Hakeem Baba-Ahmed is a former Special Adviser on Political Affairs to President Bola Tinubu. In this interview, he speaks on President Donald Trump’s rage against the Nigerian government over alleged persecution of Christians and the implications for the country, among other issues, ANAYO EZUGWU reports

What’s your reaction to the position of President Trump on the killings in Nigeria?

I’m shock and disappointment. I’m shocked that even a president as unpredictable and unconventional as Trump would contemplate those utterances and threats he had made against a country like Nigeria. You would have thought that people would have said to him to be careful; this is not the kind of position we need to adopt against a country like Nigeria. We need to check the intelligence we have. We need to be careful about the kind of utterances and threats we issue.

And perhaps we need some kind of engagement first before we come really hard on a leadership which is very weak in a country that is already on its knees. If America succeeds in creating the worst situation in Nigeria, everybody will pay the price for it. This is a very delicate situation.

And the worst thing we want is a falling out with America. We’ve been friends. We’re allies. We’ve come a long way with each other. We’ve never had a quarrel between us. This is the time when the U.S. should stand by Nigeria and ask us what we can do, so that it can help.

You make the point that the situation has been consistently there. The U.S., perhaps, has run out of patience with Nigeria and therefore taken this hard line position…

I’m afraid it’s not exactly the case. The Nigerian circumstance hasn’t remained static. If you go back to 2009, when the first uprising of Boko Haram occurred and to where we are today, the mutation of some of these problems and also the addition of new challenges has changed the face of this conflict entirely. So, we’re not really talking about the same Nigeria. Nigeria today is dramatically different from Nigeria of even 10 years ago because the situation is direr.

The challenges are more serious, the threats are more varied and the sources of these threats are more varied. I mean, the only thing that has been consistent all along is that we have had bad leaders going as far back as perhaps after President Umaru Yar’Adua. All through the last 15 years, this country has been poorly led.

Everything that happens to this country, you can visit it on the doorstep of our leadership. Nigeria is a great country and great people, which has been poorly served by bad and indifferent leaders. So, if America feels, we’re running out of patience, Nigerians would never get their acts together.

Nigeria is a great country with great people but has been poorly served by bad and indifferent leaders

It will continue this business of just saying, hey guys, there are enemies on your doorsteps and we don’t like them. And therefore they burst in and say we’ll fix this country. America will not fix Nigeria. The last thing we need is America breathing down our neck and making Nigeria weak because we can buckle under.

That is not good for this country. Nigeria holds a huge strategic position in West Africa and Africa. It’s not the kind of country where you have a president who is used to getting his way or who will say bring Nigeria on the table, I’ll deal with it the way I want to. And then, the language of Americans is not very encouraging.

The intelligence, the statistics, there are grounds for this action. It does not indicate that you’re dealing with a well-informed leadership that recognizes the fact that they are dealing with a very complex country. So, I’m afraid the truth is the Americans haven’t done justice for themselves either. So, when you put all these things together, I think the point is that the door was opened by our leaders.

We are where we are today because our leaders have failed us. President Tinubu has failed us. The president before him for eight years, did nothing about the increasing place of insecurity in our lives. The president before him hasn’t done much either. And here we are. Friends that should be saying to us, what can we do, are now saying to us, fix yourselves or we’ll fix you.

You have outlined the fact that poor leadership has worsened the situation, and if you’re not somebody who’s really prominent, you can’t hope to get justice in this country. On what basis can we continue this way?

There is no basis and we shouldn’t continue like this. We shouldn’t. We should blow the whistle. The best way you can read the U.S. position is that it starts as a wake-up call.

If we had lived with killers of all types in the South-East in IPOB; in the North-East in the Boko Haram and in ISWAP; in the North-West where you have the bandits, in the North Central where you have the people who say they are Fulani herders, killing people and then being killed. It’s enough. Nigerians need to sit up and say to our leader, it’s enough.

In the process of that sitting up and talking to our leader, how do you think the leader should react now at this very critical point in this country’s history?

I offered an opinion on social media and I said I’m shocked that President Tinubu has still not spoken to Nigerians. I mean, as a leader, talking to the people he leads. And it’s really shocking. I posted that tweet, I think three days ago and as we speak, the President hasn’t deemed it necessary to sit in front of the camera and say to Nigerians, I understand the situation in which we are.

