Trump-Tinubu fiasco: What’s really at play?

Many saw it coming. Now the turn of Nigeria, unsurprisingly, after South Africa got its own fair share a few months ago of what some have come to describe as ‘Trump’s global shifts and power dynamics’. President Donald Trump, who, through his multiple actions, is always trying to prove he is a master in setting the menu and deciding who gets to eat – at least from inference of his relationship with the rest of the world so far, called out the Nigerian government and sounded as if he is out for blood holding our leaders feet to the fire, a move that immediately thereafter appeared to be yielding material impacts.

As the nation threads the needle, President Tinubu’s administration has now got a real fight on its hands and probably for the first time since his presidency, appears to act in a manner to suggest to Nigerians that there is need for urgency in tackling this menace a little more responsibly and definitively and act decisively than past approaches have been since the deadly security scourge commenced in various parts of the country. Hopefully, our government will successfully pull back the curtains and, for the very first time, expose the hidden secrets behind these heinous atrocities for all Nigerians to know.

Expectedly, there has been a wave of reactions to Trump’s address. A section of the nation quickly frowned at President Trump’s riot act to President Tinubu’s administration, characterising it as a needless gush punch on the jaw of not only the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but on the entire citizenry.

To them, his actions are over the top – capable of crushing the spirit of the people, and it does not get much worse, claiming the execution of his threat, if he ever does, would be an affront on the collective will of the people and an infringement of our territory’s sovereignty. Nonetheless, several other folks see it differently. To these set of people, it is viewed as a crucial development and warmly welcome the expression of disapproval from Trump while making the argument that it is intolerable and disheartening that it will take the President of America to catalyse our leaders and security agencies to appearing to want to sit up to face headlong, the bane of security vulnerabilities in this country which stem from the failures of leadership over the years.

For the average Nigerian, however, the immediate response is far more optimistic: earnestly hoping that Trump’s rhetoric remains what they pray it will be – pure sentimentality and grandiloquence. Nigerians will be fortunate if this is the case. However, even though many see him as often being performative, the danger is that it may escalate if what the world has come to know about the irrationality of the American leader is anything to go by. This makes it rather more concerning for tons of folks, although the legality of some of his actions has come under severe scrutiny – rightly or wrongly.

It is not a story anymore that Nigeria, of late, has featured prominently in the big news out of Washington with President Trump and a few of his allies – US elected representatives ranging from senators to house of representatives, speaking about the “Genocide of Christians” and justifying the designation of Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern”. In actual fact, many analysts have accentuated how the entire narrative is really much more complicated than it appears – and I could not agree more with this assertion. To their credit, many commentators have adduced a mixture of reasons, many of which have been as chilling as they are painful, as the likely reason(s) underlying the ‘threat’ issued to the Nigerian government, and I must emphasise that whilst I may not agree with a few, it is hard to diminish many of the valuable insights.

Nevertheless, there is one in particular that I genuinely think may be striking at the core of Trump’s anger towards Nigeria’s leadership. Whereas no one can discount the senseless and sustained killings of many Christians – many in record numbers have been slaughtered – tragically by these Islamic terrorists and bandits – we should not forget that unsuspecting Moslems are also targeted as there have been media reports of the ridiculous massacre of some Muslim clerics and many followers of Islam by these same dastardly gangs, nonetheless, I am inclined to think that Trump’s remark, “If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killings of Christian…..”, is possibly at best, a bait – merely a means to achieve a predetermined goal.

If you ask me, the crux of the matter has far more to do with global economic advantages. The ongoing economic and trade duel between the US and China has been anything short of dramatic, and I can see attempts by Trump to bring Nigeria into the fray. A well-known proverb: “When two elephants fight, the grass suffers” – the grass in this instance is Nigeria, which by all accounts is a vulnerable bystander. Against all speculations, China has stood uncompromisingly firm and maximised its advantage. A proverb in Yoruba says, “Kikere labere nkere, ki nse mimi f’adiye”- literal meaning – A needle might be small, it cannot be swallowed by a cock or hen. China is proving this proverb right.

