The spectacle of Donald Trump once again striding onto the global stage with a self-fashioned “peace plan” for Ukraine has exposed something Europeans have quietly feared for years but rarely say aloud: that the European Union, led by a bureaucracy that prides itself on stability and procedure, has been caught flat-footed in one of the most pivotal geopolitical crises of our time. It is not simply that Trump can ignore Europe; it is that Europe has made itself easy to ignore.
Nowhere does this failure feel more embodied than in the figure of Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission president who often speaks as if conviction alone were a substitute for strategy. Her solemn declarations of unity, her unshakable insistence that the EU stands firmly with Ukraine, all ring somewhat hollow when measured against the brute fact that Washington whether led by Biden, Trump or a committee of unruly ghosts still dictates the tempo and terms of war and peace on Europe’s own borders. The continent that imagined itself as a normative superpower has lately struggled to be even a competent regional one.
The Trump episode crystallizes the broader paralysis. Trump, in his signature bravado, claims he can “end the war in 24 hours,” a boast that would be laughable if it weren’t a reminder of Europe’s diminished role. The disturbing part is not the outlandishness of the promise but how casually it sidelines Brussels. He doesn’t need Europe. He doesn’t fear Europe. He doesn’t even calculate Europe. He simply disregards it, as one might disregard background noise while negotiating something serious. And Europe, for all its institutions and summits and declarations, appears content to clear its throat politely while events unfold without it.
This is not merely a matter of diplomatic ego; it is a matter of security. European citizens, those whose homes lie closer to Russian artillery than Washington’s, are stuck watching leaders who seem permanently surprised by geopolitical reality. While Putin rewrites borders by force and Trump rewrites alliances by impulse, Europe writes speeches. The continent’s vulnerability is not just military; it is conceptual. It has not yet accepted that soft power finds its limits in hard times.
One might have hoped that Russia’s invasion in 2022 would jolt Brussels into strategic adulthood. And yes, Europe acted with a speed that surprised even itself, sanctions, arms deliveries, refugee support. But the initial burst of clarity soon dissolved into familiar patterns, bureaucratic friction, intra-EU disputes, strategic ambiguity masquerading as sophistication. What began as a moment of unity hardened into complacency, as if the mere act of condemning aggression could contain it.
Meanwhile, Europe’s dependence on American military power, long acknowledged, long lamented, never resolved, has reached a level that borders on the absurd. The EU talks of “strategic autonomy” with the kind of earnestness that suggests it is reciting a phrase from a language textbook it has not yet learned how to use in real conversation. For all the conferences on the subject, the continent remains a security tenant living under America’s unpredictable landlord.
Enter Trump, whose plans, whatever their details or lack thereof, underscore Europe’s inability to shape its own fate. The tragedy is not that Trump is returning to the global spotlight; it is that Europe, facing its most dangerous moment since the end of the Cold War, still relies on the whims of an American politician whose worldview is built on unilateralism and transactionalism. Europe claims to champion multilateralism, yet its security rests on a single man’s mood at any given hour.
What, then, is the path forward? It certainly does not lie in the EU’s current posture of performative resolve and institutional inertia. Europe must do something radical: take responsibility. Not in the abstract, not in glossy strategy papers, but in the concrete terms of defence spending, unified command structures, and the political willingness to face the world as it is rather than as it wishes it to be. The continent needs leadership that can distinguish between optimism and illusion, between diplomacy and drift.
But this requires confronting uncomfortable truths. It requires admitting that Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission, however well-meaning, has governed with a technocratic complacency ill-suited to an era of power politics. It requires acknowledging that many European governments have treated security as a luxury item, something to debate in safe rooms rather than invest in before the storm hits. It requires accepting that Europe’s soft-spoken moral certainty, that favoured tool of post-war identity, cannot stop tanks, dissuade autocrats, or deter the ambitions of men who believe force is the ultimate currency.
Most of all, it requires Europe to stop outsourcing its survival to the United States. America may be a friend, an ally, even a lifeline but it is not Europe’s guarantee. It never was, and certainly not in the era of Trumpian unpredictability. The notion that Europe can continue to rely on Washington while offering little more than speeches in return is not just outdated; it is dangerous. The continent must either grow into the responsibilities of sovereignty or accept the consequences of its dependence.
If Trump’s unilateralism awakens Europe from its strategic slumber, then perhaps there is a silver lining to the insult of being dismissed. But if Europe continues believing that declarations of unity are a substitute for power, then the next crisis, whether sparked in Ukraine, the Balkans, the Caucasus, or within Europe’s own political fractures will leave the EU once again staring at events it cannot shape, waiting for someone else to decide its fate.
Europe does not lack the capacity to act; it lacks the will. Until that changes, the continent remains what it has become: a geopolitical observer with the vocabulary of a superpower and the influence of a bystander. And history, as it has warned repeatedly, is not kind to bystanders.
The conference halls in Belém were supposed to feel like the front line of humanity’s common struggle, humid air, anxious negotiators, the faint hope that yet another global climate summit might be the one that finally cracks through the shell of geopolitical self-interest. Instead, what hung in the air was something heavier, almost metallic, the knowledge that the world had shown up, but the United States had not.
This year’s United Nations climate conference, COP30, ended as so many of its predecessors have—thick with well-intentioned language and thin on the commitments that would actually bend the planet’s overheating trajectory. Delegates managed to agree on modest steps for adaptation financing and incremental progress on transparency measures. But the elephant that has been stomping around these conferences for years, the need to phase out fossil fuels remained untouched, undiscussed in any meaningful way, and certainly uncommitted to. It was as if the very words “phase-out” were too radioactive for the diplomatic lexicon.
And yet, the absence of the United States was the real ghost wandering the corridors. The Trump administration’s refusal to send even a symbolic delegation was more than a diplomatic snub; it was a message written in thick marker: We will not play. We will not help. We will not acknowledge our role. For a nation historically responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than any other, this was not just petulance it was a dereliction of planetary responsibility.
To many delegates, especially those from small island nations whose shorelines shrink year by year, the American no-show landed with the dull inevitability of a betrayal repeated too often. But this time, the disappointment carried an edge sharper than usual, because the stakes are no longer theoretical or futuristic. Brazil, the host, is living through the climate crisis in real time: record drought punctuated by catastrophic floods, the rainforest gasping under the dual assault of illegal burning and global warming. And yet, despite the immediacy of the threat, the conference’s conclusions read like a polite shrug.
