There is a particular arrogance to empire when it insists it no longer exists. The language has changed, the uniforms are gone, and the maps look cleaner, but the instinct remains the same. When the White House reportedly begins quiet conversations with oil companies about Venezuelan crude, it is not diplomacy. It is not humanitarian concern. It is the opening move of modern colonization, dressed in corporate suits and justified with familiar rhetoric about stability, markets and security.
This is not about helping Venezuela recover, nor about easing global energy prices for struggling households. It is about control without responsibility. About extracting value while outsourcing chaos. The old empires sent governors and gunboats. The new one sends consultants, contracts, and compliance requirements. The result is the same: a weakened country turned into a resource corridor, its sovereignty slowly hollowed out while officials in Washington congratulate themselves for being pragmatic.
Once oil is back on the table, the rest of the playbook follows naturally. Camps, politely renamed “processing centers,” for the unwanted migrants whose displacement this same system accelerates. Agreements for short-term labor visas that promise opportunity but deliver precarity. Workers imported when needed, discarded when inconvenient, and always kept just temporary enough to never demand belonging. It is slavery with paperwork, exploitation with a press release.
We are told this is realism. That borders must be managed, markets must function, and voters must be reassured. But realism for whom? Certainly not for the Venezuelan farmer watching foreign firms profit from land he can no longer farm. Not for the migrant housed behind fences because their labor is useful but their presence is not. And not for the American worker told to accept lower wages and fewer protections in the name of competitiveness.
What makes this moment especially corrosive is how normal it has become. Camps no longer shock. Cheap labor schemes are debated like technical adjustments. Entire populations are reduced to “flows” and “pressures,” abstract problems to be optimized. The moral cost is carefully excluded from the spreadsheet. This is how societies slide into cruelty without ever announcing it.
The United States likes to imagine itself as a reluctant superpower, dragged into global messes by circumstance. But there is nothing reluctant about negotiating access to another nation’s resources while that nation remains politically and economically strangled. There is nothing accidental about designing migration systems that benefit corporations while breaking human beings into manageable units of work.
And what of consent? Not the kind manufactured through desperate governments or elite agreements, but the consent of the American public. How much will citizens tolerate being implicated in this system? How long before they question why policies carried out “in their name” consistently favor oil companies, private contractors, and security firms, while delivering insecurity and moral erosion at home?
History suggests there is a limit. Empires rarely collapse because of foreign resistance alone. They rot internally, from cynicism, exhaustion, and the quiet realization that the story no longer matches reality. When people sense that ideals have become branding exercises, trust evaporates. Participation turns to resentment. Silence turns to anger.
This is not an argument for isolation or naïveté. It is an argument for honesty. If the United States is choosing a path of resource extraction, labor exploitation, and managed disposability, it should at least stop pretending this is about freedom or democracy. Call it what it is. Admit the tradeoffs. Allow citizens to decide whether this is truly the country they want to be.
The danger is not only what is done abroad, but what is learned at home. When a nation grows comfortable treating others as expendable, it eventually applies the same logic inward. Surveillance justified at borders migrates into cities. Emergency powers become routine. The line between citizen and subject blurs. People are told to be grateful they are not on the other side of the fence, and fear replaces solidarity as the organizing principle of politics.
If there is a next move, it will not be announced loudly. It will arrive as another policy tweak, another pilot program, another necessary compromise. That is how modern empires move: incrementally, until resistance feels futile. The question is whether Americans will notice before the cost is irreversible, or whether they will wake up one day to discover that exploitation abroad has rewritten the social contract at home.
To expect the Iranian regime to collapse because of demonstrations and internal weaknesses, by comparing it similar authoritarian regimes of the region of the past, is a dangerous miscalculation. It is comforting even seductive, to believe that history moves in neat patterns, that popular anger inevitably topples entrenched power, that corruption hollows out any state beyond repair, that fear eventually dissolves in the face of courage. But Iran is not Iraq and the Islamic Republic is not merely another brittle dictatorship waiting for the right push. It is something far more deeply embedded, far more entangled with the daily life, psychology and social structures of its people.
The comparison with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is particularly misleading. Saddam ruled through naked coercion, tribal alliances and a military machine that ultimately depended on loyalty bought with money and fear. When that machine cracked, the state collapsed with it. The Iranian system, by contrast, is not just a government; it is an ecosystem. It has spent more than four decades weaving itself into education, welfare, religion, business, media and even private morality. It does not merely govern society. It inhabits it.
The ayatollahs did not build a regime that floats above the population like a foreign object. They cultivated one that sinks roots into neighborhoods, mosques, charities, universities and families. The Basij is not only a paramilitary force; it is also a social ladder for the rural poor, a source of identity for young men with few alternatives and a gateway to jobs, loans and respect. State-linked foundations distribute food, housing and scholarships. Clerical networks mediate disputes, arrange marriages and provide a sense of moral order. For millions of Iranians, the regime is not an abstract oppressor but the system through which daily life is navigated.
