Opinion
The Americans Are Coming
The Americans are coming and Nigerians are running helter-skelter, clawing at each other. In the space of a week, every Nigerian—Muslim, Christian, non-affiliate—has become a religious Voltron and a foreign policy expert. In the storm of public commentaries, “expert” analysis and social media expressions, it became clear that we are not listening to each other. We are, both Muslims and Christians alike, more spurred by emotions than reason. This emotive state of the nation made me quite reluctant to even address this issue because I doubt there will be any sort of objective reading of any kind of opinion. But in the end, these are issues that must be addressed.
I will try to avoid issues that have been over-analysed across several fora in the last few days. At this point, it doesn’t seem like any Nigerian can be convinced one way or the other whether there is a “Christian genocide” or not, as not many people are willing to change their opinion on this.
So, I will start by acknowledging that even a broken clock is right at least twice a day, and in all his rants, US President Donald Trump may be wrong about many things, but he is right on one issue—labelling Nigeria a “disgraced country.”
What country with any self-worth allows itself to be disgraced by a bunch of rag-tag groups of terrorists, criminals, militias, militants, gunmen, looters and every scallywag with balls? What sort of resource-and-population-rich country allows itself to be in a position to be threatened with the withholding of foreign aid or “military action” by a foreign power over a rascally lot we should have efficiently dealt with years ago?
Our ancestors said one should not look to where one fell but at where one tripped. There have been a series of mistakes and oversights that have got us to this point where our sovereignty is being dragged through the mud of the international village square. We caused it. Our governments did.
The first mistake we made was tolerating the existence of terrorist and criminal gangs across the country. Nigeria has successfully, through gross negligence, incompetence, complicity and corruption, democratized violence. The rise of ethnic militias that were unleashed at our return to democracy in 1999 and the communal violence that we witnessed in places like Kano, Kaduna, Jos, Sagamu, Lagos, etc., and the vigilantisation of the South East region, along with the government’s woeful handling of these situations, set us on this track.
Successive governments’ failure to secure Nigerians at that time was only compounded by the failure to dispense justice after those irrational bursts of violence. Mass murderers were shielded by this lack of justice; their crimes were waved away and they were allowed to continue walking among the people whose loved ones they killed.
This directly gave birth to militias and terrorists hiding under the guise of addressing these injustices the state overlooked. Fulani militias will claim they are avenging the murders of their loved ones and the rustling of their cattle by “Christian youths,” who in turn will claim they are avenging the injustices done to them when the herdsmen raided their farmlands. Even the worst scourge we have had in this country, Boko Haram and ISWAP, claimed they were fighting social injustice and carving out an “Islamic state” from Nigeria for themselves, to be governed by their twisted notion of justice, as their only option. The same arguments are being made by IPOB, who seek to carve out a separate state that they believe will be just to their people, as the Nigerian state has been unjust to them. The Niger Delta militancy, though not aspiring to secession, was fuelled by the decades of social and environmental injustices the region had suffered. This same rationale fuelled the OPC agitations.
Instead of dispensing justice, Nigeria has cavorted with terrorists and criminal gangs, cultivated them for political positioning and nurtured them for corrupt gains. “Repentant” Boko Haram members are pardoned and reintegrated into society without ever facing justice and with no regard for their victims; pro-tempore “repentant” bandits who have abducted hundreds and murdered dozens are presented before the press and treated as celebrities at “peace” events, where they come wearing their weapons like war medals, and leave with them only to resume their killings after a short while.
Our failure to handle this insecurity better—from Jonathan, to Buhari and now Tinubu, who all made campaign promises centring on this issue, and failed to follow up on them—led us here. I have written columns on massacres in Zamfara, Katsina, Plateau and Benue, where the government promises to find the horde of perpetrators and promptly sweeps aside the issue. We have been disgraced by these terrorists and the steady stream of headlines reporting mind-boggling massacres long before Trump decided to strip us naked in the village square.