There is a kind of global emotional fatigue at these summits, a sense that everyone is required to pretend we are inching forward while knowing we’re mostly running in place. But even the most hardened doubters, the sceptics who’ve grown allergic to climate optimism, had to admit something as COP30 concluded, without the United States participating fully and forcefully, the prospects of preventing destructive warming collapse dramatically. The world may no longer revolve around Washington, but the climate still does. America’s economic weight, its technical capacity, its political influence over global energy markets, these are irreplaceable. And it is precisely these levers that Donald Trump has allowed to rust.
There is no way to speak honestly about COP30’s failures without speaking plainly about Trump. His withdrawal, literal and ideological, from climate cooperation is not simply a policy difference. It is an allegiance. And it is not to the American people. It is to the industries that have long mastered the art of pretending the future is somebody else’s problem. Fossil fuel interests have found in Trump not just a reliable ally but a kind of champion who carries their talking points with the zeal of a convert. The result is not subtle, gutted regulations, theatrical disdain for environmental science, and the normalization of climate indifference.
The paradox is that Trump claims to fight for American strength even as he weakens the very global structures that have allowed the United States to lead. Climate diplomacy, at its best, is one of the few remaining arenas where American soft power still commands respect. When America walks into a climate summit, the room shifts. When America refuses to walk in at all, the room shrinks.
Brazil’s president, along with numerous other leaders, pushed hard for a more ambitious agreement this year, but without Washington’s political gravity, every proposal rose briefly then drifted away like loose paper in an open window. Europe cannot shoulder the burden alone. China, despite massive investments in renewables, continues to approve new coal plants at a dizzying pace. The Global South remains trapped between moral urgency and economic constraints. In this fragile geometry of global interests, the United States is the anchor even when it behaves badly, even when it demands more than it gives. But this time, the anchor was simply gone.
And so the summit’s final text reads like an exercise in restraint. Words like “encourages,” “recognizes,” and “invites” appears where words like “commits,” “requires,” and “phases out” should have stood. It is the diplomatic equivalent of clearing your throat for three days and deciding that the clearing itself counts as progress.
Critics often describe climate summits as talk shops, but talking is not the problem. Talking is the precursor to action. The problem is pretending that talk alone counts as action, especially when the world’s most powerful nation can’t even be bothered to show up and talk.
There is a tragicomic quality to the global climate effort now: nations drafting elaborate plans to avert disaster while one major player insists that the disaster itself is a hoax or worse, someone else’s responsibility. But climate physics is indifferent to American politics. The atmosphere does not pause to see who won which primary. It tallies emissions with cold accuracy.
What COP30 revealed, yet again, is that humanity has the technical tools to change course, the scientific wisdom to see the danger, and even the financial capacity to cushion the transition. What we lack is the political will of one country that holds an outsized share of the power. And until that country decides to act like the indispensable nation it claims to be, climate summits will continue to end the way this one did: with exhausted applause for agreements that no longer match the urgency of the crisis.
The planet does not need American heroism. But it does desperately need American participation. And until the United States reclaims its place at the table, no matter who sits in the Oval Office the world will keep gathering, keep talking, keep waiting. The climate clock will keep ticking. And the future will keep shrinking.
International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
There is a day each year, November 25th, when governments tweet slogans, NGOs publish earnest posters, and the world rehearses its condemnation of violence against women. The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women has become a ritual of recognition, a solemn nod to a crisis so vast and so persistent that it almost resists comprehension. Yet this year, that ritual feels different. Heavier. Fraught. Because the backdrop against which it unfolds is not merely the familiar landscape of gender-based violence but a political era tilting unmistakably toward the far-right, where the very notion of women’s rights has become a battleground.
It is no coincidence that, as extremist politics surge globally, domestic murders, often minimized as "family tragedies" rather than what they are: preventable killings, are rising with grim consistency. The data and headlines do not whisper; they shout. Women killed by partners. Women killed by former partners. Women killed because someone decided their autonomy was an insult. Violence against women is the longest-running pandemic on record, and no vaccine has ever been developed because its root cause is not biological. It is ideological.
Far-right politics is not solely responsible for the phenomenon, but it has certainly become its accelerant. In many countries, political leaders who champion “traditional family values” also champion judicial reforms that quietly, efficiently, and lethally weaken women’s protections. They cast gender equality as an elitist provocation, feminism as a corrupting foreign import, and the concept of systemic violence as a myth designed to emasculate men. The courtroom becomes a theatre where women must perform their pain convincingly enough to be believed, but not so convincingly that they appear hysterical. And the judges, mostly men, often untrained in gender-sensitive approaches, sometimes carrying unexamined biases, retain the authority to decide whose suffering counts.
We are told, in this era of political polarization, that everything must be balanced. But balance is a luxury not afforded to the dead. In many jurisdictions, courts have begun entertaining “parental alienation” claims more readily than testimony of abuse, and such rulings disproportionately place women and their children back into the custody or proximity of their abusers. The message is unmistakable: the system doesn’t merely disbelieve women; it disciplines them for speaking.
If this sounds dramatic, it is because the situation is dramatic. What is happening is a rollback, subtle in its bureaucratic language, blatant in its consequences, of hard-earned rights and protections. And the far-right does not hide the blueprint. Its political vision hinges on the restoration of a patriarchal order: man as provider, woman as dependent. Man as authority, woman as subordinate. In such an ideological structure, domestic violence becomes not only invisible; it becomes predictable.
What makes this moment especially perilous is not just the rise of extremist leaders but the normalization of their rhetoric. Misogyny has rebranded itself as a form of cultural preservation. Online, it flourishes with unchecked ferocity. Influencers with millions of followers preach a gospel of male entitlement, repackaged as self-improvement philosophy. Young men, disillusioned and digitally isolated, find community in anger. And when anger becomes identity, violence becomes expression.