There’s a huge quarrel that has broken out. Muslims are saying, they’re coming after us. Christians are saying, yes, they are welcome. And people are afraid. They are scared. We think that things are going to get worse.

And they will get worse. If America does undertake any activity that weakens this country further, it’s not doing justice to Christians or Muslims. So, we’re in a very bad situation. You would have thought a president would say, what does it take for President Tinubu to address the country? These are citizens, for goodness sake.

He’s our leader. We elected him. What does it take to get this president to say, fellow Nigerians, I understand the situation. This is regrettable. We are going to take the following steps. In relation to the U.S., we’ll take these steps. In relation to the insurgency and the killings and everything, we’re going to take these steps. What’s wrong with that? That’s what leaders do.

For two or three lives, we know countries where the president leaves what he’s doing, comes and sits down and speaks directly to citizens. Our president has not spoken to Nigerians. It’s not as if public’s address to your citizens is anathema. What’s wrong with the presidency? It’s almost like you have nothing to say to them. Or you have nothing to say to them. That is a terrible thing.

Are you struck by the fact that the Nigerian government acts as if these warnings from the U.S. amount to insults and attacks against it?

Let’s say if the Americans needed advice, and if I were to advise the President from day one, I would have said, your language should be very carefully chosen. Your intelligence should be sound, strong, and profound. And your engagement strategies should be really well thought through. On all three counts, he didn’t do that. So, even Americans themselves, if that is the right thing to have done, threatened Nigeria and say, get your ass together or we’ll get it for you done, they didn’t do it very well.

This is the country of Muslims and Christians. So, this persistent tenor that we’re going to free our Christian brothers and all these things, it plays into the hands of those who are saying they don’t care. I think this point needed to have been there consistently from day one. And what it does is that it sort of dilutes the strength of the case that the Americans are making.

I just read that the U.S. hasn’t been able to get the numbers it needed to get Nigeria listed as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) and that tells you one thing, that it’s quite possible that Trump is isolated on this position. But let’s focus on Nigeria. We have let the door open. We need to fix ourselves.

Only Nigerians can do this. No one else can do this for us. We need to get angry enough and tired enough of this kind of leadership to say to President Tinubu, fix insecurity now or forget 2027. It’s a perfectly legitimate thing to say to the president. If we didn’t say anything before, we should say it now. This is enough. We’re fighting. We’ve let enough blood out. Criminals and killers now think Nigeria is a free fall. We are not and we’re tired. It should stop.

Are you encouraged by the fact that discussions are happening in the U.S. Congress about targeted sanctions, not against Nigeria as a country, but against individuals such as politicians and military chiefs, who they accuse of enabling the violence or corruption?

Absolutely! If the Americans or anybody outside Nigeria has evidence that there are Nigerians who are actually directly or even indirectly involved in escalating the insecurity, please get these people. And they should do more. If you have evidence that people are stealing our money and bringing it to your country, stop it.

If you have evidence that people have stolen elections and they come to your country for holidays and they’re buying homes, stop them. If they steal our money and they send their children to your country, stop it. Stop giving them visas. These are the ways in which they can help us.

If we have problems with our military and intelligence, help us. You’re America, you can help us. But this battle has to be fought by Nigerians because Nigerians have suffered long enough and we can fix this. But the first thing we need to do is to fix the leadership and the best way Americans can help us is to hold our leaders, the same way we’re doing, accountable for what’s going on.

And again, let me repeat, any hostile act that makes Nigerians weaker is actually jeopardizing the recovery of the country. It’s not good for Nigeria; it’s not good for America and it’s not good for the world. This is a country on the edge. It should not be pushed further.

Do you think this unprecedented global attention could force change in this country, and is that something you are hoping for?

Whether we like it or not, we are living in a global village to use a very popular cliche. I mean, the world knows our situation, which is the reason why those who really are concerned about what’s going on in this country know that there are attempts by interests to take over part of Nigeria, part of Chad, part of Cameroon, part of Niger and turn it into the global headquarters of terror. Those in intelligence circles know this. I’m saying this publicly now. A lot of people know this.