This does not mean the system is loved. It is resented, mocked and cursed with impressive creativity. It is blamed for inflation, isolation, corruption and the slow suffocation of personal freedom. Protest slogans have become bolder, angrier, more explicit. The courage of young Iranians, especially women, is undeniable. Yet resentment is not the same as revolutionary capacity. A society can be deeply unhappy and still profoundly constrained, fragmented and risk-averse.
One of the Islamic Republic’s greatest strengths is its mastery of controlled pluralism. It allows just enough debate, factionalism and ritualized dissent to release pressure without surrendering power. Reformists, conservatives, pragmatists, hardliners, these labels give the impression of choice and motion, while the core remains untouched. Elections are staged not to transfer authority, but to periodically renew the illusion that authority can be negotiated with. The result is a population trained to hope narrowly, complain loudly and act cautiously.
There is also the matter of fear, which in Iran is not crude but calibrated. The state does not need to terrorize everyone all the time. It only needs to make examples, unpredictably and selectively. Prison sentences, disappearances, sudden executions, the quiet destruction of families through blacklisting and social exclusion, these are enough to discipline millions. The message is subtle but clear: protest is possible, resistance is admirable but survival is mandatory.
Unlike Saddam’s Iraq, Iran also possesses an ideological spine that still holds, however crookedly. The revolution of 1979 is not ancient history. It is a living myth, retold in schools, commemorated in murals, revived every year in ceremonies and speeches. The regime presents itself not just as a state, but as the guardian of a cosmic narrative, resistance against Western domination, Shiite martyrdom against injustice, dignity against humiliation. Even those who reject this story are forced to speak its language. It defines the grammar of political life.
Economic misery alone will not undo this architecture. Sanctions, inflation and unemployment erode legitimacy but they also deepen dependence. When the private sector collapses, state-linked institutions expand. When opportunities shrink, ideological loyalty becomes currency. Hardship does not always radicalize; it often exhausts.
This is why predictions of imminent collapse resurface every few years and are proven wrong every time. Outsiders see the crowds, the slogans, the viral videos and mistake visibility for momentum. They underestimate how thoroughly the regime has learned to absorb shock. It bends, retreats tactically, sacrifices a few officials, adjusts the volume of repression and then resumes. Like a seasoned boxer, it knows how to lean into the punch.
None of this means the system is eternal. It is aging, sclerotic, riddled with corruption, and increasingly disconnected from the aspirations of its own youth. Its religious authority is thinner than it once was. Its economic model is unsustainable. Its succession question looms like an unspoken storm. But decay is not collapse and stagnation is not surrender.
Real change in Iran, if it comes, is more likely to be slow, messy and internal, a transformation of the system rather than its sudden demolition. It will emerge from generational shifts, elite fractures, economic reconfiguration, and the gradual erosion of ideological faith. It will not look like Baghdad in 2003 or Tehran in 1979. It will be quieter, more ambiguous, and far less cinematic.
To believe otherwise is to misunderstand the nature of the Islamic Republic and, more importantly, the reality of those who live under it. Hope is not analysis. Anger is not strategy. And history does not repeat itself simply because we wish it would.
There are moments in a country’s life when politics stops being about tax brackets and highway funding and becomes something rawer, a fight over the meaning of belonging, power, and fear. America is drifting into one of those moments now. Trump’s shadow still stretches long and thick over the public imagination, and MAGA ideology, simple, angry, intoxicating, keeps teaching millions to confuse dominance with strength and cruelty with truth. In this atmosphere, it is easy to believe that only louder demagogues or more polished cynics can survive. Yet figures like Zohran Mamdani suggest something more unsettling to authoritarians: a different moral rhythm altogether.
Mamdani does not look or sound like the strongmen that history tells us to expect in dangerous times. He is soft-spoken, intellectually restless, shaped by migration and movement rather than nostalgia for a mythic past. And that is precisely why he matters. Authoritarian politics feeds on emotional shortcuts: fear of strangers, reverence for hierarchy, longing for lost greatness. Mamdani’s politics interrupts that circuitry. He speaks of housing as dignity, not charity. Of public safety as community, not vengeance. Of democracy as a daily practice, not a brand to sell at rallies. These are not radical ideas on paper. In practice, they are subversive.
The MAGA worldview thrives on a story of siege “you are under attack, and only I can protect you.” It reduces the nation to a bunker mentality. Mamdani offers a competing story, one of shared vulnerability and shared responsibility. That may sound fragile in an age of roaring slogans, but fragility can be disarming. It asks citizens to grow up emotionally, not regress into tribal reflexes. That alone is revolutionary in a political culture addicted to outrage.