Meanwhile, women remain told by institutions, by politicians, by judges to report violence “through the proper channels.” But these channels are clogged, cracked, or designed to loop women back into harm. When a woman gathers the courage to report abuse, she often enters a labyrinth where her credibility is interrogated more thoroughly than the violence itself. She finds herself having to convince strangers that her fear is valid, that her bruises are not metaphors, that her partner’s volatility is not simply “a private matter.” She may be asked why she stayed, why she left, why she didn’t record the abuse, why she did. It is a procedural ritual that rewards silence far more than it rewards truth.
This is the hypocrisy at the heart of our current moment: we commemorate a day dedicated to eliminating violence against women while simultaneously inhabiting political landscapes that treat such violence as an inevitable by-product of social tradition. We cannot both celebrate women’s resilience and elect leaders who legislate their vulnerability. We cannot claim to protect women while permitting courts to interpret their trauma through prisms of suspicion. And we cannot praise “family values” while ignoring the fact that, for countless women, the family home is the most dangerous place they will ever enter.
The true purpose of this international day should not be to mourn yearly statistics. It should be to confront the ideologies that uphold them. To examine which political movements benefit from keeping women quiet, frightened, and dependent. To acknowledge that violence is not merely an individual act but a structural one: a consequence of narratives that devalue women, institutions that fail them and political movements that exploit them.
The far-right does not ascend because it promises safety; it ascends because it promises certainty. And in that promise lies a dangerous question: certainty for whom? Certainly not for the women whose names appear in grim annual tallies.
On this day, this symbolic day, we owe more than remembrance. We owe clarity. Violence against women does not exist in a vacuum; it flourishes where inequality is policy, where misogyny is political strategy, where the courts are more concerned with reputation than justice. Until we confront that, November 25th will remain not a day of elimination but a day of repetition.
To ward off terrorism and banditry, Nigeria must take strong action against religious extremism. It must be defined and eliminated by our constitution.
When Nigeria fought the Civil War with the Biafra separatist movement, it ran for three fierce years and only providence gave the Nigerian side victory. But now Nigeria is in another war that the military tells the nation is asymmetric. It is now 16 years and still running. It is a war of Fulani bandits and terrorists against other Nigerians.
The Fulani employ the bandits who once were called Fulani herdsmen but now out of pressure from the Fulani elites who said they should not be profiled as Fulani herders have transformed into terrorists. It took years to brand them terrorists because the elite Fulani who use them would not allow even the label “terrorist.” A war expert told me labelling them terrorists will allow the military to deal with them with strong hands. Without that label, I’m told Nigeria will not be able to deploy the Tucano jets Nigeria purchased from the USA. Until these bandits began to abduct and rape the wives of elites in the cities, the very elites sponsors did not allow the nation to label terrorists by a law. The law to do it will not just be passed in the legislature; they blocked it. The administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan could not do it because he was the very reason the bandits were put together. Despite his kowtow to the Fulani elites, they still will not allow him rest. He must be removed from power because he is not one them. He is from the Niger Delta and even though the Niger Delta produces the oil which is the financial life line of the nation, yet Goodluck Jonathan does not deserve respect, he is not a Fulani who are the presumed owners of Nigeria. That is what their great grandfather told them. Every inch of Nigeria belongs to them.
Not until the bandits had gained the upper hand in Zamfara State killing their fellow Muslims because of control of gold reserve in that state and causing problems for the Fulani elites did former President Muhammadu Buhari remember he had to don his military uniform once again to drive some terror to the bandits who he helped nurture. Nurture the bandits? Yes, the story goes like this, there are allegations yet unchallenged, that Buhari, Nasir El Rufai, former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Dr. Usman Mohammed Bugaje, former PDP chieftain and others in APC, and possibly the current president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who nurtured an ambition to succeed Buhari as president, imported a group of armed Fulani from other parts of West Africa into the country to show former President Goodluck Jonathan the way out forcibly if he decided not to leave power. These foreign Fulani elements having seen the good of Nigeria and Jonathan having left power voluntarily because his ambition, according to him, is not worth the blood of any Nigerian, did not leave the country when their service was no longer needed. For this set of Fulani, Nigeria is too prosperous a nation not to enjoy her goodies. Together with their kith and kin in Nigeria who enjoyed great patronage from Buhari who was the patron of the Myetti Allah, the umbrella association for all Fulani cattle herders, they became a thorn in the flesh of Nigerians. They could not be touched, they were the apple of Buhari’s eyes. With these two sets Buhari hoped to fulfill his unexpressed desire to Islamize Nigeria. At a time Buhari was so pushed by that desire that he didn’t know when he said he would distribute one Quran to each secondary school student in Nigeria to improve their morality. I think somebody must have pinched him by his side to remind him that Nigeria is a federal state and a multi-religious society, and he did not have power to do that. He abandoned the idea subsequently.
But Islamisation still burns in his bones. Buhari surrounded himself in power by all manner of Fulani elites. So Nigeria has three categories of terrorists; the Boko Haram that was terrorising the North East, a section of local Fulani herdsmen who formed the bandits and are ravaging the North West and foreign Fulani who with their local collaborators filled the forest of Nigeria, and are kidnapping Nigerians and ferreting them to the bush from where they demand ransom to set their captives free. Many of their captives were killed. But who are these three categories of terrorists. Only one category of them brought to foment trouble should Goodluck Jonathan not want to leave power are foreigners. The Boko Haram, who are they? What produced them? What empowered them? There is talk generally that President Bola Tinubu must act fast to defeat Boko Haram and bandits. He can’t do it. This is the time the weakness of the president will manifest: the man who is strong in politics but is not a statesman. He thinks only of himself, his family and his friends, and not about Nigerians.
Defeating Boko Haram and banditry will come only when we know the source of those evils and call them what they are not minding whose ox is gored. Mohammed Yusuf was the first leader of Boko Haram. How did be become enemy of the state? He was born by a Muslim father. He dropped out of school, Gemini AI said. Gemini AI did not tell us why. But we can hazard some guesses. His father could have been poor and unable to send him to school. So if Mohammed Yusuf had the opportunity of a free education funded by the state, he could have had the opportunity of a good education and would have turned out differently. After he dropped out of school he stayed at home learning the Quran under the guidance of his father. Statistics say there are over ten million out-of-school children in Nigeria, most of them in the north. The north pays no attention to them, some southern governors are joining them too by neglecting education. These out-of-school children are potential recruits into Boko Haram and banditry. To defeat terrorism and banditry, Nigeria must provide education for children of school age. But President Tinubu cannot fund university education as he loudly said. Then the nation will have to continue to contend with banditry and terrorism.