This culture of neglect directly led to the second mistake—our failure to appoint ambassadors for two years. How any country, especially one that aspires to play a major role in the comity of nations, cannot have ambassadors to secure and advance its national interest is something that confounds. It is possible that the presence of an ambassador in the US, for example, might have mitigated the strength of misinformation deployed to push this narrative. Of course, there is no guarantee that would have prevented the stupendous misreading and oversimplification of the situation by the US government, but there is no way of knowing that, is there?
Other mistakes we have made have included not being deliberate about fostering national unity—which admittedly is a hard task when our concept of social justice is dangerously kwashiokored. Neither have we bothered to properly document the killings in the country to acknowledge the sheer scale of it, to honour and remember the victims, and remind ourselves never to let it happen again. Instead, we content ourselves with ineffectual presidential condemnations.
On the other hand, it would be really easy to dismiss Trump’s posturing and declaration as the actions of an impulsive man, but upon closer scrutiny, it may be far from it. For over a century, the US has lifted from a tested playbook. Most recently, we saw the deployment of the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and other disinformation campaigns to put US boots on the ground in Iraq, to firebomb Gaddafi’s convoy in Libya and intervene in several countries where the populace anticipated the intervention would improve their lot. Most of these countries and their people have discovered that that hasn’t been the case.
Nigeria must be careful how it responds to this play by the US and not rush into the mistake that Colombia made. In 1928, striking Colombian banana plantation workers demanding better pay and working conditions threatened the interests of powerful US businesses—the United Fruit Company (UFC), which at the time had enormous influence and control over the banana trade in South and North America, generating billions in revenue.
To protect its interests, UFC worked closely with the US Ambassador to Colombia, Jefferson Caffery, who dispatched telegrams to the US Secretary of State portraying the strike as a communist uprising that must be quelled immediately.
Much as it is doing today, the US government of Calvin Coolidge, deliberately misinformed and misled, pressured the Colombian government to deal with the striking workers or risk being invaded by the US marines stationed just off the coast. In its panic to avoid invasion and end the strike, the Colombian government opened fire on its own citizens, killing about 2000 people who just wanted to be paid for their labour in what has become known as the Banana Massacre.
As in that case, a lot of disinformation and manipulation was employed, as was the case in Iraq and Libya, and other places the US had set eyes upon, and as is the case in Nigeria today. Whatever interest is being pursued by this narrative must not come at the expense of more Nigerian lives than are being lost already, but make no mistake, the terrorists killing Nigerian Muslims and Christians must be dealt with decisively and efficiently.
If there is anything worthwhile in this shameful episode, it is that Trump’s words and posturing might have lighted the fire that will force the Nigerian government to act decisively. Our government needs the kick in the backside. If the wails and whimpers of thousands of dying Nigerians and the streams of our blood have failed to convey the urgency of the situation, then perhaps these scathing words might serve the purpose.
It would be a terrible shame for the Americans to come; their words should suffice. Nigeria cannot afford to mismanage this crisis as we have mismanaged our security situation in the last two decades. But it is high time we put this house in order. After all, we can blame Trump’s unilateralism, but there has to be a crack in the wall for a lizard to crawl into.
The war in Sudan is no longer a Sudanese war. What began on April 15, 2023 as a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has mutated into one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes and a full-blown proxy conflict.
The numbers are staggering.
According to UN estimates, nearly 200,000 people have been killed. More than 12 million have been displaced internally and across borders. Famine is no longer a risk — it is a reality in Darfur and parts of Khartoum. UN agencies have warned repeatedly that conditions will worsen as the fighting escalates and humanitarian access shrinks.
And yet, no regional initiative from IGAD, no African Union roadmap, no UN Security Council resolution has managed to halt the violence. Control of the war has slipped beyond the two belligerents. Weapons, money, drones and mercenaries flow in from outside, ensuring that the battlefield evolves faster than diplomacy.
This week, Massad Boulos, the US President’s Senior Adviser for Arab and African Affairs, made a fresh appeal on X: “The warring parties in Sudan must accept a humanitarian truce as the first step toward lasting peace,” he wrote, adding that Sudanese people deserve “an opportunity to engage in a political process leading to peace in a united Sudan.” It was a familiar call. What is unfamiliar is what Washington is now alleging happened on the battlefield.