His influence will not come from overpowering Trumpism in sheer volume. It will come from modelling a politics that refuses to mirror its enemy. Every authoritarian movement secretly wants its opponents to become caricatures, screaming, dismissive, elitist, or cynical, so that repression feels justified. Mamdani’s calm insistence on structural justice makes that harder. He does not argue that MAGA voters are monsters. He argues, implicitly, that they are neighbors trapped inside a cruel story about how the world works.
This is dangerous to authoritarianism. Tyranny depends on emotional simplification. Mamdani complicates the emotional landscape. He introduces doubt where certainty is demanded, empathy where rage is profitable. He talks about material conditions, rent, debt, healthcare, transit, not as technical problems but as moral failures of a society that claims to value freedom. In doing so, he exposes the hollowness at the heart of MAGA economics: the promise of dignity through dominance rather than security through solidarity.
There is also the symbolic power of his presence. A Muslim socialist immigrant in American public life is a living contradiction of the “real America” myth. His existence quietly refutes the idea that identity must be narrow to be legitimate. He embodies the future that authoritarian nostalgia fears: plural, messy, unclassifiable, uninterested in racial hierarchy as destiny.
Critics will say that this kind of politics is naive, that authoritarianism cannot be reasoned with, only crushed. But history is not so simple. Authoritarian movements often collapse not just when defeated, but when they lose their narrative monopoly. Mamdani chips away at that monopoly by offering a vision of courage that is not loud, of leadership that is not theatrical, of patriotism that does not require enemies.
His language is especially important. Trumpism survives by turning politics into entertainment and grievance into identity. Mamdani refuses to perform outrage as a personality trait. He speaks like someone who expects adults to think, not chant. That alone can recalibrate what people imagine politics is for. Not to vent, not to humiliate, but to organize life more fairly.
Will this convert hardened MAGA loyalists overnight? Of course not. But influence is not always about conversion. Sometimes it is about keeping an alternative alive long enough for history to need it. In periods of democratic decay, the most powerful act can be to demonstrate that cruelty is not inevitable and that compromise is not weakness.
If Trumpism is a fire fed by fear, Mamdani represents a different kind of flame: slower, steadier, meant to light rooms rather than burn them down. He does not promise greatness. He promises repair. And repair is not glamorous. It does not fit on hats. It does not thrill crowds the way a villain does.
But repair is how societies survive themselves.
In an America drifting toward the theater of authoritarian certainty, Zohran Mamdani’s greatest influence may be this: reminding the country that democracy is not supposed to feel like war. It is supposed to feel difficult, unfinished, and human.
The term “talk the talk, walk the walk” is a phrase in English that means a person should support what they say, not just with words, but also through action. Actions speak louder than words.
For more Walk the talk, HERE! For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!
Jesus Christ was not born on December 25. This has been proven beyond measure, but those who want their own religion as opposed to true worship of God continue to observe that day. Heaven is not about religious rituals or observances. It didn’t bother Jesus either; they could enjoy themselves and buy their chickens even with stolen money, money stolen from their offices. They can sing all these good songs, and they can even stage plays; they do it unto themselves but not unto Christ.
The birthday of Jesus is not something that Jesus asked believers in him to celebrate. If Christ came and didn’t die and rise, all those beautiful teachings he gave would be unattainable by anybody. It is the death and resurrection of Jesus that is most important for man. But humans are hypocrites. They like to create their own ways. The death of Jesus Christ has meaning, and his resurrection too. Since we are not in church, we won’t write on that here.
But Christmas has become a problem in Nigeria, especially among the Yoruba, who used to be praised as an example of religious tolerance. Some Yoruba Muslims are preaching that any Muslim who takes Christmas food from a Christian will go to hell. No, they won’t. Whether they eat or not, no harm will befall them. But the Muslims are very scared, and they avoid Christian celebrations. I know one good Muslim who now avoids my house every December. He will rather visit me on the 26th of December and give a reason, which is usually a lie. To avoid a sin that is no sin really, he jumped into another one. I know, like Muslims all do, he would go back home and chant his ‘Astagafurulahi,’ begging Allah for forgiveness. Muslims have a lot of latitude in forgiveness of sin. I envy them. Even their dead, long after they are dead, are forgiven as they pray for them. I envy them because with my religion, once you die and your sins are not repented of—please, I’m saying repented of, not just confessed—you are gone forever into hell. That’s the magnitude of Muslims’ latitude on forgiveness of sins. I love them tremendously.