Why was Yusuf’s father not able to provide education for Yusuf’? Perhaps he has too many children. Islam permits, it did not compel four wives, you can marry four wives if you can love them equally. Sultan of Sokoto Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar 111 has only one wife. We don’t know why but perhaps he knows he can’t love two women equally, let alone four women always brawling because of envy. Perhaps by his education he knows that a one-wife man buys peace for himself and unity among his children. Multiple wives gives multiple children and multiple children results in unmanageable population. Huge population has become a tool in the hands of political elites in the north with which they win elections. China’s Mao Zedong, was a Marxist theorist, revolutionary, the first chairman of the People’s Republic of China, was like the northern elders. He thought that huge population is instrument of international power until over four million Chinese died of famine and starvation. His successor, Deng Xiaoping saw the illogicality of that thinking and stopped it. He began the policy of one-child per family (Now relaxed to three) and also opened up China to market-driven economy away from the strictly communist production of Mao. The result is what we see today, a developed China that is striking fear into the heart of Octopus America. There must be someone who must compel a strict population control in Nigeria. God himself knows we don’t have enough resources to take care of the current population and we will never have. It must be a countrywide policy and no religion must be respected in that regard. Former president Muhammadu Buhari said he was consulting when he was asked to curtail population. Maybe we will see the result of his consultation in the near future. Until population is curtailed, especially in the north, there will be many more Mohammed Yusufs, and terrorism and banditry will not end. When Mohammed finished learning at his father’s feet, he also learnt under several prominent Islamic teachers. When he qualified he was said to be the equivalent of a graduate. First he joined the Shia group, the second largest branch of Islam. He became a Salafarist, a very radical group of Islamists. Not satisfied with the extent of their radicalism, he formed his own group. He preached against Western education, secularism, democracy, and the concept of evolution. He believed that Sharia must be imposed on society. His sect believes that Muslims must engage in politics, in fact taking power to impose Sharia.
To ward off terrorism and banditry, Nigeria must take strong action against religious extremism. It must be defined and eliminated by our constitution. Many people praise the effort of Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore but Lee himself told the story of what he did to eliminate religious extremism. He said: “In the beginning we locked up many religious extremists without trial.” Lee was an Oxford trained lawyer who knew everything about human rights and the rule of law. He knew also that nation building demands tough action against all factors that can hinder a nation at its formative years. Today Singapore is a good story to tell. Religious extremism is not restricted to Islam, it is also in Christianity and it could be in the traditional religion. Islam fractured immediately after the death of the Prophet when there was division about his successor. That broke Islam into Shia and Sunni and it remains like that till today. Division within the two major blocks have developed. Celestial Church of Christ splintered into divisions immediately after the death of its founder, Bilewu Oscoffa and the divisions are still multiplying. The same thing with the Cherubim and Seraphim. Some Pentecostal churches have also splintered. Nigeria must make the issue of religious extremism as a constitutional matter. Mohammed Yussuf died violently when he was killed in a scuffle with the police. His successor Abubakar Shekau was more hardened. His own life trajectory reflects who terrorists are. He was born by an Islamic teacher who taught him. An ethnic Kanuri, he was sent to Maiduguri to be almajiri. He reportedly begged for food on the street, a common practice among the almajiri.
Abubakar Shekau, the former leader of Boko Haram, attended the Government Secondary School in Konduga, Borno State, and later enrolled in the Borno College of Legal and Islamic Studies. He believed Sharia must be imposed on society. When he took over from Yusuf, he escalated the crisis. He aligned with Al Queda. He was known to be very brutal, slaughtering his victims like one will slaughter a ram. His group splintered when ISIL ( Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant) also known as the Islamic State, ISIS, appointed another leader for Boko Haram which he did not like. He was said to have a photographic memory that enabled him to have his own interpretation of the Quran, and also fluent in Hausa, Fulbe, Arabic and English. He reportedly committed suicide when the rival ISWAP cornered him. Shekau’s background as an almajiri formed in him a very crooked and wicked character turning him from someone who should have been a profound intellectual into an extremist, who aims to destabilize society, according to his narrow and unsophisticated interpretation of the Quran .
Alamajiri system must be cancelled by a legal instrument. Parents must have the responsibility to look after their wards. Parents who won’t must be sanctioned by jail terms. Nobody must commit the care of his children to others. This is why the issue of population control and control of marital pattern is very essential. Nobody must use his sexual indiscipline to wreck society. Secularism must be emphasized in our constitution and it must cover the entire country. We have seen the problem we have with democracy. While leaders from the north talk adoringly about democracy, in their heart they don’t want it. They, like Yusuf and Shekau want to impose Sharia. We have seen that in the smuggling of Sharia provision into the Constitution. A recent viral video showed a man in Abuja who had a commercial dispute with another person. The Sharia Court of Appeal ordered to lock up the shop of that man, who is a Christian and Igbo. They will sell off the goods in his shop. But the man is not a Muslim, so why did they bring him under that system. Those who want Sharia always tell the rest of us that it does not concern non-Muslims. Ilorin is called an Islamic city where the Yoruba Isese traditional worshippers cannot operate. The Emir of Ilorin gave an order to drive Isese worshippers out of the city.
The trajectory of Bello Turji, one of the most notorious bandits, who has done much damage to lives is another story that tells the source of that evil. He has no formal education, and over 30 years he has been roaming the forest tending his herd. He had conflict with some people in settled communities, possibly the Hausa. He alleged his cows were stolen and given to an emir. His efforts to sue the emir failed because of the usual corruption. Six of his siblings and an uncle were killed. He took to banditry and formed a group which he leads till date. The Nigerian military has not been able to arrest him and he has led many deadly ambushes against the security forces. He has killed over 200 people. He has had several peace negotiations with state governments which he has often reneged on. Like others, he also has no formal education. With welfarism declared by a constitutional mandate, potential bandits like Bello Turji will find their feet. Nobody would spend some years in school, secure a good training and a good job or business and want to put himself at a risk of being a bandit. Bandits are very brutal thieves. They will continue to be if they are not educated. A cow herder following cows in the thick forest, exposed to wild animals cannot but be wild like the animals that he encounters. Fulani herders must be settled in ranches and be given education.
