By Kolawole Ojebisi
Elder statesman and former minister of foreign affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, has advised President Bola Tinubu to be wary of adopting confrontational approach in issues involving the newly inaugurated President of the United States, Donald Trump.
Akinyemi spoke on Channels Television Politics Today hours after the inauguration of Trump as the 47th US president on Monday.
Akinyemi, a distinguished Political Science scholar of international repute and one time Director General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs(NIIA) )advised Tinubu on how to deal with the US president on issues that involve Nigeria’s strategic national interests.
He said: “If I were President Tinubu, I would try to steer clear of antagonising him because there is nothing a bully likes better 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 take him on, you are just even going to suffer more for it.
“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 stated.
Akinyemi who described Trump’s inaugural speech as “shocking and depressing,” added that the world is “in for a rough ride” due to his policies, including tariffs, for four years.
Trump, the 47th US president, was sworn in on Monday in Washington, DC. In his inaugural speech, he promised to deport millions of “criminal aliens,” who illegally gain entry into America.
“All illegal entries will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions of millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.
“We will reinstate my ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy,” he added, vowing to “rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America”, he said.
Trump also said he would end the “weaponisation” of the justice department, vowing that “the scale of justice will be rebalanced”.
In 2018, Trump was alleged to have said African countries, alongside Haiti and El Salvador, constituted ‘shitholes’ where “undesirable migrants” were coming from into the US.
He however denied the claim adding that he has high regard for Nigerians. In December 2024, former President Olusegun Obasanjo said Trump must accord Africans due respect and dignity as he was about to assume leadership of the White House.
Obasanjo said it was time to prove to Trump that what he called a “shithole” was not it, noting that America has an enlightened interest in Africa.
