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AVOID CONFRONTATION WITH TRUMP – EX-NIIA DG ADVISES TINUBU
A Professor of Political Science and former Director-General, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Bolaji Akinyemi, has advised President Bola Tinubu to avoid confrontation with the newly inaugurated 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump.
Akinyemi gave this advice on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Monday.
“If I were President Tinubu, I would try to steer clear of antagonising him because there is nothing a bully likes more than taking on people who are not strong enough to resist him.
“You know there is that African proverb that if you are not strong enough to take on a bully and you challenge him, you will only suffer more for it.
“That’s the advice I would give President Tinubu: try to avoid having a confrontation with him, even if that means he does things that annoy or step on the interests of Nigeria. There are ways in which you could address his actions without confrontation,” he said.
The university don, who is a former Director General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs. NIIA, described Trump’s inaugural speech as uninspiring, shocking, and depressing.
According to him, rather than rallying the world for peace, Trump used his speech to threaten the rest of the world with a bouquet of hostile policies, including taking back the Panama Canal, renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, and engaging in tariff wars, among others.
Akinyemi said the US president would soon learn that there are repercussions to policies and jingoism, stressing that the world is in for a rough ride during the four years of the Trump presidency.
The former Nigerian Minister of External Affairs said Nigeria is no longer a focus for the 78-year-old most powerful president, and that Africa’s most populous nation should not expect anything extraordinary from the Trump presidency.
Donald Trump was sworn in as president on Monday, succeeding Joe Biden, four years after an electoral defeat that truncated his second-term ambition