America’s Position: No Legitimate Government In Khartoum
According to PMnewsnigeria.com,
Washington’s assessment of Sudan’s political legitimacy is brutally frank. The US State Department has stated that neither the SAF nor the RSF, nor their leaders, constitute a legitimate and constitutional government. Both rule solely by force of arms, and therefore both are unqualified to govern the country.
In practice, however, the international system still treats the army as Sudan’s de facto official authority. Burhan’s administration in Port Sudan issues passports, sits in international meetings, and addresses the UN. This is despite the fact that he came to power through a military coup in 2021, derailing a civilian transition, and despite grave allegations of abuses including indiscriminate airstrikes, killings of civilians, and obstruction of humanitarian aid.
The State Department says it has repeatedly demanded an unconditional humanitarian truce and a commitment to an inclusive political dialogue that leads to civilian rule. Those demands have been ignored.
The diplomatic rupture deepened this week. Reuters reported that the United States refused to grant a visa to General Burhan ahead of his scheduled address to the 81st UN General Assembly on Thursday.
Sudanese sources said the move was linked to a US-backed ceasefire proposal that Port Sudan opposes. The decision, if confirmed, would mark the lowest point in US-Sudanese relations since the war began. A Sudanese source told Reuters that Foreign Minister Mohieddin Salem would deliver the speech instead.
PMnewsnigeria.com notes it is not an isolated sanction. In January 2025, the United States imposed sanctions on Burhan personally, accusing the SAF under his leadership of violating international humanitarian law, targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, carrying out extrajudicial killings, and obstructing aid delivery. Yet Burhan remained a central interlocutor for international diplomats.
Dragging Sudan Into The Prohibited
It is against this background that the chemical weapons allegation has emerged — potentially the most serious escalation in the war’s legal and moral dimension.
Sudan has been a State Party to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) since 1999.
The Convention bans the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. Membership was supposed to close that chapter forever.
In May 2025, the US State Department declared that it had determined that the Sudanese Armed Forces had used chemical weapons against the RSF. Washington imposed sanctions on Sudan as a consequence. It did not stop there.
It brought the case to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, calling on Sudan to comply fully with its obligations and to allow independent verification.
Khartoum responded with a national investigation that concluded no evidence of chemical weapons use had been found.
Washington rejected the national mechanism outright, stating that a self-investigation cannot substitute for independent international verification.
For months, the issue simmered. Then in September 2026, two major American newspapers — The Washington Post and The New York Times — published investigative reports citing classified documents and intelligence. Both alleged that the Sudanese army had established a stockpile of chemical weapons, including munitions and bombs containing chlorine gas, and had used them against RSF positions during the ongoing war.
The army categorically denies the allegations.
The OPCW is the only specialized international body technically capable of confirming such use through sample collection, chain-of-custody procedures and laboratory analysis. But its ability to operate inside an active war zone like Sudan is severely limited. So far, the independent international investigation has been minimal compared to the seriousness of the allegation.
The Justice Gap The World Cannot Ignore
This creates what analysts call a normalization of alleged war crimes. The RSF is rightly pursued for documented atrocities, including ethnically motivated killings in Darfur and widespread sexual violence. But the SAF, despite allegations of chemical weapons use, indiscriminate bombing, and the suspension of Burhan’s visa, continues to be presented as the legitimate voice of Sudan at the UN.
According to PMnewsnigeria.com, the United Nations International Independent Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan has tried to correct that imbalance. Its report states that both sides have committed serious violations of international law and that some drone operations could amount to war crimes. It also notes that recruitment of foreign fighters and external support networks are fueling the war, strengthening the military capabilities of both parties and enabling increasingly sophisticated operations with devastating civilian consequences.
The Mission reminds states linked to these supply chains that they have strict obligations under international law to exercise due diligence, investigate and halt illicit mercenary and supply networks operating from or through their territories, prevent violations, and enforce the UN arms embargo.
The central question for the international community is no longer whether Sudan’s war is dangerous — it is how dangerous it has become. If chemical weapons have indeed been used, Sudan has crossed a red line that implicates not just Burhan, but the global non-proliferation regime itself.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has arrested Olori Halima Tejuoso in connection with an alleged N600 million fraud involving Mrs Mary Oluwaseye Sholoye and Mallam Ibrahim Gidado.