Some are praying now so that Trump who has declared to help Nigeria to wipe off these terrorists and bandits will not come. One of those prayers I saw making the rounds on social media is from the palace of the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar 111. It was addressed to all Muslims. Good effort, but my little knowledge of God is that he does not answer the prayer of sinners. I’m sure some of the Muslims who will say that prayer have murdered persons in the past in the name of Islam. Perhaps those of them in Sokoto participated in the killing of Deborah Samuel, the Shehu Shagari College of Education student who was killed because she confessed Jesus as her helper in her exams which she passed. Even the Sultan himself is complicit. We are not aware whether he made any effort to get justice for Deborah Samuel who was killed not too far from his palace, according to reports. Let’s not deceive ourselves playing religion. Trump will come because government here will continue to lack the will to do anything. Tinubu does not have the muscle to move against the terrorists and bandits in the north. Trump is the man that will set Nigeria to rethink our wickedness and set this nation right. We are in the harvest season of our misdeeds. God must revenge. The emir who got Turji’s cows will have to pay for it somehow. I recommend that all our traditional rulers, because they have outlived their usefulness, should vacate their thrones while elected mayors take over the towns and cities.
First Published in METRO
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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.
Fika is a state of mind and an important part of Swedish culture. It means making time for friends and colleagues to share a cup of coffee and a little something to eat.
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Working for Donald Trump is like riding a runaway carnival carousel: dizzying, precarious, and full of sound and fury. Imagine then, that just days after he unleashed a barrage of bluster at the Nigerian government, threatening war, speaking of “total devastation,” framing global conflict in transactional terms, the world watched as terrorists struck in tragic, decidedly un-cinematic fashion. Over 300 schoolchildren and a dozen teachers were abducted at St. Mary’s Catholic School in Niger State, Nigeria. This horrific event didn’t register as his greatest foreign-policy moment. Rather, it exposed something far more telling, moral bankruptcy dressed as bravado.
Trump’s verbal assault on Nigeria wasn’t rooted in careful diplomacy. It was performative, transactional, rant-fueled. He cast the country as a failing actor in a global marketplace of influence, threatening to withdraw recognition, threaten war, or destabilize things entirely, his words swinging like a machete in a political jungle, lopsided and aggressive. And here, nearly simultaneously, was a real crisis: children torn from classrooms, teachers forced into terror. The contrast should have caused a collective moral recoil, but instead, the spectacle of his bombast overshadowed the substance of suffering.
To work under that kind of man is to internalize a stark disjunction: public threats paired with private impotence. The administration’s grandstanding about Nigerian governance does nothing to redeem its failure to protect innocents or to condemn abductions with the kind of global moral clarity that might actually make a difference. If anything, Trump’s hawkish language gave the world a distorted metaphor: as if Nigeria were a toy to be broken or bartered, rather than a nation where children yearn to learn in peace.
We might wish that attention toward Nigeria’s plight sprang purely from altruism. But in this world of power, urgency often arrives on the back of self-interest and in Trump’s case, cornucopia of theatrics. His threats were not an outpouring of concern for Nigeria’s future; they were an overture in his transactional politics: “If you don’t do this, we’ll do that. If you don’t pay, we’ll pull back.” Yet when gunmen stormed into a Catholic school and snatched hundreds of young lives, the performative war cries turned eerily hollow.
Abductions in Nigeria are sadly not new, kidnappings of students have become almost routine, a grotesque testament to the failures of regional governance, extremist opportunism, and global indifference. But what should have made this abduction resonate was not just its scale but its timing: following the bluster from Trump’s lips, days after he had painted Nigeria as inept and dangerous. The world was primed to hear warnings, to watch fireworks; instead, it got a tragedy that blew past the rhetoric and laid bare a ruthlessness no amount of sabre-rattling could repair.
The irony is biting and brutal: in his bid to corner Nigeria into submission, Trump spoke in abstractions, state failure, instability, diplomatic leverage. But in real life, the failures are concrete. Weak infrastructure, failing security forces, deeply vulnerable communities. The children snatched from St. Mary’s weren’t pawns in geopolitical grandstanding. They were human beings, and their abduction punctures the farce of transactional diplomacy.
There is, of course, a temptation to frame this as a foreign policy failure and it is. But it’s more than that. It’s a moral failure of prioritization. What does it mean to threaten war when you can’t protect children? To chant economic leverage when you aren’t even ensuring basic security partnerships? To preach “America First” while ignoring that global responsibility sometimes requires more than a bombastic tweet.
It should boggle the mind that a showman’s voice could drown out the crying horror of real violence. But it does. In the cacophony of threats and counter-threats, the moral gravity of what happens in Nigerian backwaters, where Catholic schools can become deathtraps, becomes a footnote. And that’s no accident. That’s the architecture of neglect.
Those kidnapped children deserve more than a tweetstorm. They deserve an international system that refuses to treat their nation as a bargaining chip. They deserve real aid, serious diplomacy, relentless pressure on local and regional actors to guarantee their safe return. They deserve moral leadership that doesn’t require the next headline, the next deal, the next slice of leverage.
And what of working under Trump through all this? It likely feels like watching a pyrotechnic show while fires rage in the distance, spectacular from your seat, but destructive for everyone else. Yes, the stage dazzles. But the backdrop burns.
In the end, the tragedy of St. Mary’s isn’t just a commentary on Nigerian security; it’s a mirror held up to American posturing. Threatening war is easy. Sending real help, showing consistent solidarity, building trust, demanding accountability that’s hard. Bombast is cheap. Leadership, real leadership grounded in humanity, has a price.
If we continue to let the loudest, most incendiary voices dominate global discourse, we risk turning every foreign tragedy into background noise. And the voices that matter most, the terrified children in a Catholic school, the grieving teachers, the families waiting by the phone, will be drowned out by the next political spectacle.
Trump’s threats were loud. But his commitment was shallow. And as those young lives hang in peril, that dissonance echoes with devastating consequence. The world must do more than listen. It must act, with urgency, with humanity, and with a moral clarity that no amount of grandstanding can replace.
