising the allegation of Christian genocide. To what extent is this allegation true?

No right thinking person would say that things are okay with Nigeria on so many levels. We have been shouting ourselves hoarse for years that Nigeria is bleeding and it is poor working-class people that are bearing the brunt of all the bloodletting taking place in several parts of the country. There have been mass killings in Nigeria, yes. There have also been specific cases of Christians killed in cold blood like the lynching of Deborah Yakubu, or the brutal killing of Bridget Agbahime. But most of the mass killings under the combined dynamics of Salafi-Jihadists, bandits, and armed herders have not been based on religious lines. In the Middle Belt, particularly on the Plateau and in Benue, we have seen communities attacked time and again and thousands of people killed. These attacks initially came from herders, and they were largely herders versus settler-farmers conflicts. These morphed into the involvement of bandits as well, as banditry became intertwined into the wave of generalised insecurity we are witnessing. Most communities in the Middle Belt turned to Christianity at the advent of colonialism, as a form of resistance to avoid being swept up by the spreading Fulani Jihad in the nineteenth century. Without prejudice to the horrendous killings in the Northeast mainly by Jihadists and the Northwest largely be bandits,  the massacres in the Middle Belt are utterly condemnable. But they speak more to the unresolved national question than religious divides, not to talk of a genocidal dimension to this, as claimed by Trump and several other commentators, including in Nigeria.

 

What should the Nigerian government do to ensure that its relationship with the US government does not deteriorate further?

There are two things here. First is that the mass killings of Nigerians that has now become a norm is not acceptable. The Nigerian state, which itself is also culpable in some ways, must put an end to this. Otherwise the APC government of President Bola Tinubu should resign, just as he urged the PDP government of President Goodluck Jonathan. Second, is the issue of what should be our response to Trump and the United States? Trump is a bully and the United States is an imperialist state. The only answer to a bully is to stand up to it. People should stop glorifying yankeeland as if it were an Alpha and Omega. It might be the world’s super power. But it cannot be more powerful than all other countries or even a few bold countries standing up together to say “wetin sef? E don do!” There is nothing new under the sun. There was a time that the sun did not set over the empire and dominion of Britain. And before pax Britannia, there was pax Romana of the Roman Empire. Pax Americana too will end sometime.

 

What is your take on the failure of the Tinubu's government to appoint Ambassadors till now?

This is symptomatic of the Tinubu government. In the first place, how do you explain the blanket calling back of ambassadors? And to make a bad decision-making worse, how does not replacing them for two years make any sense to otherwise right-thinking persons? It’s simply ludicrous. Well, for me part of the problem has been a general decline in the placement of professional diplomats as ambassadors, over the years. Ambassadorial positions have become increasingly for settlement of party loyalists as against a time when they were a mix with large inclusion of professionals. I suspect that in-house horse-trading on who gets what amongst the APC chieftains or their surrogates in terms of countries of posting is a major factor for this long delay. APC’s change mantra is nothing but change for the worse.

 

How do you see the recent retirement of the Chief of Defence Staff and reshuffle of the Service Chiefs?

Let us call a spade a spade, there is ample justification for linking the reshuffling of the military top brass to rumours and plots of coups. In fact, it underscores the likelihood that the government lied when it claimed there was no coup plot. However, what we have had, despite the military returning to the barracks in the wake of the mass pro-democracy struggle of the 1990s is that military chieftains are not only politicised, they are also more and more businessmen. They are all interested in how much money they can make from the system. Barely two years ago, a major general was convicted of fraud running into $3.3 million. And a few months ago both the ICPC and EFCC received petitions about another major general siphoning millions from the military budget. The implications of the reshuffling is that a new set of inner caucus in the chopping spree will have better access to the largesse of money, wealth and privilege. I doubt if there will be any positive impact on safety and security. They all always say that they will improve on these when they are sworn in. They never do. What they are perfect at are pillaging and overseeing the repression of poor working people and youths on behalf of the ruling class.

