What is going on Nigeria?

[Victor Okafor]

https://youtu.be/GWXN7KDTUsA?si=JLlExINQSQmFbAGJ

Sincerely,

Victor O. Okafor, Ph.D.

Professor, Department of Africology and African American Studies (DAAAS)

Eastern Michigan University

Email: vok...@emich.edu

https://www.emich.edu/aaas/faculty/v-okafor.php

https://www.facebook.com/DAAASEMU/

Tel: 734.487.3463 

Food for Thought: 

“I myself do not judge a man [or a woman] by  the color of his [or her] skin. The yardstick that I use to judge a man [or a woman] is his [ or her] deeds, his [her] behavior,  and his [or her] intentions. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth. And, every time you let someone stand on your head and you don’t do anything about it, you are not acting with intelligence and should not be on this earth—you won’t be on this earth very long either." -- Malcolm X.

[ogunlakaiye]

Sometimes ago, the Nigerian writer, Teju Cole, asserted that "the fastest growing industry in the US is the WHITE SAVIOUR INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX," and he buttressed it in a series of tweets. Tweeting, he said, "The white saviour supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by  (white man's) enthusiasm. This world exists simply to satisfy the needs - including importantly, the sentimental needs - of white people. The White Saviour Industrial Complex is not about Justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege. I deeply respect American (U.S.A.) sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know, it is deadly. (Quoted by Dipo Faloyin in his book titled, "Africa Is not A Country)."

Donald Trump is not sending U.S.A., soldiers to Nigeria to combat insurgents and bandits he has branded as Islamists committing genocide on Christians. If Donald Trump wants to help Nigeria to fight insurgents and bandits, he should send military hardware to equip, particularly, the Nigerian Army. The deployment of American soldiers in Nigeria is for other purpose than combating Islamist insurgents and bandits, supposedly and allegedly, killing only Nigerian Christians. It must be recalled that the U.S.A., for many years had a large drone base in Agadez, Niger Republic. After the military take over of the government by the military under the leadership of General Abdourahamane Tchiani in July 2023, the base was closed down and the 800 US troops were expelled. Since then, the US had no ground troops in West Africa. The military Juntas in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have declared their countries' independence from the neo-colonial Western Powers which is not acceptable to the leader of Western World, the U.S.A. Nigeria may now be used as a springboard to topple, firstly, the government of Niger Republic that shares boundaries with seven states in Northern Nigeria and later governments of Burkina Faso and Mali.

Based on a CIA report in 2005, the former US ambassador to Nigeria then, John Campbell, predicted that Nigeria would dissolve as a country in 2015 as a result of ethnic and sectarian tensions. If President Donald Trump can depict the dark-skinned Christian and former President of the U.S.A., Barack Obama, and his wife as monkeys, on what ground does he stand to declare love for the dark-skinned Nigerian Christians for whose sake he is sending American soldiers to defend them?

S. Kadiri   

[Victor Okafor]

Your thoughtful comment makes me wonder about the type and worldview of the individuals who are currently running the affairs of Nigeria. Are they truly alive to the nature of contemporary global geopolitics, particularly the ongoing New Age Scramble for Africa? To whom do they owe their allegiance? Are they compromised and subject to blackmail by the geopolitical powers whose music they are now dancing to? Do these current occupants of Aso Rock really believe that they are accountable to the Nigerian people? Decades ago, we used to have a Nigerian government that pursued an Africa-centered foreign policy? What is the ideological premise of the foreign policy that we see unfolding from Aso Rock? Some of the actions that we see emanating from Aso Rock these days make one wonder about the interests that are being served. What is happening to Nigeria's sovereignty? Is it being given away, piece by piece? Why is Nigeria going in the opposite direction from countries like South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Ethiopia, Uganda? Do the occupants of Aso Rock think that the rattle snake that was expelled from the Sahel Region would cease to be a rattle snake when relocated to Nigeria? What is really going on? This unfolding situation is worrisome, to say the least. 