In an unexpected and stunning turn, Marjorie Taylor Greene, once one of Donald Trump’s most ardent MAGA champions, has announced her resignation from Congress. For a woman who built her political identity around raw loyalty to Trump, conspiracy fervor and bitter attacks on the establishment, her exit reads less like a graceful bow out and more like a capitulation born of fear.
Greene’s rise was meteoric. She came into Congress proclaiming herself a truth-seeker and provocateur, firing salvos against norms, calling for the release of secret Epstein files, and jeering at opponents with relish. But over time, she became not just a defender of Trump but an instrument of his brand: bold, abrasive, formidable. Yet now, confronted by his wrath, she retreats. Trump, the very figure she insisted she served above all, reportedly called her a “traitor.” That word, echoing from the lips of a man she once deified, seems to have triggered something far more primal than political disagreement.
In her farewell video, Greene said, “I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better.” It was a raw metaphor, uncharacteristically vulnerable. The image of a battered spouse is not one we expect from a bomb-throwing congresswoman who has built a career on ferocity. But it tells us everything, Trump’s power, once a buoy, has turned into a burden. And buying into his mythology evidently carries psychological costs as well as political risks.
Greene’s resignation isn’t just a political calculation. It’s a window into the paradox of loyalty in this movement. Trump’s followers are often the loudest defenders, ready to stomach social ostracism, mockery, even personal threats but their devotion is conditional. When the cult leader turns on you, there is little recourse. To cross Trump is not a misdemeanor; in his universe, it’s treason. Greene found this out the hard way.
And so, she retreats. She frames her departure in defensive terms, painting herself as someone who refuses to be a victim any longer. That framing is telling: she isn’t leaving because she’s tired, or because she’s fulfilled her mission. She’s leaving because she’s scared. And perhaps more than anything, she’s scared of the man she once elevated above all.
Here lies a broader lesson about the Trump ecosystem: the bravest voices are often the most fragile. Those who raised the volume, who stormed the gates, who declared themselves fearless, are sometimes the first to crumble when the master of the universe looks in their direction and says, “You betrayed me.” Their defiance, it seems, was never their own. It was a borrowed power, power granted by a tyrant, and just as easily withdrawn.
This resignation also reveals a deeper transactional quality to Trumpism: loyalty is repaid not with respect, but with leverage. In Greene’s case, her sin was not doctrinal deviation or policy failure. Rather, she apparently crossed an unwritten line, something only Trump knows and enforces. When he calls you a traitor, it's not just an insult. It’s a sentence. And in his court, your only options are to submit or to be broken.
Her metaphor of the battered wife is more than rhetorical flourish; it’s psychological realism. In abusive relationships, personal, political, or ideological, the abuser wields control not just through punishment, but through fear. Even the most outspoken victims can become silenced when they realize that the subject of their loyalty has the power to end them. Greene’s departure suggests that her loyalty wasn’t unconditional. It was a Faustian bargain.
There’s a certain irony in this letting-go: Greene, who obsessed over secrecy, Epstein’s scandals, and conspiracies from the deep state, apparently never grasped the basic truth about her own situation. The greatest secret wasn’t in Epstein’s files it was in Trumpism itself. The movement was built on loyalty, not ideology. It was never about a coherent political vision, but about devotion to the man. And now that her devotion has slipped or perhaps she has simply exhausted the psychological cost of it, she is cut loose.
Her resignation resonates beyond her individual story. It’s a mirror held up to an entire political ecosystem. What happens when the loudest MAGA voices realize their megaphone can be switched off at any moment? What happens when the apologists, the insurgents, the jihadis of Trump’s base, recognize that their defiance can evaporate with a single word from him?
Greene’s departure is not the death knell of MAGA, far from it. But it may be a signal, at least to those paying attention, that the movement’s rebel heart is more fragile than its swagger suggests. And that the cost of loyalty is far heavier than the veneer of fanaticism lets on.
At its core, this is not just a political retreat. It’s a psychological revelation. Her exit suggests that the bravado, the calls for declassification, the incendiary rhetoric, all masked a deeper insecurity. If Greene could be dismantled by the man she once branded a hero, what does that say about those who remain, the ones who have yet to be crossed?
Donald Trump built a movement on the promise that he would never abandon you. But what we are seeing now, in Greene sneaking out the back door, is that perhaps the moment he doesn’t need you anymore, he simply tosses you aside. Loyalty, it turns out, has a shelf life. And when the time comes, even the fiercest protector can become collateral damage.
Marjorie Taylor Greene didn’t just walk away from Congress, she walked out of the illusion that she was untouchable. In exposing her fear, she revealed the lie that bound her: that in Trump’s world, power was mutual. It wasn’t. And she paid the price for believing otherwise.
Spain, it seems, is haunted not by the distant specter of Franco himself, long dead and interred in a mausoleum of memory, but by something far more insidious: the restless energy of a new generation who see the country’s past, present, and future through a narrow, unforgiving lens. The cruel irony is that Franco returns not with the iron fist of yesteryear, not with the black-shined boots or the endless parades but through young Spaniards who wield blame like a cudgel, pointing at socialists as the architects of every modern ill, as if the sins of the past were not compounded by their own selective amnesia.
There is a particular cruelty in this. History is rarely neat, and Spain’s story is one of tangled loyalties, bloody reckonings, and a democracy fought for in the teeth of dictatorship. Yet, in 2025, one encounters, with alarming frequency, a cohort who prefer moral simplicity over the messy truth. Socialists, communists, leftists, pick your label, are routinely cast as the villains of a narrative that stretches back to “original sin,” an inherited blame that conveniently absolves their own ideological forebears. It is a sophisticated form of historical revivalism, one that dresses itself as patriotism, but feels more like exhumation. Franco’s shadow is long, but it is not the dictatorship itself that lingers, it is the idea of it, resurrected in a rhetorical theater where nuance is heresy and critical thinking optional.