But my concern today is the great man, Donald Trump of America and the small man of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, who was arrested like a chicken from his bedroom as he had a sober moment with his wife in the cool of the night in their bedroom and was handcuffed and abducted to America to be tried. Tried! Under what law? How can the law of America be binding on a Venezuelan? He was not among those who made that law. America is democratic; they respect the rule of law. That is long gone. America has become the most lawless nation on earth too. Nicolas Maduro will be tried under a set of laws that are foreign to him, under which he should not be tried. Who will be the lawyer of Maduro, and what will he plead? Trump is solidly in control of the courts, even the Supreme Court. He has six judges on the Supreme Court. He appointed them during the dying days of his first term. Trump is never afraid. One judge recently resigned, and he said he cannot continue being a judge where ethics forbade him from speaking his mind publicly. Justice has become injustice in America, and he wants to speak his mind, especially in this Trumpian era where the president is a literal dictator. The last time Trump won a case at the Supreme Court, he openly thanked the judges and promised them, “I will not forget.” He did not carry “Ghana must go bags” loaded with dollars as is done in Nigeria, but the judges know they must bend justice to him because that was why he appointed him. Trump, like Nigerian politicians, tells those who think he is not following the rule of law “to go to court.” He is so sure nobody can defeat him at the Supreme Court. Trump is the only government that the US has today. He is in control of the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. I think a third term will not be impossible for Trump. He won’t need to consult ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, who did it but keeps denying that he did not till today. The last time I saw Obasanjo and the first lady holding hands like they were boyfriend and girlfriend going inside the Aso Rock, to which Obasanjo and others had been invited, I laughed at this Christmas issue again, this deception that brings hypocrites together, that makes sinners pretend to be sinners. Mrs. Oluremi Tinubu, for our knowledge, is the wife of the president, and she is a pastor, a spiritual daughter of Enoch Adeboye, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Nigeria, and overseas. Enoch Adeboye calls President Bola Tinubu his son-in-law because Tinubu is the husband of Oluremi Tinubu.
It is a Christmas where ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo and first lady Oluremi Tinubu became saints suddenly. At least that’s what millions of Nigerians who saw them lock hands thought. There were a few who insinuated that the two big persons held hands like secret lovers. Don’t mind Nigerians; their minds are not clean. But after a good deal of hypocrisy at the Aso Rock Christmas Carol, I hope they are allowed to visit Father Christmas at his grotto. I would have wished to see the behaviour of Obasanjo at the grotto. But it is Christmas, and in the early morning of it, like a thief in the night, the almighty Donald Trump chose to visit Nigeria because of the bandits and terrorists. Why did Trump choose this particular day, the day many Christians deceive themselves, the day that Remi Tinubu just had a swell time with her guests at a lavish party? Was Trump disdaining Nigerian Christians? I don’t think so. Was he disdainful of the president and his first lady by choosing the day of their party to create fear in the heart of the president and to turn their joy into mourning? Discerning Nigerians have since thrown into the dustbin the lie that the strike was a cooperation between the US and Nigeria, between Tinubu and Trump. Only Trump knows why he chose that day. Maybe to deceive the Muslim-populated north that Trump, whom they think is a Christian but is not, would not do any such thing during a Christian day. But Trump struck that Christmas day, killing many terrorists who obviously would have gone to bed with the hope of waking up the following morning to continue to unleash mayhem on hapless Nigerians who could not hope for any protection from their governments, state and federal. Trump struck at the backyard of the Sultan of Sokoto, Saad Abubakar, the most powerful man in Nigeria. That would be a desecration by Trump. Since Trump struck, the Sultan has not spoken. Some have asked if he has gone into hiding; the usually loquacious Ahmad Gumi, a proponent of Sharia and a voice for the terrorists, has not said a word. Some said he had deleted all the vituperative posts he had made against Trump from social media. Gumi alleged his life was in danger because there was a security report that listed him among those Trump would pick on like he picked on Maduro. Who would not fear Trump? Gumi has harassed Nigerians with his posts; he has called the bandits and terrorists freedom fighters. He didn’t tell the world what bondage they were in that they needed to be free from. But when Trump struck at his backyard, he quickly learned that Trump is not Tinubu and that the man can make good on all his threats: he kept quiet. If you know President Bola Tinubu, he would rather keep quiet doing his manoeuvres behind the scenes. So too is Professor Usman Yusuf. He is also keeping quiet. Fear of Trump is the beginning of wisdom. Gumi and Yusuf have wizened up.
