By SUNNY IKHIOYA

President Donald Trump of the United States of America means different things to different people. You either hate him or like him, but he is consistent with whatever position he holds. In just one month in power, he has succeeded in rocking the whole world. Every single country of the world is calculating and mapping out containment strategies of the consequences his actions and policies will bring. Whether he will succeed in imposing the US hegemony on the world, we will know before his four-year tenure expires. 

I am not a fan of Trump, but with the LGBT thing, I believe the previous regimes have taken it too far, causing severe moral decadence and fouling the whole world space. In all of these, how do we factor-in Nigeria? With the USAID and WHO exit, a reasonable number of our elite and aid workers will find themselves out of job; and they will do all within their means to kowtow and to pamper Trump, including his allies, to rescind his decisions. But have we not said it here severally that our solution lies in looking inward both in our medicine, technology, food or even politics? 

The day we decide that we can do it on our own will begin the turnaround. There are other things I believe we can learn from Trump, and that concerns strong leadership. We must try to treat relationships with others from the position of strength, both in the leadership and what we can offer the other party. Presently, we cannot exactly say what the Nigerian foreign policy is. It used to be Africa as the centre point; but with the way the AU and ECOWAS are being tossed around, one cannot say where we stand. For me, our policy must begin with Nigeria first and reciprocal actions to guide relationships. If you treat us well, we treat you well and vice-versa. 

If we agree on this, we can begin to study the Trump model of containing the US borders with neighbours. If you look at our relationships with our neighbours and African brothers, it has been a one-sided affair; Nigeria gives to everyone from South Africa, East Africa, Central Africa to West Africa. Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, Zimbabwe and all the rest of them have been beneficiaries at one time or the other. We had given and continue to give, but what do we get in return? Disrespect, betrayal, and outright rejection. 

We need leadership that will make Nigeria great again. We must have a leadership that will negotiate not out of fear but that of reciprocal respect. One with a strong voice that will be backed with action. We have opened up our country to all comers, with vile and negative cultures. People come in and go into our forests to mine precious minerals without control. They come in, go into our places of worship, and preach vulgar sermons that disunite us, and we give them royal passages. 

In the name of foreign aids, people come in and indoctrinate our people with strange religious doctrines that make brothers fight against themselves, and we do nothing about it. We offer safe passage to foreign itinerant preachers to walk in and do whatever they want, and we do nothing about them. We accept them in the name of religious brothers and tribal consanguinity; they cause horrible havoc and terrible setback to our country’s development. 

This is why we need a strong president like Donald Trump who will match his words with action. We pay the highest dues in ECOWAS and the African Union, yet we do not get the commensurate compensation. That has to change. 

With the coming of Trump and the wave of nationalism blowing through the world, countries are looking inward for their survival. We must take a very strong stand on foreign invaders coming into the country to cause destability in our land. We must do so with a strong stance against countries that are allowing terrorists through their borders into Nigeria. We must properly arm our border patrol troops to successfully repel these foreign invaders, including proper sensitising and intelligence backups. 

When Trump announced sanctions against neighbour countries like Mexico and Canada, people thought it was a joke. Now, the countries are negotiating with the US on the way forward. Mexico has agreed to mass 10,000 troops at their border with the US to stop the massive movement of illegal migrants into the USA. Canada is also toeing the same line, amongst other measures that will be put in place. That is the solution I am advocating for our country’s borders. 

We are a great people with strong resilience. All that is required is the leadership to give direction and set proper examples. If you look at our borders and what has been happening there all these years, you will find compromised neighbours, either through the aid of bandits and terrorists or through their help of illegal smuggling, especially of petroleum products. The naira appears to be the weakest currency in the region now, such that artisan foreigners that flocked the country in the past have all left, leaving behind the dangerous ones like armed herders and the like. 

We must spell out what we want for Nigeria as a nation and allow this to sink into our neighbours and all foreigners. That it is the survival of Nigeria first before any other interest. We lack integration as a people, and the way to change this to begin to sensitise our people so that they can easily identify foreign threats. The time to do this is now with President Tinubu, firmly in control and with the backing of governors and the security agencies. If we want this country to survive as a nation, we must all begin to think in the same direction that will benefit and unite us. 

Only a strong president can bring this into reality, the one with a human face who can easily rally the people towards a common beneficial goal. Let no one deceive himself. The sufferings that the people endured these past years are supposed to be yielding the required results. It is time to come out of the bend.