Nigeria risks losing vital global influence due to its weak diplomatic posture, a U.S.-based professor of international politics, Mojubaolu Okome, has warned, urging the Tinubu administration to treat President Donald Trump’s recent military threats as a serious national security concern.
Speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria in New York, Prof. Okome said the escalating security crisis at home and the increasingly tense international reactions require Nigeria to adopt a far more assertive diplomatic strategy. According to her, while Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous and should be openly condemned, it must not be dismissed as mere bluster.
Okome, a veteran scholar of geopolitics and Distinguished Higher Ed Ambassador for the Council on Foreign Relations Education Programme, said Nigeria’s diminishing diplomatic visibility has weakened its global sovereignty posture. She argued that this vacuum is part of the reason foreign actors now feel emboldened to issue threats.
She also criticised Nigerians who are calling for foreign intervention, describing such appeals as unrealistic and rooted in a misunderstanding of global power politics.
“The reason I’m saying America has no business in Nigeria is out of actual understanding of international politics and geopolitics,” she said, adding that the United States intervenes only when it stands to gain.
According to her, Washington’s interests are clear: access to Nigeria’s rare-earth minerals, more favourable oil terms, and the opportunity to establish a military base—an outcome she said would be “a major win for Donald Trump.”
“How do we expect magnanimity from somebody who has actually spoken so terribly about Black people?” she asked. “He hates Black people. He thinks we are a ‘shit-hole’ country.”
Prof. Okome also faulted successive Nigerian governments for failing to take insecurity seriously until international pressure escalates. She argued that the sudden urgency displayed by officials followed Trump’s incendiary warning that he would “rain hellfire” if Nigeria did not address alleged religious killings.
“They did not pay any attention until Trump said he’s going to rain hellfire,” she said.
The scholar urged the Nigerian government to stop outsourcing responsibility for its national security to foreign powers.
“Acting out of desperation and saying that America is the saviour is a mistake. Let Nigeria take charge of its own business,” she said.