A few days after the Tangaza and Jabo strikes in Sokoto State, the US struck again in Kaduna. Again, reports said the strike was a combination of the US in the air and Nigerian boots on the ground. An untold number of bandits and terrorists were killed in that raid. Kaduna is where Sheik Gumi rules from. He has his own laws, which supersede the laws of Nigeria. Who dares question him? His late father was the Grand Khadi of the Appeal Court and the chief advisor of the first premier of the north, Sir Ahmadu Bello. Who dares question him? He wants Sharia, and that’s at all costs. Maybe the bandits and the terrorists are his means of obtaining that. But Trump struck, and he understood that the gun is more powerful than any religious doctrine. He knew the guns of the bandits are nothing before the bombs of Trump.
Trump took a break. He announced to Nigeria that he was not done yet. The bandits cowered, Gumi cowered, and Professor Yusuf went quiet. The bandits began to flee. Then, a few days later, Trump’s soldiers were at the premises of Nicolas Maduro, where in his sleep he and his wife were abducted and flown to the US for trial. Maduro is not a Nigerian; he is a Venezuelan. But he has lessons for Nigerian leaders. The US accused Maduro of leading a drug cartel. America has been fighting him with sanctions, but when the US saw that sanctions did not do the work of getting Maduro removed, it decided to visit him personally and arrest Maduro and his wife alive. Again, as in Nigeria, where Trump praised his soldiers for a precision strike that he said only the US could have accomplished, American forces demonstrated another precision foray into the bedroom of Nicolas Maduro and his wife. “Nobody died on our side, but 32 Cuban soldiers died,” Trump triumphantly told journalists. Those 32 were the personal guards of Maduro. According to reports, for a year, the US, through its CIA, had compromised Maduro’s elite guards. The CIA had gotten three of the elite guards. How they compromised those guards is an important message for President Bola Tinubu and all those that rule Nigeria now and will rule her later. America used the excuse of narco-terrorism to arrest Maduro. And when you hear about narcotics, you know Nigeria is hot on the deal. Brigadier-General Mohammed Buba Marwa is doing a great job, but that’s at the lower level. Not yet in Aso Rock, not yet in all the legislatures, and not yet among the political parties. In Venezuela, all three elite guards were affected by the economic challenges, which had plunged the people into unprecedented hardships. There is hyperinflation in the country. You need a wheelbarrow of Venezuelan money to buy a loaf of bread. The report added that a second guard had a daughter who was sick and needed to be taken abroad for treatment. The elite guard, whose daughter was sick, could not afford the money for treatment. But Maduro flew to Cuba for a health check despite the collapsing economy. Do you remember that our own Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, has just returned from a health check in the UK? However, the report disclosed that the CIA offered to take the ailing daughter to the US for treatment, all expenses paid. To convince the three elite guards, the CIA secretly smuggled their families to America under a different identity. The third elite guard was just disgruntled. He had been bypassed for promotion because he was not politically connected. The CIA got to know and fueled this dissatisfaction and began to use the guards. The three guards were providing information to the CIA. Maduro kept where he sleeps each day a top secret. Nobody knows, but it happened that one of these elite guards was assigned to a night duty in a safehouse where Maduro would pass the night. He informed the CIA. When the Americans came for Maduro, the guards did not put up any resistance. The 32 Cuban guards who did were all killed by the American soldiers.
What is the lesson for our venal and selfish leaders in Nigeria who think that their guards are not Nigerians and are immune from the economic malaise? No matter what you do to your personal guard, they suffer what other Nigerians also suffer. If they don’t, they have relatives who do. They are not happy with the current situation, as millions of Nigerians are not happy with the administration. The administration has built a system that rewards incompetence, where the best of jobs go to the worst of people. They see and know everything, and they can be easily recruited into rebellion. Recall that the president’s personal military aide was recently recommended for promotion to the rank of brigadier-general. The retired generals cautioned the president, saying it may jeopardize discipline in the military. President Tinubu has a way of bribing everybody to support him. But this cannot go too far. It is all Nigerians that ought to be bribed into good living so that there can be peace. The generality of Nigerians ought to be bribed by an improved economy. The president had to reverse the promotion of his military aide, which is said to be the second in two years. How many are around the president now that were not recruited on merit? Senator Ali Ndume cried against the president for ordering some staff of the Central Bank (CBN), Abuja to be posted to Lagos because CBN was overstaffed and because they constituted a threat to the CBN building. Senator Ndume cried himself hoarse because his daughter was involved. He threatened that the north, to which he belongs, will not vote for the president in the coming 2027 election. Nigerians read that and took note of it. The ground is being prepared for a revolt, which, if it happens, Ndume and others like him will regret. The ground is being prepared for a Trump visit. We might have another Maduro on our hands.
