A Professor of Political Science, Bolaji Akinyemi, has requested that President Bola Tinubu to avoid confrontation with the newly sworn-in 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump.
“In the event that if I were President Tinubu, I would try to steer clear of antagonizing him because there is nothing a bully likes better than taking on people who are not strong enough to resist him,” Akinyemi said.
“You realize there is that African proverb that if you are not not sufficiently able to take on a domineering jerk and you take him on, you are just even going to languish more over it.
“That is the counsel 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 response without confrontation,” he said.
Prof Akinyemi, a former Director General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), criticize the inaugural speech of Trump as unacceptable, “shocking and depressing”.
The octogenarian expressed instead of revitalizing the world for peace, Trump found opportunity to threaten the rest of the world with a bouquet of hostile policies including tacking back Panama Canal, renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, tariff wars, and others.
Prof. Akinyemi said the US president would “soon learn that there are repercussions to policies, to jingoism”, adding that the world is “in for a rough ride for four years” of the Trump presidency.
The previous Nigerian Minister of External Affairs said Nigeria is out of the focus on the 78-year-old most powerful president and that Africa’s most populous nation shouldn’t expect anything unprecedented from the Trump administration.
Donald Trump is confirmed as the 47th US President in the US Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025.
Trump was sworn in as president on Monday, succeeding Joe Biden, four years after an electoral defeat that truncated his second-term ambition.
Trump, 78, was a political outsider at his first inauguration in 2017 as the 45th president, but this time around he is surrounded by America’s wealthy and powerful.
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos and Google CEO Sundar Pichai all had prime seats in the Capitol alongside Trump’s family and cabinet members.
While Trump refused to attend Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration after falsely claiming electoral fraud by the Democrat, this time Biden has been keen to reestablish the sense of tradition.
Biden joined former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton at the Capitol. Former first ladies Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush were there however ex-first lady Michelle Obama distinctly stayed away.