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Baba Kadiri,

The message is We live in a wicked world, so we must be careful

After all the doom and gloam in the Naija social media, such as Dele Farotimi’s fatalistic Nigeria, a finished country and some of the latest from Northern Security Update , plus some daunting news about the proposed Biafra , it was uplifting to listen to a very upbeatTope Fasua holding forth inThe Toyin Falola Interviews: A Panel Discussion on Nigeria in 2026, perhaps less so from the man from that Tuft's school, where so many CIA operators come from…

All that remains to be done is for Ojogbon to organise a summit in which he pits the cautious, moralising John Onyeukwu against the upbeat nationalist Tope Fasua for a fight to the finish

I don’t know what happened to my earlier posting but it’s further down below, unamended, starting with “ What’s Goin’ on”

For now I’d just like to remind Baba Kadiri that Donald Trump’s latest moves in Mama  Nigeria  is consistent with the age old US Policy of his predecessors as satirised in Tom Lehrer’s ”Send the Marines” 

Due to some  cultural, colour, racial, political, ethnic, and maybe even religious/ non-religious sentiments, we might have some difficulty imagining, due to Nigeria’s current security situation, Trump’s immediate predecessor Barack Obama sending US troops to quell an alleged on going genocide of Nigerian Christians, Muslims, disbelievers 

Under the guise of fighting/ wiping out perpetrators of the alleged on-going Christian genocide in Nigera, Commander-in-ChiefTrump eventually establishing a US military base in Nigeria as a springboard for a blitzkrieg against Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso is not a far fetched conspiracy theory, in fact the longer the US action continues the more it looks alike a new AFRICOM base in Nigeria  would be a fait accompli… 

We ought not underestimate the unflinching support that Trump has from nearly all the Christian groups - I’d say including the Southern Baptists - even though the fallout - - the anger and shock about his monkey business with the Obamas is surely going to downsize the 6% support that he was said to have among Black folks in the US. 

What’s Goin’ on ? 

What is going on in Nigeria?

The alarm bells are ringing and being rung 

The earlier question was “What can save Nigeria?” 

You ask one of the Bible-thumping, fun-da-mentally 

Pentecostal, and he or she will tell you that funda-mentally 

the real question that Nigerians should be asking themselves 

is, “ Who can save Nigeria ? “ and that is because they believe 

that only by a miracle will salvation or a national redemption 

be achieved, and that the  correct answer is to be found in one word

and one person only : JESUS ! 

As the Philadelphia pastor told me the other day, ”believe and be saved.”

Jesus is reported to have said at some time, “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign”

So, not surprisingly, there are those who also believe that the answer is two words in one person : DONALD TRUMP ( the Sheriff)  

They stress that it is not required that you believe in him but you could believe  in a Divinely ordained United States Military Intervention - and that here too it’s GOD moving in His mysterious ways, His wonders to perform - in this case a Divinely ordained Military Intervention - Pikuach Nefesh to save the lives of Nigeria’s Christians  

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Stockholm

Sweden

People’s Planet

10th February, 2026 

Baba Kadiri,

Many thanks for the reference to Teju Cole, nailing it on the head with “the fastest growing industry in the US is the WHITE SAVIOUR INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX”. 

Some of us are familiar with afflictions such as “ Colonial mentality” , "colonial complex”,  “inferiority complex” , White Jesus,  etc, but are less familiar with The White Saviour Industrial Complex. I would love to hear a lecture by P.L.O. Lumumba just on that topic 

In that famous speech on “Mental Slavery” our own  Marcus Garvey told us way back, on October 31, 1937, “We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind”

A few decades later in 1963, at the Harlem Unity Rally , as Malcolm put it,  it’s the ” big white ape” that they’ve got to get off their back ( and off their minds) 

Thank God that we’re living on our peoples’ planet earth, not “Planet of the Apes” 

We note with satisfaction that it wasn’t the case that Noija went running over to Massa to beg him to please assist - and what if Massa had assisted - in time  - in Rwanda ?

There’s the famous scene in Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus , in which Faustus having renounced the Trinitarian God conjures some spirits and the devil appears instead…

I understand that you probably don’t beleive in the devil / Iblis/ Shaitan , so the unanswered / unanswerable question is - would you  - if need be ask for some assistance from the hypothetical devil / “The Great Satan “ to prevent an allgeed ongoing genocide? 