There is inequality in Nigeria, and Nigerians know it. Those who toil in the universities and come out with good grades have no jobs. I met one a few days ago in Ibadan who was riding the popular Marwa tricycle. When we began to discuss politics in Nigeria, I saw that his contribution was well informed. It was then he told me he is a graduate of political science. He is very well informed, and he can never be loyal to Nigeria in his present situation. President Muhammadu Buhari called the youths lazy, but I met one who rides a Marwa tricycle. They are making money, but they know their education and skills have prepared them to be better engaged. I was curious to know why Venezuela became poor in spite of being the country that has the biggest oil deposit under its soil, so I asked Gemini AI. And it gave me an avalanche of information. As I read the story, I felt I was reading the story of Nigeria, which I’m familiar with. Venezuela had earned so much from its oil, and with the money it made, it stopped producing anything; rather, it imported everything. Doesn’t Nigeria read like that? Do we produce anything? Even the clothes our leaders wear are imported. The news outlet, Sahara Reporters, observed President Tinubu wearing a wristwatch that cost over 400 million naira, during the recent Eyo festival in Lagos. For the poor Nigerians who cannot afford new clothes, the rags, the used clothes imported from America, have become popular all over the nation. Chief Obafemi Awolowo worried about it and promised he was going to ban it. The Igbos who started wearing it said they will not vote for him. They did not. But Awolowo’s people, who were proud of the promise to ban the used clothes, now proudly wear them. It’s not that they love it, but that’s what they are left with. Seyi Tinubu, the son of the president, gallivants around in expensive clothes and cars. Seyi Tinubu has not done more than his age mates; in fact, he has done less, but he earns more than his contemporaries. Seyi Tinubu is contributing to the fire that may lead to the downfall of the president; he and Tinubu’s daughter, Folashade Tinubu-Ojo, imposed as Iyaloja-General of Nigeria, who dictates the pace in all markets in Nigeria, are the cynosure of all eyes, but they are lighting a flame because Nigerians are observing everything they do, and they don’t seem to like what’s going on.
I hope Donald Trump will not decide to come here like he did to Maduro in Venezuela. Americans are discussing that Africa and Latin American countries should be recolonized because we can’t govern ourselves. You can flaunt all your theories of sovereignty. The sovereign nation today is the one that has the power to defend itself and whose people are readily supporting their nation and their leaders because they are receiving good governance. Building a nation on equality, fairness, and justice is what captivates the hearts of the people to love the nation. President Tinubu wants to make more money from tax but has done nothing to justify that tax increase. If Trump decided to come here today, what the elite guards did to Maduro they will do here also. Who helped remove General Yakubu Gowon from power? It was then Colonel Joseph Naven Garba, who was from the same place in Plateau State as Gowon. He was Gowon’s commander of the brigade of guards. Tribal sameness or political loyalty is not an assurance in the days of trouble. Competence, equality, justice, and fairness build a sense of nationhood into a people. According to the sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the only visionary national leader Nigeria has had, “Our problem is in our attitudes and our sick and lame leadership.” Let President Tinubu hear this and stop thinking his political manoeuvres can save him in the day of trouble. It is righteousness, as the Bible says, that delivers from death. “Righteousness” is big old English, but it simply means “right doing.” Nigeria is not too far away from Maduro and Venezuela.
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.
Donald Trump’s latest performance art arrived wrapped in the language of honour and peace. Speaking with the casual entitlement of a man who believes all institutions are subsidiaries of his will, he declared it “would be a great honour” to accept a Nobel Peace Prize from Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, should she decide to share it with him. The sentence collapses under its own weight. It misunderstands the Nobel Prize, misrepresents power and exposes a worldview where prestige is something to be redistributed by personal whim, like a hotel upgrade or a gold-plated trophy.
The Nobel Peace Prize is not a souvenir that can be split, reassigned or gifted by aspiring heads of state. It is not a loyalty token nor a diplomatic coupon. It is awarded by a committee that has, for better or worse, its own logic, rules and independence. Trump’s comment treats the Nobel Committee as if it were a wing of the ...Trump Kennedy Center, staffed by loyalists waiting for instructions from a man who confuses global institutions with branding opportunities. In his imagination, history itself is malleable, provided the narrative flatters him.
This is not merely ignorance. It is a symptom of a deeper disorder in Trump’s political imagination. Authoritarianism usually thrives on discipline, coherence and an iron grip on symbolism. Trump’s version is sloppier, louder, and increasingly untethered from reality. He does not just demand loyalty; he demands applause for fantasies. The danger is not only that he misunderstands how power works; but that he believes humiliation is a currency others should gladly pay to stand near him.
Enter María Corina Machado, a figure who has become a symbol of resistance to Venezuela’s authoritarian decay. Her struggle against Nicolás Maduro has earned her admiration far beyond Venezuela’s borders. Yet admiration is not immunity from criticism. Trump’s comment forces an uncomfortable question, how far is Machado willing to bend, smile or remain silent to secure international backing for her political ambitions?