 

The PDP's crisis has continued to deepen with the dwindling of its states and its expulsion of Nyesom WIKE, Anyanwu and the others. Would you say that this marked the beginning of the extinction of the former ruling party?

PDP has been on a self-destruct trajectory for sometime now. The journey to its possible extinction did not start now. It was built into its very emergence. You know, Naom Chomsky once said something to the effect that the United States is a one-party state with the democrats and republicans being just two factions of that same party. In Nigeria, things have evolved differently, even though the essence of what Chomsky said is applicable here as well. The different parties of the ruling class are one. But in the Nigerian context where you have primitive accumulation in perpetuity, the place of ideas take a backstage in the contestation of power between the different sections of the ruling class. It is all about access to state power to enable what Fela described as “chop and clean mouth, like say nothing happen”. In fact, nowadays they do not even bother to clean the mouth. Otherwise, how would some people be saying that that uncouth Nyesom Wike should have even the slightest dint of respect in PDP because he funded the party at a time as if it was his father’s money that he used to do so. Anyway, it is very difficult to have the sort of stable contestation between six and half a dozen that you have in the United States with the Republicans and the Democrats, or, even though within  a different, a parliamentary setting, between Labour and the Tories in Britain.  In the Nigerian context, a party that cannot hold on to the centre is likely to asphyxiate. That is what we are seeing with PDP.

 

With the continued defections from PDP to the APC, the ruling party now controls two-thirds majority in the National Assembly. What are the implications of this?

You should expect more of such defections because of the reasons I earlier laid down. The Nigerian ruling class politics is belle politics. They do not want to be shut out of the largesse. Then there is also the other side of it. The party at the centre can and does utilise the anti-graft agencies to hunt down those not under its unction. So, it makes sense for federal legislators as much as governors who do not want wahala over wetin dem chop to cross over to where all their sins can be forgiven. Now, the implication of this are not clear to the APC today as it was not clear to the PDP earlier. It is impossible to have a sustainable two dominant party system. There has to be one big bad wolf in charge. The APC will not last forever in power, just as the PDP did not last sixty years as one of its leaders once claimed it would. If the revolution tarries, you can be rest assured that there would most likely be a taking down of the party in ways and manner that will shock it. But that is not today. However, when it does, with how the APC people have fallen so much in love with the sweetness of being in charge, it is likely to be quite ugly.

 

With the current state of the APC do you think that the opposition coalition under ADC will make much impact on the 2027 general elections?

A friend of mine once described ADC as Another Democratic Circus. The fact of the matter, in my view, is that it is not a serious contender for power, come 2027, at least. Taking ADC seriously at the moment, I would say, is like likening a snail to horned animals like the buffalo. Who knows though, these are still early days and things might change. But sha o, you get a feel of how the weekend will be by mid-week, already.

 

What is your advice to the new Chairman of INEC, Prof Joash Amupitan?

My advice to him would be a simple Yorùbá proverb which he would understand. Both the king that ruled and the community was peaceful and the one that ruled leaving the community in anomie would be remembered. It is left to him to demonstrate what he wants history to remember him as: an Iwu or a Jega, warts and all.

 

What is your take on the victory of APGA’s Soludo in the Anambra governorship election?

First, let me say that the most significant thing for me in the Anambra election was the candidacy of Chioma Ifemeludike of the African Action Congress. She challenged the capitalist and patriarchal status quo with a radical perspective, vivid energy and panache. That been said, I think that Anambrarians voted more with their legs than with their thumbs. Less than fifty thousand people bothered to turnout to vote because they knew it had little or no meaning. Soludo has been said to have won by a landslide with over seventy percent of the votes. But several news outlets have reported that  vote buying and selling as well manipulation of results was the order of the day. Soludo’s victory is tainted by this. It is a jankara victory.

 

First published as “Recent Change Of Military Chiefs Can’t Make Much Impact On Security – Baba Aye”  in the Sunday Independent, 23 November 2025, p.21: https://independent.ng/recent-change-of-military-chiefs-cant-make-much-impact-on-security-baba-aye/