President Tinubu has failed us. The president before him, for eight years, did nothing about the increasing place of insecurity in our lives

We must never allow that kind of thing to happen. We don’t want to live under ISWAP. We don’t want to live under Boko Haram. We don’t want to live under Lakurawa.

We don’t want to live under IPOB. America has been our friend, for goodness sake. The point I’m making is we shouldn’t fall out. This is the time when a real friend will come over and say, listen, this thing has gone on for too long.

What can we do? And there’s a lot that Americans can do for us. For instance, they can sanction our leaders, but making life more difficult for ordinary citizens or taking on Nigeria in a hostile manner or setting us up against each other is the last thing the Americans need to do.

What about the fact that we have been doing it to ourselves given that Nigeria has a Muslim president and a Muslim vice president in a country where there’s always been balance?

It would be interesting if you know what the Muslims say. What is the point of having a Muslim president and a Muslim vice president if Muslims are dying in these numbers? Well, they could say, in fairness, if you want to be fair, you could say those people were elected. So, Nigerians were given a choice elect a Muslim ticket, or elect a Christian ticket. Well, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that President Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima are elected people.

But I agree with you. The optics suggests for those who don’t like it, that this is a country dominated by Muslims. But we’re a country of people who count on our finger how many generals in the recent changes are Christians and how many are Muslim. This is a country of Muslims and Christians and that is the reason why we should raise our levels of sensitivity in everything we do.

Inclusion must be a key element of everything in Nigeria. And we should stop this business of saying more of us have been killed; every single life that we have lost matters. It doesn’t matter who it is. Now, the final point is that Nigerians need to get a little bit angry and not violent but we need to be angry with our leaders.

They’ve taken us for granted for too long. We have lived with this insecurity for too long. You change service chiefs, change a few generals here and there, move them around, and nothing happens. They will come back again in 2027, and the same people will come back. No, it has to stop. A leader that cannot secure his people has no business leading them. And I think we need to tell these current leaders, fix insecurity now, or in 2027, we’ll reject you.

We’ve seen a lot of defections from the opposition parties to the ruling party. Do you think the legality of the defections should be tested, or should we just shrug our shoulders, resign ourselves to it, and perhaps wait for when Donald Trump might decide to set his sights on the defection mania in the country?

I’ll tell you the truth. I’m amazed that nobody has really taken this issue of defections all the way to the judicial process. I don’t know. If it’s been done, but I believe that this is a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed. Do you elect a person, or do you elect a person on this party, or do you give the party the mandate?

This is very important. That needs to be rigorously interrogated because it is very important for us. In any case, politicians who are defecting to APC suggest only one thing; that the Nigerian political system is broken. The transactional nature of Nigerian politics is poisonous.

It’s all about money as people are running away from being prosecuted because they have committed one crime or another. That is the simple truth and it comes back to the issue we were talking about.

Should we trust these people with another four-year mandate to continue to run this country aground?

Actually, I’m not as helpless and hopeless as a lot of people are. Maybe, I’m just wishing something, that somewhere along the line between now and 2027, Nigerians will rise against this kind of leadership. If between now and 2027, all the things that have been going on, the threats, the quarrels that we have, the scare and everything, a foreign country says, Nigeria, get your acts together or we will come over and fix it for you. That’s an insult for a country like Nigeria.

That’s enough to get us to say we caused it. And the killings haven’t stopped. The simple thing, like President Tinubu talking to citizens, we’re begging for it. We’re saying, Mr. President, what’s going on? Talk to us, not the Minister of Foreign Affairs, not the Minister of Information, not your media people.

We have to beg for our President and we’re saying to him, don’t go to the US. They will humiliate you. Don’t go. Even if they invite you, don’t go. Stay here and fix this country. So, like I said, it sounds hard, but that is the simple truth. If all Nigerians or most Nigerians can agree, let’s draw a line. If this President doesn’t fix insecurity in a year, then we turn our backs on him. And no one should cease to assume to get our votes unless he gives us one promise.

That he will get rid of all these killers all over the country, wherever they are and that he will secure the lives of every Nigerian, Christian, Muslim, Northern or Southern. The priorities should be curbing of corruption, giving young Nigerians faith in their country, so that they can grow up as citizens of a country worth respecting. I think it can be done and it must be done because the failure of Nigeria is unimaginable in terms of its crisis.