What makes this particularly disquieting is the generational twist. One might have assumed that distance from the trauma of the dictatorship would encourage reflection, critical thought, and empathy. Instead, some young Spaniards have absorbed the ghosts of the past not as cautionary tales but as badges of identity. The cruelty lies in how they rewrite memory, not with new scholarship or earnest inquiry, but with a casual certainty: that all misfortune, all corruption, all political failure, must flow from a socialist root. The past is compressed, sanitized, weaponized. Franco himself need not rise from his tomb; the ideology of fear and blame has become self-propagating.
In cities like Madrid or Seville, one sees this new dogma unfold in social media feeds, barroom debates, and family tables where history is distilled into a morality play of absolute guilt and innocence. A teenager lectures on fiscal policy as if they personally endured the suppression of union rights; a young professional derides cultural subsidies as if they had witnessed the censorship of playwrights and poets. The performance is impeccable in its conviction, chilling in its unawareness. There is little acknowledgment that the Spain they inhabit, the one they gripe about, vote for, or idolize is the product of painstaking compromise, decades of democratic labour, and the quiet, relentless courage of those who resisted authoritarianism in both its overt and subtle forms.
This is not merely a debate about politics; it is an exercise in collective memory. And memory, as any historian or psychologist will tell you, is fragile, malleable, easily co-opted. By blaming socialists for nearly everything, the new generation is practicing a form of intellectual necromancy, resurrecting a past that conveniently justifies present anxieties. They don’t see that their anger, their certainty, their moral rigor, is itself an echo of Francoist thought: an insistence on hierarchical blame, on a singular villain, on a clean, moralistic narrative that spares them the discomfort of historical complexity.
One might argue that every country has its ideological cycles, and Spain is no exception. Yet there is something uniquely dissonant in watching children of democracy invoke the authoritarian past as their moral compass. It is not simply nostalgia; it is re-enactment, albeit through the prism of blame rather than boots. The cruelty is doubled: the nation’s history is reduced to caricature, and those who suffered under real repression are consigned to a supporting role in a story written by strangers with no memory of their terror.
It is tempting to dismiss this as generational posturing, a phase that will burn itself out. But the consequences are real. A society that simplifies its past cannot fully grapple with its present. When young Spaniards, confident in their inherited righteousness, demonize a political lineage that fought for social justice, they contribute to polarization, mistrust, and, paradoxically, a latent admiration for authoritarian certainty. Franco’s specter is alive, not in the cadences of generals, but in the rhetoric of teenagers. He returns in Facebook posts and Instagram threads, in casual dismissals of democratic compromise, in a language of blame that is at once seductive and corrosive.
The question, then, is how Spain moves forward without losing its memory or its moral compass. Perhaps the answer lies in fostering education that encourages empathy, nuance, and historical literacy not merely a catalogue of victories and losses, but the human stories that underscore them. Perhaps it lies in resisting the simplification of political life into binaries of good and evil. Above all, it requires acknowledging that cruelty can return in quiet, insidious ways: not always through the decree of a dictator, but through the certainties of those too young to remember the lessons that blood and compromise once taught.
Franco is gone, but his ideological echo finds life in unexpected quarters. The real tragedy is that it finds fertile soil in the very hearts that should, by inheritance and responsibility, resist it. The siesta of Spain may be long, but the ghosts of yesterday are still awake, whispering blame to those willing to listen.
There comes a moment in the life of every political leader when the noise surrounding them grows louder than the voice within. For Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that moment seems to be arriving with the slow inevitability of a political tide. Suspicion sometimes grounded in legitimate concern, sometimes inflated by rumor, sometimes weaponized by enemies, has begun to curl around his presidency. In wartime Ukraine, where everything feels sharpened by danger and exhaustion, even shadows cast longer, and Zelenskyy finds himself standing in the lengthening one of corruption allegations that may or may not touch him personally, but unquestionably stain the atmosphere around him.
He has long insisted he is untouched by the rot that notoriously seeped through Ukrainian politics for decades. Critics, however, insist that proximity is its own kind of involvement. Allies fall, advisers resign, ministers are dismissed under clouds that drift perilously close to the presidential palace. Even if the president himself is free of wrongdoing, the optics are unkind, and optics matter, perhaps more in wartime than at any other moment. A wartime leader must project control, clarity, moral advantage. Anything less begins to feel like fragility.
For months, Zelenskyy has resisted what many abroad and at home consider the only legitimate pressure valve: elections. Democratic renewal. A return to the rituals that distinguish Ukraine from the power-obsessed cynicism of the Kremlin. But the president has argued, with some fairness, that elections during ongoing bombardment would be unworkable, unsafe, possibly exploited by Russia itself. This argument held moral and practical weight as long as Zelenskyy stood unmistakably as the unchallenged symbol of national resistance. Yet the longer he waits, the heavier the questions become. Hesitation, once framed as wartime prudence, now risks being read as calculation.
Ukraine is, after all, a nation that has risen again and again against the small tyrannies of delay. The Orange Revolution, the Maidan uprising, each was a refusal to accept a leader’s claim that extraordinary circumstances excused the postponement of democratic accountability. Zelenskyy knows this history intimately. He once embodied its aspirations.
Now, though, something has shifted. You can hear it in the murmur of diplomats who once praised him without qualification, in the open letters penned by Ukrainian civil society leaders, in the increasingly sharp columns written by analysts who were gentler with him a year ago. The murmurs do not yet constitute a damning chorus, but the notes are accumulating.
Zelenskyy’s predicament is not unique. History is littered with wartime leaders who feared elections more than the front line. War magnifies leadership, but it also exposes its seams. What begins as justified caution can harden into an instinct for control. And once a leader begins to fear the electorate, the electorate begins inevitably to fear the leader.
None of this is to diminish the impossible pressures Zelenskyy faces. Ukraine is fighting not only for territory but for existence. Every choice is sharpened by mortal stakes. To call elections without adequate security would be a gift to Russia. To avoid them indefinitely would be a gift to cynicism. The president is caught between dangers, one external, one internal, both existential in their own way.
But this is precisely why elections, eventually, must happen and must be unimpeachably transparent. Not because Zelenskyy’s legitimacy is absent, but because legitimacy, like trust, decays when not periodically renewed. Democratic authority is not a medal earned once and polished forever; it requires the public’s recurring affirmation, especially in moments of national strain.
