Why US Intervention Can’t End Terrorist Activities In Nigeria – Baba Aye

As 2025 ended and 2026 began, how would you describe Nigerians’ lives in the outgone year?

Last year was a terrible year for poor working people in Nigeria. For the few that were still lucky to have salaried work, their wages could hardly take them home. House rents shot through the sky. For many people, their rents doubled between 2024 and 2025. Insecurity made travelling and even living in people’s homes a challenge of survival. While the economy did grow, it was only to the benefit of the few rich and powerful people, who became richer while the poor became poorer.

 Would you say there are signs that the New Year will be better for the Nigerians?

There are signs for sure that this year will be better for rich people. In the second week of the year, the news filtered in that the NGX, which is the Nigerian Stock Exchange, crossed the centi-trillion naira mark for the first time. While this hides the impact of things like the devaluation of the naira, regarding actual value, it nonetheless speaks to the economic growth last year, which I just mentioned. But everything points towards a year that will be worse off, yet again, for the poor masses. Already, PricewaterhouseCoopers, a major capitalist consulting firm and the World Bank, which is not our friend as working-class people, have both highlighted the strong likelihood for more people to fall into poverty with the poverty rate expected to increase up to 62%. This is very serious. Also, despite all the government’s chest-beating boasts about reducing inflation, the cost of food in the market has not reduced. Many families find it difficult to feed. We are also seeing increasing gentrification of cities, particularly Lagos. Already the demolition of Oworonshoki, which started last year, has continued. In the first week of the year, the Lagos State government also started demolishing Makoko with similar brutality unleashed, including on little children. This means that more and more people will be homeless as well as being jobless and hungry. The signs are very bleak, except our class fights back. I am happy that the NLC and TUC have stated that they will start mobilising and negotiations for a new national minimum wage this year. I hope they follow this up with the necessary action and without delay.

What is your take on the controversies surrounding the new Tax Laws which the President said their implementation must start on January 1, 2026?

 These new tax laws are designed to enable capital accumulation, at the heart of which is the exploitation of working-class people with the state as the executive committee of this exploitation which needs to raise funds to play that role effectively. One of the things the Nigerian state is doing is lying through its teeth to give us the illusion that it will not adversely impact the poor. First, anyone earning the minimum wage will still pay taxes, contrary to the impression being given in some quarters that the poorest persons will not pay taxes. The threshold for not paying taxes at all which is N66,667 per month is absolutely insignificant. I must also point out that the rich will benefit more than any so-called lower taxes for the poorest of working-class people. To understand this, you need to look at the evolution of the country’s taxation of corporations since independence. In 1960, this was forty percent. It rose to about 45 percent in the 1970s. And then even during the earlier part of the neoliberal era with the introduction of the structural adjustment programme, it was 35 percent. We are now talking of 30 percent and even those with an annual turnover of between N25million and N100 million paying as low. So, the tax is aimed at aiming the capitalists to grow their capital on one hand, and broadening the tax net to capture more poor working-class people on the other hand while pretending to be kind to us. We must not be deceived. They do not mean well for the poor masses with these laws. They have never done and they will never do. They serve the interests of their god – capital.

How do you see the US intervention in the terrorist war in Nigeria? 

The ignoble interventions of the United States of parts of North America in Nigeria and particularly so the Christmas Day airstrikes are less about fighting terrorism and more about projecting imperialist power on one hand, and signalling Trump’s supposed fidelity to Christianity to the influential evangelical wing of his support base on the other. This is the point of departure for any meaningful understanding of what is happening. This also leads us to the bigger picture of the current state of evolution of US imperialism which has been clearly marked with the extremely condemnable attacks on Venezuela and Donald Trump’s declaration of utter contempt for the so-called rules-based international order, which had been the hegemonic construct of Pax Americana. Now, the bloodthirsty fists of Yankee imperialism are out of the gloves of international diplomacy in Nigeria and elsewhere. This must be contained as it is not likely to end well. There are a lot of lessons to learn from how the world stumbled into the Second World War as we stare into the Trumpesque abyss of today.

Would you say that the US missile attacks in the Sokoto area have really checked the terrorists as there have been attacks and killings in Borno, Niger, Kwara and Plateau states?