In comparison, Trump’s America may view China as little less economically – China runs more of an export-dependent economy largely relying on the US that also accounts roughly for 40 percent of the world’s consumption (of every ten dollars spent globally, four dollars are spent in the US while China and the rest of the world share the balance, even though America’s population is just about 4 percent of the world’s population) but the US has struggled to ‘swallow China’ – all thanks to the use of what seems to be its only competitive advantage: rare earth minerals, with which it rules and controls a massive percent of global supply chain with Africa reported to being a significant source of these assets for it, and has used this effectually as a bargaining chip to make the most populous communist nation come out with a great deal with the US in South Korea recently, a deal Trump himself called “a win-win”.

At a time when Trump is pushing to circumvent China, counter its dominance in the rare earth ecosystem and stamp America’s authority as the pivotal economy in the world, he has not hidden his disdain for why China would have a monopoly of these extremely crucial mineral assets which are critical raw materials for economic sectors such as defence and aeropspace, medicals, electronics, green energy, etc, and has been aggressively seeking new partnerships. Remarkably, $8.5 billion rare earth deal with Australia was recently signed, Trump hosted five presidents of countries in Central Asia, where talks on rare earth deals featured prominently, and there were claims that he struck major rare earth deals with countries in Southeast Asia during his recent trip. The reality, to my mind, is that the timing of his blow-up on Nigeria echoes loud the thought pattern of President Trump on these consequential capital and for a vast majority of discerning Nigerians that are paying attention, it’s not lost on them.

As I see it, could the outburst by Trump against Nigeria and our leaders signal an extension of his economic and trade fight against China to the shores of Nigeria and the key focal point: Nigeria’s rare earth minerals? Questions have been asked, why not Trump negotiate with Nigeria when he is busy doing that all over Asia? The answers perhaps lie in what some suggest about the ‘frosty relationship’ between him and Tinubu, in which President Tinubu has travelled about a dozen times to France since his presidency, but could only send Vice President Shettima to UNGA 80, when numerous heads of state and governments seized the opportunity to engage in bilateral meetings on the sidelines with Trump at the event.

There is a long history of our minerals being fraudulently carted away in ‘Gestapo fashion’ by foreigners in collusion with some government officials without accountability, and it is difficult for our government to deny it. Sadly, our government officials are quick to finger-point and give reasons that are, to say the least, feeble and shallow when confronted with the wide-range condonement of the evils being perpetrated by these foreigners, many of whom have been reported to be Chinese nationals, which is akin to allowing them to do the exact same thing a broad section of people portray Trump’s proposed humanitarian intervention will achieve: infringement on our sovereignty.

Even though experts recognise that we have significant reserves of these mineral assets, the lack of official data and the manner in which much of these assets are stolen – high-level conspiratorial sophistication on a scale never seen before- makes it difficult to quantify how much of our collective patrimony has been stolen over the years. Amidst efforts, at a short notice, to hurriedly make concrete attempts to dig the country out of the hole these insurgencies have left us for an untold period, the question I genuinely think many concerned Nigerians are asking is: are our government handlers not aware of how China relied almost exclusively on rare earth metals to hammer out a deal with the US and equate their actions of allowing several of these foreign nationals maintain unlawful footprints and fraudulently tap these same assets as the most nonsensical thing?

The question of Christian genocide is a subject matter of vigorous and heated debate, albeit my esteemed professor, senior friend, noted that the Benue and Plateau states’ mindless killings get close to a genocide. Nevertheless, Trump’s brouhaha, which many see as possibly going to have swift consequences, paints an entirely different picture for me: Could the “Christian genocide” claim be a decoy and part of a playbook of what Peter Navarro, senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing to Trump, said recently, “I think history will show that Communist Chinese is in tremendous favour by weaponising rare earths and their supply chains and basically reminding everybody in this country and around the world their mission is world domination…and we used to be the king of rare earths, they took it from us……and we gonna solve that problem a lot quicker….we gonna get the job done”?

Is part of getting the job done this economic chess aimed at checkmating the growing rare earths strength of China, using Nigeria’s humongous mineral base as the battleground? The truth will be revealed in time!

Ande, a financial and political economy analyst, writes from Lagos and can be reached via [email protected]