If the answer is yes, if, some time later on  you change your mind  or plans go awry , as in the best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry, then what are you going to do when you tell him that his troops must leave and he says no way, they’re there to stay ? 

Coupé Cloué - Mon compè/Ti bom

On Monday, 9 February 2026 at 12:24:50 UTC+1 ogunlakaiye wrote:

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Professor Okafor, 

These are trying times for all of us , but first the funny side of things, because it’s not good to be woken up like the late Shehu Shagari, woken by an orderly or a friend of the family, first thing in the morning, to be informed , even as you’re rubbing sleep from your eyes, that there has been a coup d'état (bloodless) and that verily it happened last night, on New Year’s Eve, ushering in what was to have been the beginning of your Happy New Year.

And in such a situation, if you are to be the bearer of not so glad tidings, of course, you don’t first crack a joke to Mr. President, to put him in a good mood, soften him up a little before announcing that his time is up,  his ass is now grass, because he has just been deposed. 

I like this expression : “To know him is to love him”

The expression is seldom “To know her is to love her “

 that kind of inevitability, perhaps because when it comes

 to “ her”,  to know her has implications of e.g Adam having

 knowledge of Eve, by loving her - as in that Percy Sledge song 

When a Man Loves  a Woman 

More seriously, if to know x , then x must be true, I daresay I know for a fact that some of Professor Okafor’s latest misgivings expressed herein have been severally (almost wrote "severely") addressed by Baba Kadiri in an epistle he posted to this thread two days ago, an epistle which has yet to see the light of day in this thread perhaps due to a technical glitch or a / the moderator’s instinctual oversight / sensitive supervisory censorship objections to what could be some “controversial” elements in the contents of Baba Kadiri's discourse - in this our day of freedom (of responsible speech). But having discussed the matter with him last night, I can assure you all (family) that there's nothing in the contents of Baba Kadiri's submission that falls short of speaking truth to power and perhaps thereby inadvertently ruffling a few peacock feathers of some erstwhile top military brass, among others. 

I do not intend to steal any of his thunder and in fact nobody else could possibly re-present what Baba Kadiri has said in that as yet unpublished posting in that Baba Kadiri’s inimitable way of presenting  some truths sometimes in their utter, stark nakedness So I’m kindly requesting that the moderator, whoever he  or she believes himself or herself to be, to  please release Baba Kadiri's submission form detention / solitary confinement and without further ado post what baba kadiri wrote, pronto  -to keep this democratic discussion going. I am particularly incensed about this as his enlightening submission was in fact in response to my previous post in this thread.

Food for thought : 

Albert Einstein's Life Lessons Men Learn Too Late In Life

Like everybody else, I’m sad about the passing away of Biodun Jeyifo.. 

Among his academic laurels and legacies, his interviews ….

We all / all of us know  or are at least familiar with The Trouble With Nigeria …

That was also a good series The Achebe Foundation Interviews 

Here’s a good signpost on which to pin this discussion :The Achebe Foundation Interviews #19: General Muhammadu Buhari through which we may observe the tension between knowing what’s right and sometimes falling short of carrying it through when we are in office/ in power to fully do so 

At this point I'd say that ostensibly the West (not “The Wild West” “ is pleased with Brer Tinubu & The First Lady as indicated by they’re being invited to dinner at the White House, and next week  they will be having dinner with King Charles at Buckingham Palace and writing postcards to Peter Obi saying “ Wish you were here” 

 “May you live in interesting times” is certainly holding true for all of us as it’s obviously getting more and more interesting, as the plot thickens.  I’m afraid that the crucible that is currently Nigeria’s complex security/ insecurity situation has just been compounded by this main news item in yesterday's BBC Focus on Africa : US Bill on Religious Persecution in Nigeria  which I’m sure this forum is going to be discussing for the rest of the year. About yesterday's BBC programme , I’d just like to add that some of us ( inkling me) are well pleased with what a very balanced Makouchi Okafor said in yesterday's BBC Focus on Africa  to the extent that in what he said so succinctly in those few given minutes he was obviously also speaking on behalf of yours truly.