Nigeria’s exclusion from Donald Trump’s parley gratifying

The Nigeria’s exclusion from a list of African countries meeting with United States President Donald Trump to discuss the so called commercial opportunities is not only welcoming but also upstanding giving the unraveling new world order. President Donald Trump announced that he will host five African leaders at the White House to discuss “commercial opportunities”  […]

The Nigeria’s exclusion from a list of African countries meeting with United States President Donald Trump to discuss the so called commercial opportunities is not only welcoming but also upstanding giving the unraveling new world order.

President Donald Trump announced that he will host five African leaders at the White House to discuss “commercial opportunities”  The countries are Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal.

In the dispensation prior to Trump’s emergence, this diplomatic gesture from America would have been a golden bilateral opportunity for these countries to strengthen their diplomatic relations and transcontinental trade with the United States.

However and most unfortunately, what the world is dealing with is an interregnum of foreign policy meltdowns contrived and exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s impertinent treatment of leaders of sovereign nations with execrable diplomatic candor and an aura of superiority complex.

After the presidents of Ukraine and South Africa were served with a dose of diplomatic ignominy in the ambush well orchestrated by the White House and made a spectacle for the world to see, it would amount to self effacing tourism of a preposterous proportion for any African President to honour a bilateral parley with Trump however the benign nature of the invitation.

Trump’s bully tactics and lack of diplomatic etiquette coupled with his terrorising trade tariffs have distanced many allied countries from the United States.

For those critics haranguing the president for not being invited by Trump, it’s time they examined their sense of patriotism and national pride.

Rather than sucking up to America and her new found demagoguery diplomacy, African countries and especially Nigeria should look inward and fix the structural headwinds vitiating their economic growth.

For instance concerted efforts must be led by the president to tackle the bogus oil revenue forecasts as a basis for reckless budgetary insertions by the National Assembly. 

The task to recalibrate the budget is urgent and more important than the window-dressing facade of putting up an appearance with Donald Trump in a discourteous meeting meant to “Make America Great Again”

Recall that the combined GDP of the five African countries invited by Trump is less or almost at par with Lagos State’s GDP. These countries may still be having a misconception of what America has morphed into expecting any diplomatic handout from Donald Trump.

In a trajectory that seeks to fulfill an electoral promise the US now stokes a zero-sumness foreign policy that hardly brooks “live and let live.”. It’s either you are seen to be advancing the U.S interest or you are treated as inconsequential.

On Thursday, US Secretary Of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. was abandoning what he called charity- based foreign aid model and would favour those nations that demonstrate “both the ability and willingness to help themselves”.

With a budget replete with misaligned insertions by the National Assembly and oil revenue projections falling below the benchmark, Nigeria needs an expedited executive intervention. This would do the nation more good than a worthless flight of fancy overseas in pursuit of a self deprecatory diplomacy.

 

ESV Bukola Ajisola can be reached via [email protected]