The optics are grim. When an opposition leader allows herself to be rhetorically absorbed into Trump’s ego theater, she risks shrinking her cause to fit his self-image. Trump does not see allies; he sees accessories. If Machado becomes one more prop in his quest for validation, the moral clarity of her movement blurs. Power gained through humiliation is never clean power. It stains everyone involved.
There is a tragic irony here. Trump speaks of peace while embodying a politics that thrives on division, spectacle, and personal grievance. He frames himself as a misunderstood peacemaker, persecuted by elites who refuse to recognize his greatness. In this narrative, the Nobel Prize is not an award for concrete achievements, but a missing jewel stolen by enemies. If only the “right” people were in charge, he implies, the prize would naturally find its way into his hands.
This mindset mirrors the very authoritarian impulses Machado claims to oppose. Authoritarianism is not just about repressing opponents; it is about redefining reality so that institutions exist only to confirm the leader’s virtue. Trump’s confusion of the Nobel Committee with a personal award panel is not a joke. It is a glimpse into how he believes legitimacy is manufactured: by loyalty, by flattery, by submission.
Machado’s challenge, then, is not only Maduro. It is the temptation to treat Trump’s attention as an unqualified asset. Support from powerful figures can be useful, even necessary, in international politics. But there is a line between strategic engagement and self-erasure. Every nod, every shared stage, every unchallenged absurdity chips away at the dignity of the cause she represents.
The humiliation is subtle but cumulative. It begins with silence, with polite laughter, with the decision not to correct the obvious falsehood. It ends with a movement reframed through someone else’s delusions. Trump will move on, as he always does, once the applause fades. Machado, and Venezuela, will be left to deal with the consequences.
Trump’s statement is not about peace, Venezuela or Machado. It is about himself, as always. It is about maintaining the illusion that he sits above institutions, that history awaits his approval, that even prizes dedicated to peace must orbit his ego. The real question is not whether he understands the Nobel Peace Prize. It is whether those who seek his favour understand the cost of playing along.
For Venezuela’s future to be credible, it must be built on principles stronger than borrowed egos. International solidarity matters but not at the price of dignity. Machado’s leadership will ultimately be judged not by who praises her but by what she refuses to become. Aligning with delusion may offer short-term visibility, yet it corrodes the very democratic promise her struggle claims to defend. Absolutely essential.
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An additional note to the article: It is amazing that we live in an era where the Norwegian Nobel Institute needs to clarify something we all know, the Nobel Peace Prize cannot be transferred, shared, or revoked.
In a statement, the institute said the decision to award a Nobel Prize is final and permanent, citing the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, which do not allow appeals. The organization also noted that committees awarding the prizes do not comment on the actions or statements of laureates after receiving awards.
“Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared or transferred to others,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee and the Norwegian Nobel Institute said on Friday. “The decision is final and stands for all time.”
They searched Through rubbish In the streets Of Caracas, They searched For scraps of food, They were the new Homeless and a result Of Maduro’s promised Socialist wonderland, But he brought them Instead a savage Totalitarian Dictatorship, Where inflation, Was above 500%.
Then Maduro Was gone and The liberals in The US protested His demise, While masses Of Venezuelans Around the world Celebrated The liberation Of their people.
******************************* With a digital painting from Nikos Laios
January 12, Jack London’s birthday is an awkward date to celebrate in polite company. London is one of those American writers who refuses to stay embalmed in the amber of high school syllabi. He keeps pacing, growling, shedding. Read him closely and he has the unnerving habit of sounding contemporary, even predictive. In the era of Donald Trump, London’s work reads less like historical adventure fiction and more like an x-ray of American instincts we prefer not to examine for too long.
London was intoxicated by strength, competition, and survival, but he was also deeply suspicious of systems that rewarded cruelty while calling it virtue. That tension animates nearly everything he wrote. He believed in struggle, yet he never romanticized what struggle did to the human soul. In that sense, London feels like an unofficial chronicler of a nation forever torn between rugged individualism and collective responsibility, a conflict that Trump did not invent but dramatized with reality-television flair.
Take The Call of the Wild. Buck’s transformation is often misread as a simple endorsement of brute force. But London’s point is subtler and darker. Buck survives by adapting to a world that has become harsher, less moral, and ruled by whoever holds the club. Civilization collapses quickly; instincts rush in to fill the vacuum. The lesson is not that savagery is noble, but that it is contagious. Trump-era politics thrived on a similar logic. Norms were dismissed as weakness, empathy reframed as naïveté, and cruelty marketed as honesty. Buck does not become a wolf because it is good; he becomes one because the world demands it.