Zelenskyy, more than most leaders, understands the power of narrative. His presidency began with a story, a political outsider who stood up to a corrupt system. Now he stands at risk of being written into a different story, one that insists even the idealists are eventually swallowed by the machinery they swore to dismantle.
He has a choice, and the choice is still his to make. He can interpret the rising suspicions as a warning from a people who believe too deeply in their democracy to allow it to drift. He can call for elections not as an act of surrender but as an act of strength, proof that Ukraine’s democratic identity is resilient enough to withstand even this darkest hour. That would not merely silence critics; it would restore the moral contrast that has fueled global support for Ukraine since the first day of invasion.
The alternative is far more perilous. Should Zelenskyy appear to cling to power, even unintentionally, even temporarily, even with reasonable arguments at hand, the narrative will begin to slip from his grasp. Rumor will become certainty to those predisposed to doubt him. Allies may quietly step back. Public patience always finite, may fracture.
In wartime, leaders are defined not only by the battles they fight on the front lines but by the ones they choose to fight within themselves. The temptation to delay accountability is understandable. But the cost of yielding to it may be irreparable.
If Zelenskyy wants to preserve the legacy he once seemed destined to hold, the president who defended not only Ukraine’s land but its democratic soul, he must step toward elections, not away from them. Transparent, credible, indisputable elections.
Because in the end, the darkest suspicion is not that a leader is corrupt, but that he is afraid of his own people. And that is a suspicion no democracy can endure.
In the latest turn of this tragic play Ukraine finds itself at a monumental crossroads. After Donald Trump demanded that Kyiv accept, within days, a U.S.–backed “peace plan” that would force Ukraine to cede territory and make other painful concessions, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has soberly acknowledged that his country now faces “one of the most difficult moments in its history.” But while his words strike with urgency, it is not only external pressure that threatens Ukraine’s future it is also Zelenskyy’s own strategy, which seems caught between principled defiance and desperate pragmatism.
A peace plan crafted under duress, backed by a man who has consistently undermined Western unity and cheered by Vladimir Putin offers no genuine pathway to freedom. Putin, more than anyone must be smiling. He has watched the West fracture, seen allies stumble, and now sees former patrons like Trump swinging a wrecking ball at Ukrainian sovereignty. In his victory the Russian president is not just a predator; he is a masterful puppeteer, weaving discord with surgical precision.
Meanwhile, Europe looks on, numbed or perhaps paralyzed by a familiar ennui. For two decades, European leaders have stumbled from one crisis to the next; often hoping that someone else will do the heavy lifting. Their diplomatic muscle has softened and their moral voice, once robust, now echoes with uncertainty. In the face of Trump’s ultimatum they are silent, reluctant to break ranks and fearful that dissent will invite retaliation. This is the Europe we’ve come to know, cautious, fractious, and unable to speak with one clear moral purpose.
And Zelenskyy? He is left with an impossible dilemma. To reject Trump’s proposal outright might risk losing vital Western support or worse sow discord within his own ranks. But to accept is to betray the very principles on which his nation has staked its future. In this tension lies a kernel of his own undoing. In his hour of greatest need, Zelenskyy has gambled on Western unity, counting on a chorus of calls for solidarity. That chorus has failed to materialize.
His decision to publicly decry the demands feels simultaneously brave and flawed. It’s brave because he refuses to yield to foreign coercion even when doing so might ease his burdens. But it is flawed because it presupposes a level of Western cohesion that simply does not exist. He speaks as if Europe will march with him, as if the U.S. under any other leadership would not try to bargain Ukraine away. His words summon great ideals but his strategy reveals a vulnerability that of a leader who built his strategy around alliances that may not be as steadfast as he imagined.
Zelenskyy’s greatest weakness may be that he misread his own leverage. He believed that his moral clarity, his resistance, his appeals to the world’s conscience would bind the West together against Russian aggression. Instead, they have revealed how conditional that solidarity really is. His rhetoric has not translated into unshakable commitments. The West applauds his courage but when cornered, it hesitates.
And so Ukraine faces a choice that no nation should ever have to make: between existential resistance or existential compromise. Accepting Trump’s roadmap would mean surrendering territory, conceding to demands that could weaken its long-term security. Rejecting it risks political isolation, or worse, a slow unraveling of the fragile international support upon which Ukraine’s survival depends. It is a choice between losing land or losing hope.
This moment reveals a deeper failure, not only of Western statesmanship but of Zelenskyy’s realist instincts. He has been a charismatic wartime president, a symbol of defiance. But charisma alone is not enough when the international system fractures. His leadership, for all its inspirational power, has not built institutions strong enough to withstand a coercive exit strategy laid down by a former U.S. president intent on rewriting the rules.
Worse, his refusal or inability to build stronger bilateral frameworks with European powers in recent months feels like a strategic miscalculation. Instead of weaving a dense web of security guarantees, economic lifelines, and political assurances, he may have allowed Ukraine to drift toward a dangerous dependence, not just on the goodwill of Europe, but on the ever-shifting whims of global power brokers.
So what should he do now? Zelenskyy must pivot, but carefully. He needs to broaden his diplomatic gambit beyond public condemnations and stirring speeches, to serious engagement with skeptical European capitals, cultivating not just moral solidarity but tangible commitments. He must also prepare his own people for the kind of austere resilience that may lie ahead, because the peace plan on offer is less a peace than a poison pill.
He needs to recalibrate his message: not just as a beacon of resistance, but as a shrewd negotiator who recognizes the brutal realities of power, while refusing to sacrifice national dignity. He must take seriously the risk that the West will push him into submission and make sure he can counter that by offering credible alternatives that do not simply capitulate.
Zelenskyy’s predicament is not just a test of Ukraine’s strength; it’s a test of his own leadership. He must show that he is more than a wartime icon; he must act as a statesman capable of navigating back-channel diplomacy, leveraging asymmetric alliances, and preserving the core of what Ukraine stands for, even if it means confronting the West’s deepest contradictions.
If he fails, Ukraine’s future could be mortgaged to a plan that feels like peace but functions like subjugation. And if he succeeds, he might yet steer his nation through the most treacherous passage it has ever faced. The irony, of course, is that in demanding him to fold, the world has only underscored how formidable he really is. That perhaps is his greatest strength and his greatest danger.
