By Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja
Your Excellency, President of the United States of America (USA),
By way of introduction, my name is Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja. I am a lawyer and previously a member of the International Law Section, Federal Bar Association (FBA), Capitol Hill Chapter, Washington, DC, USA.
Between the years 2014 to 2018, I regularly attended the bi-annual international conference on legislation and law reform of the FBA Capitol Hill Chapter. The venue was at the World Bank Centre, Washington, DC, USA.
In addition to my practice as an international lawyer, as part of my undergraduate Bachelor of Laws (LLB) programme, I studied International Law for one full year between 2001/2002.
One of the basic rules of International Law is pacta sunt servanda (agreements must be respected), which is the very basis of International Law itself.
In other words, International Law is that regime of law that arose and arises when countries and other actors on the international plane enter into a legally binding agreement.
In other words, there must be a consensus or meeting of minds (ad idem) before any rule of International Law becomes binding upon the parties.
So, flowing from the foregoing, the question arises: at what point did the Federal Government of Nigeria formally solicit to be added to the list of 13 AFRICAN COUNTRIES to receive $93m Food Aid?
At what point did the Federal Government of Nigeria even admit or declare that we have a shortage of food for our 230,000,000 population?
We are waiting for your anticipated prompt and positive responses because we have just read online that your government has added us to the list of African Countries to receive food aid, https://www.thecable.ng/nigeria-among-13-african-nations-selected-for-93m-us-food-aid-scheme/
How did the Government of the USA reach the said conclusion? Didn’t you read that we recently doled out $100,000 as a gift to each player of our female football and basketball teams?
Can any country that can afford such a humongous amount of money be classified as in need of food aid?
Yours faithfully,
Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja,
10th August 2025.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
Funny how we give athletes $100k each, yet America says we need food aid. Maybe they only checked poverty figures, but shouldn’t they also look at how we spend our money?