London understood that power is rarely gentle when it feels threatened. In The Iron Heel, his chillingly prescient dystopia, an oligarchic elite crushes democracy under the pretense of order and patriotism. The book is often cited as a socialist tract, but it is also a psychological study of authoritarianism. The ruling class does not see itself as villainous. It believes it is saving the nation from chaos, decadence, and ungrateful masses. Replace London’s steel trusts with billionaire donors and algorithm-driven outrage, and the structure feels uncomfortably familiar. Trump did not dismantle American democracy; he stress-tested it by amplifying the impulses London warned about: resentment, fear of decline, and nostalgia weaponized into policy.
London was fascinated by masculinity in crisis. His heroes are rarely calm; they are anxious, overcompensating, forever proving something to an invisible jury. This is where the Trump parallel sharpens. Trump’s political persona would have made perfect sense to London. Not admirable, necessarily, but legible. London knew that when men feel their status slipping, they often reach not for solidarity but for spectacle. They demand applause, enemies, and simple hierarchies. Complexity feels like betrayal.
What makes London especially relevant now is that he never let readers off the hook. His stories do not allow moral spectatorship. You are implicated. You root for Buck even as he becomes more dangerous. You understand the Iron Heel’s appeal even as it horrifies you. This mirrors the Trump era’s most unsettling truth: it was not an alien invasion. It was a homegrown phenomenon sustained by millions who found comfort, entertainment, or validation in its excesses. London would not have been surprised. He believed societies revert under pressure, and America, for all its progress, is not exempt from gravity.
Yet London was not a nihilist. Beneath the ice and blood, there is a moral argument pulsing through his work. He believed in solidarity as a counterforce to domination. His socialism was less about doctrine than about dignity, the idea that survival should not require the abandonment of humanity. In the Trump years, this idea was mocked as weakness. But London would argue that a society organized entirely around winners and losers eventually runs out of winners. The wolves eat each other.
Reading Jack London today is not an exercise in nostalgia; it is a warning disguised as a birthday celebration. He reminds us that America’s greatest danger is not decline but denial, the refusal to see how quickly ideals erode when fear takes the wheel. London knew the wolf at the door was never just outside. It was always pacing inside us, waiting for permission.
Originally from Port Macquarie, Australia, Paul Woods is a Cartoonist and Illustrator based in South London who also plays drums, works as a Cameraman and likes bad horror films. His series of cartoons is entitled "Insert Brain Here"
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On 7 January 2026, the U.S. government announced that it was withdrawing from membership (and thus financial contribution) to 31 United Nations' bodies and programs. According to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, these institutions and programs are "redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run and captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own." He added "Many of these bodies promote radical climate policies, global governance and ideological programs that conflict with U.S. sovereignty and economic strength."
The U.S. withdrawal comes at a time when the U.N. as a whole (the 193 member States) is in the process of evaluating U.N. structures and programs (UN 80). The results of this evaluation should be presented later this year.
A good number of the programs from which the U.S.A. is withdrawing are based or have activities in Geneva, Switzerland. As an NGO representative to the U.N. in Geneva, I have interacted with many of these programs and the Secretariat members. At this time when there are real challenges in the world society, the withdrawal of the U.S.A. weakens the U.N. system as a whole. The representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in consultative status will increase their activities so that the intellectual dynamics will not be weakened, but NGOs cannot fill the financial gap.
One of the bodies marked for withdrawal is the International Law Commission. A colleague from Egypt who taught international law at the University of Geneva was a leading member of the Commission and had a deep understanding of Middle East culture. Stronger respect for international law in the Middle East remains a real need.
Another institution is the Geneva-based International Trade Center where I had a good friend in the Secretariat. The Trade Center helped developing countries negotiate contracts with transnational corporations. These corporations usually have sophisticated lawyers to write contracts, not the case for many developing countries. Thus the work of the Trade Center filled a real need.
The U. N. Institute for Training and Research has its headquarters in New York, but many of its activities were Geneva-based and so the Secretariat cooperated with Geneva-based NGOs. The same holds true for the UN University with headquarters in Japan but with many Geneva-based activities.
The U.S. is withdrawing from support for the Office of the Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, from the U.N. Entity for Gender Equality, and from the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict - all issues on which the Association of World Citizens has been active. The U.S. is leaving the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations at a time when cross-cultural understanding is a vital need.
Many of the U.N. activities which the U.S. is leaving have dedicated U.S. citizens in the Secretariat. I am not sure what their status will be once the withdrawal is complete.
The U.S. is also withdrawing from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the key instrument on climate change issues. The consequences of climate change are being increasingly felt, and U.S. action would be needed.
As I noted, the representatives of non-governmental organizations will have to increase sharply their activities in the United Nations bodies and programs. The challenges facing us are heavy, and constructive action is urgently needed.
