Bolaji Akinyemi, a foremost professor of political science has called on President Bola Tinubu to avoid confrontation with the newly sworn-in 47th President of the United States (US), Donald Trump.

Speaking on Monday evening on Channels Television’s Politics Today program, Akinyemi urges the Nigerian President to try to avoid antagonizing President Trump as there is nothing a bully likes better than taking on people who are not strong enough to resist him.

According to him, an African proverb says if you are not strong enough to take on a bully and you take him on, you are just going to suffer more for it.

The former Director General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), faulted the inaugural speech of Trump as uninspiring, shocking and depressing.

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The octogenarian said rather than rallying the world for peace, Trump took time to threaten the rest of the world with a bouquet of hostile policies including tacking back the Panama Canal, renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, tariff wars, and others.

The former Nigerian Minister of External Affairs said Nigeria is out of the focus on the most powerful president and that Africa’s most populous nation should not expect anything extraordinary from the Trump presidency.

“That’s the advice I will give President Tinubu: try and avoid having a confrontation with him even if that means that he does things that annoy or does things that step on the interests of Nigeria.

“There are ways in which you could address his reaction without confrontation,” he said.