Tejuoso was arrested on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, after allegedly failing to honour an invitation by the Commission following her release on administrative bail.
Confirming the development, EFCC spokesman, Dele Oyewale, said Tejuoso was arrested after she allegedly jumped the administrative bail earlier granted to her by the Commission.
According to Oyewale, Gidado, who is also linked to the investigation, had been arrested earlier and arraigned before a court.
Tejuoso was reportedly accused of obtaining about N600 million from Sholoye by false pretence in connection with Gidado.
She had earlier appeared before the EFCC, where she reportedly told investigators that Gidado had allegedly defrauded her of the money she was accused of collecting from Sholoye.
However, following Gidado’s arrest and subsequent invitation by the Commission, Tejuoso reportedly failed to appear and could not be reached.
The EFCC subsequently declared her wanted on April 27, 2026, as part of its investigation into the alleged fraud.
Her arrest on September 15 brings to an end several months during which the Commission had been seeking her whereabouts.
The latest development is expected to allow the EFCC to proceed with further investigation into the circumstances surrounding the alleged N600 million transaction and Tejuoso’s relationship with the other parties involved.
The Commission’s position indicates that the matter involving Gidado has already progressed to court, while further legal steps concerning Tejuoso are expected to follow the completion of the ongoing investigation and necessary legal processes.
However, the allegations against Tejuoso remain unproven until determined by a court of competent jurisdiction.
All parties involved are presumed innocent unless and until found guilty by a court of law.
-Source: Daily Times Nigeria
Arise Television co-host Rufai Oseni has faced backlash online after sharing the outcome of an online civic opinion poll that showed Peter Obi leading a hypothetical 2027 presidential field by a wide margin.
On Tuesday, September 15, 2026, Oseni posted a screenshot from the Nigeria Elections Intelligence System (NEIS) platform with a single-word caption: “Polling.”
The image showed Peter Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) commanding 87.4 per cent of counted responses.
Atiku Abubakar of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) followed with 5.1 per cent, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at 4.6 per cent, and Oluseyi Abiodun Makinde of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) at 1.9 per cent.
The figures were drawn from more than 2,500 counted responses. NEIS describes itself as an independent, non-partisan election intelligence platform that conducts pre-election civic opinion polls and maps polling units across Nigeria. The results Rufai Oseni shared were from one such online exercise and carry no official electoral weight.
The post sparked immediate pushback. Several social media users argued that Rufai Oseni’s own follower base tilts heavily towards Peter Obi supporters, known as Obidients, making the poll’s findings a reflection of his audience rather than the broader Nigerian electorate.
Others pointed out that real elections are decided by voters at polling units, not by online participants, and that the results had no bearing on what a 2027 contest would actually look like. The debate unfolds as preparations for the 2027 general elections gain momentum.
Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has already published a final list of presidential candidates, which includes Tinubu, Obi, Atiku and Makinde running on their respective platforms.
Check out Rufai Oseni’s X post about the results of the online 2027 presidential poll below: 
@gsbabatunde wrote: “Rufai will remain immature. You packed Obidense as followers and you are conducting Polls among them knowing fully well that the actual election involves real Voters and not Bots. What sort of ‘Childish Journalist’ are You???”
@Dailymercytye said: “They’ve start their online election gaslighting again. When they lose the real election, it’ll suddenly become a ‘rigged election’ to them and they’ll start shouting rigging.”
@adewalenisa reacted: “Same way you misled Olumide Akpata in Edo Governorship……”
@IsraelYusuf13 commented: “Twitter no be polling unit. Enough of all this online noise and let face our country”
@Commyhot1 wrote: “Online President PitObi @PeterObi,
@ruffydfire the online chairman has declared you winner oooh! Congratulations online president. Una go collect woto woto come January 16”
@AdekunleAdelaj1 stated: “Some people will call for presidential debate where this type of person will be one of them and say it’s going to be a fair one. It’s only Morons that can hold such beliefs. Online president i congratulate you as your OLOFO, chairman has declared you winner.”
@tman_musa added: “Rufai when you really want to wise up and understand online polls is not real life.”
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