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Reactions have continued to trail the recent visit of President Muhammadu Buhari to the United States, where he signed bilateral trade agreements with US President Donald Trump on the May 30 in Washington DC.
Reacting to the trip, a security expert and newspaper columnist, Majeed Dahiru, frowned at Buhari’s US trip, stressing that it gave Nigeria nothing apart from the rhetorical hype and the political glitziness that characterised it.
He pointed that the deficits of trade between the US and Nigeria were still in favour of America which are likely to deepen because US President Donald Trump made it known that he intends to flood the Nigerian market with US agro products and that might undermine Nigeria’s modest achievement in this sector. He added that it will dispossess farmers in Nigeria while it will improve that of the US saying “for me there was no benefit at all.”
“So Trump wants to regain lost grounds in her dealings with China and Nigeria being one of the largest in trade in Africa nobody should be surprised that he invited our country to come and discus trade terms that are in favour of his country while he is tantalising us with extreme diplomatic courtesies which are designed to obscure the real diplomatic victory of the US against Nigeria,” he said.
On the issue of security, Dahiru said there is nothing to celebrate about the Tucano aircraft because Nigeria is actually paying for the military hardware that we are using.
He admonished Nigerian leaders to get Nigerian diplomacy right by shifting it foreign policy focus more on economy rather that the politics of it. “In any bilateral trade agreement we should focus on getting a fair share of world trade by securing external markets for our goods and services.
“We should go there to know what American citizens would likely need from Nigeria, what are those things that Nigeria has comparative advantage on so that we can negotiate trade in those areas that is favourable to us to reduce the trade deficit with the US,” he said.
On the issue of corruption Dahiru lamented that it was abnormal for Nigeria to ask the US to help her fight corruption, pointing out that there is an inherent contradiction in such request.
“You cannot by our own way and examples elevate corruption to the highest level in this country and then go to the US to ask them to help you fight corruption. It is contradictory,” he said.
Renowned international relations expert, Charles Onunaiju, who is also the Director of the Centre for China Studies, an intellectual think-tank based in Abuja, told BDSUNDAY that the visit was essentially symbolic of Nigeria’s return to mainstream international affairs and signals the preeminence of Nigeria as a regional power and a leader in Africa.
“It is more symbolic than concrete in the sense that most of the issues such as sending Tucano aircraft to deter Boko Haram could kill tens and thousands of militants but it cannot destroy the ideology. What will destroy the ideology is a social engineering of more inclusive society that provides opportunity.
“At the end of the day, jobs, infrastructure development, and economic development, inclusive and sustainable economic development are key to defeating insurgency, especially at its roots. Because no matter the number of militants that might be killed by the Tucano aircrafts as far as the ideology is alive we can have as many people flocking back to the insurgent groups,” he said.
He noted that in terms of trade and investment the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), established by former US President, Bill Clinton should have been a non -tariff trade agreement between Africa and the US but lamented that the agreement has not offered much to Nigeria and Africa, saying “the trade volume between the US and Nigeria is at a paltry level of 6 billion dollars in favour of Nigeria because of oil. We like to see more of that.”
On the security concerns, Onunaiju noted that Nigeria hopes that America’s security concern should be genuine efforts to assist Nigeria in curbing insurgency even as he blamed the US and its allies for the rampaging herdsmen allegedly trained by ex- Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to kill Nigerians stressing that “the US and its allies were responsible for the carnage in Libya, they were responsible for the chaos and the aftermath of that chaos spread violence in the region including the Boko Haram and now the killer herdsmen.”
“Buhari’s trip can be called successful in terms of its recognition of Nigeria as a force to reckon with in Africa but certainly Nigerians expect concrete engagements that can facilitate economic activity. We wait to see how much of American farmers could come here and we wait to see how much of American exports that could come to Nigeria and how much Nigeria can gain entrance into the US market,” he said.
Innocent Odoh, Abuja