 Curbing the attacks of Salafi-jihadist fighters may be considered one of the aims of the US attacks, but that was and still is secondary with value only for its legitimising the more primary ones which I just spoke about, and which have to do with both domestic political interests for Trump and the evolution of Yankee imperialism. However, even the achievement of these secondary objectives is not likely to be, as we have earlier pointed out. This is for several reasons. The situation in the North, including the Middle Belt and indeed across Nigeria as a whole, in a sense, is much more complex than the narrative which Trump and several people in Nigeria as well are putting forward. People are being killed. And most of these people are poor working-class people. They include those that are Christians as well as those that are Muslim. While there is no doubt that a number of these killings are ideologically driven, based on fundamentalist religious interpretations, against both Christians and moderate Muslims, it is also a fact that there are other important strands to the matter. These include bandits’ incursions, and clashes between herders and farmers which have worsened with the impact of climate change on competition for water and vegetation. A thousand and one attacks by the United States cannot resolve the problem at hand. If anything, as we have seen in the wake of Trump’s so-called Christmas present, as well as in Iraq and Libya, for example, such attacks are more likely to make a very bad situation only terribly worse.

What is your take on what is transpiring in Rivers State since Governor Siminalayi Fubara and the Rivers lawmakers defected to APC?

The situation in Rivers State is tragicomical. It is a reflection of the nature of bourgeois politics in Nigeria with Nyesom Wike as an archetypical figure. I am no fan of Siminalayi Fubara myself. He is part of the problem. Essentially, the difference between the band of bourgeois politicians in Nigeria is no more than that between six and half a dozen. Nonetheless, I think it is about time that Nyesom Wike is put in his place. But, beyond him as a person, there is a resemblance between what is happening globally with the Trumpesque recalibration of Yankee imperialism and what is happening as an infighting between bourgeois politicians in Rivers State, driven by the inordinate sense of power and importance of Mr Wike. In both instances, the masks have slipped, and we can see reality for what it is. Be it APC, PDP, NNPP, or ADC, they are all the same, simply vehicles for different sections of the same ruling class to fight over who gets the larger pieces of the pie. If there was any significance in terms of differences in parties there would be clear party supremacy. Despite the fact that the first two republics were of course also run by capitalist parties, you would not have seen this sort of nonsense taking place. It is a shame of the ruling class that they have become increasingly shameless without a care in the world for the people they claim to represent, even for the simple purpose of legitimation of their class rule.

How do you see the recent war of words between the APC National Secretary and the FCT Minister over the running of the state chapter of APC?

Personally, I am happy that Suraju gave Wike a piece of his mind. SRJ, the APC National Secretary, has never been someone to leave his tongue at the laundromat. What he is trying to do somewhat speaks to what I was earlier pointing out regarding party supremacy and with the first and second republics experiences as examples. But, while how this particular case pans out is yet to be seen, I think that the horse has bolted out of the stables he is trying to close.

How do you think the split in PDP, the continued influx of defectors to both APC and ADC will affect the strength of a Leftist, masses-oriented party like AAC?

 The coming months promise to be quite interesting in what will be a very tortuous year. The gale of defections into the APC, which the Renewed Hope machinery of President Bola Tinubu has brewed, is meant to make his re-election a walk in the park. Unfortunately, and as we have seen in several states, these create their own contradictions, with tensions between the defectors and those that they meet in the APC house. Attempts will be made to solve these situations – because each of them has its own peculiarities dependent on the nature of politics in different states – with patronage. To what extent will this work? We shall see. Regarding ADC, its own contradictions are even more laughable. Already the different presidential hopefuls have made it clear that they will not be stepping down for anyone else. This is pure stupidity. Even if they stand together as one, it will still be an uphill task for them to take on the Renewed Hope machinery of the APC regime. Will there be an implosion of the ADC coalition as they call it, or will they be able to resolve their differences in one way or the other that enables them to still have any traction of note by the time the general elections arrive here? We shall see. Now to the most important question for working-class people who want a liberated society, a better Nigeria. Where does AAC fit in, in all of these. First, let me point out that, because the dominant ideas in society tend to be the ideas of the dominant classes under normalcy, it is only natural that parties which present revolutionary alternatives to these dominant ideas and the classes behind them tend to be smaller and with fewer votes. But, as the economic, social and political contradictions of the exploitative and oppressive system we are living in become more naked to the eyes of the people, the revolutionary party grows. Second, AAC occupies a distinct place in Nigeria’s political history. It is the only revolutionary party with a critical mass and national spread that has been able to be on the ballots thrice and even more than that, that has been at the heart of the people’s struggles on the streets. There has been a huge leap in the number of people – workers, poor artisans, farmers, students, indeed a broad array of the masses – that have taken up membership of AAC in the thousands over the last few months. As things play out with the same and same parties of the ruling class, we can expect the AAC to continue to grow, including in its electoral fortunes at the next general elections.