When the President of the United States sneezes, many nations take notice; smaller ones even catch a cold. When that individual is Donald Trump, the sneezing is erratic, sometimes deliberately weaponised.
You may not like his character or reckless use of his country’s power, but no one can deny that he’s changed the world in unimaginable ways. He has ripped up the old rules-based world order and is establishing in its place a Trumpian reality where might is right.
Under his watch the president of the sovereign state of Venezuela, along with his wife, were snatched from their bed in the dead of night and spirited to the United States to face American justice. Today, he and Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, are supervising an upheaval in the Middle Belt whose repercussions are already being felt in all corners of the globe.
In the first twenty four hours of the invasion of Iran, the country’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along with a huge chunk of the political and military leadership have been eliminated. In response, the Iranians have been lashing out wildly against all manner of targets.
Yet, this is clearly a one-side fight that’s only going to end with the invaders prevailing. There certainly would be consequences as they have stirred up a pool of enemies who would make being American very risky, if not fatal, in certain corners of the globe. But that’s not the sort of stuff that keeps the cocky U.S. president awake at night.
One of the clear aims of the attack on Iran is regime change. Although the symbol of the theocratic state has been taken out, his movement retains control of the country – at least for now. It remains to be seen whether those preferred by Washington ever get to take charge in Tehran.
But whether in Iran or Venezuela or some far-flung part of the earth, a president who pledged on the campaign trail to keep America away from foreign adventures has shown a growing appetite for meddling in the affairs of other nations. As has been evident in the last few months, Nigeria won’t be an exception.
This country’s 2027 elections may look, on the surface, like a purely domestic contest, but in a world where American power remains decisive the disposition of the White House matters. And few occupants of that office have treated this power as transactionally, or as unpredictably, as Trump – a man who is always demanding that others make a deal with the U.S.
The question is not whether Washington will openly interfere in our elections. It is subtler than that. It’s more about how Trump’s improvisational use of leverage could reshape the incentives of Nigeria’s political class in the run-up to 2027.
Back in November 2025, Trump shook Nigeria with his threat, out of the blues, to enter the country gun-a-blazing to put an end to what he claimed was Christian genocide being executed by terrorists. He accused the government of doing next to nothing to stamp out the reign of terror. Ominously, he warned the Bola Tinubu administration to move quickly or he would take matters into his hands. From that moment on, it was clear that the journey to the next general elections would be affected by a looming American presence in the background.
In the run-up to the 2015 polls, former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration found itself battling to keep the Boko haram insurgency at bay. His inability to defeat the Islamists who had launched a campaign of bombings in major Northern cities, coupled with tales of profligacy and corruption in high places, played perfectly into the opposition’s narrative that he was clueless.
Eleven years after, the insurgency in the Northeast isn’t what it used to be – even if it hasn’t been totally eliminated. Today, the insecurity has taken a different form characterised by banditry and kidnappings that oppress the rural poor living in vulnerable areas.
While there were rumblings that the Barack Obama administration wasn’t too pleased with Jonathan and his crew, American meddling in our internal affairs was nowhere as overt as what’s been happening in recent times.
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For an enfeebled opposition whose avowed intent is the removal of Tinubu from power but who have looked increasingly lacking in options to do so, Trump’s ‘guns-a-blazing’ threat was like a gift from the gods. Giddy with excitement, they felt their bête noire was on the ropes. But not many foresaw how the president and his team skilfully navigated this tricky juncture in the nation’s history.
They went for calm words and diplomacy, rather than engaging the master of the genre in trash talking. The Nigerian president employed soft soap, stroked the American president’s ego. National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, was swiftly dispatched to Washington for peace talks. In a matter of days Congressman Riley Moore and his team were visiting IDP camps in the North-Central for fact-finding. The upshot was that the initial hardline rhetoric fuelled by a single story was tempered.
The one-off air strikes launched soon afterwards against Lakurawa terrorists in Sokoto State may have seemed like a half-hearted follow through on the promise to take the fight to the killers. Still, it signalled that the Nigerian government and its unhappy ally were now on the same page. Malevolent forces who once roamed free now have to contend with the likely intervention of the most powerful military force on earth.
Until Trump inserted himself into the equation, I had argued that religion wouldn’t have the same impact on the 2027 elections the way it did back in 2023 after the All Progressives Congress (APC) decided on a Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket. It was a move that polarised the country along religious lines, one that Tinubu’s foes gladly exploited to the full.
But having governed as a moderate who is sensitive to Nigeria’s religious fault lines, the president had managed to defuse the issue, so much so that his rivals no longer regarded it as a major talking point. That was until Trump’s Christian genocide allegation resurrected it.
So, religion is back, but not in the way it worked three years ago. Politicians have been careful with how they have engaged with the issue. They cannot be too aggressive in their attack of the American position without coming across as anti-Christian or pro-Islamists.
One of those who enthusiastically leapt into the controversy with comments critical of the American position, former Kano State Governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, must now be wishing he was more circumspect.
A bill introduced in the U.S House of Representatives on February 10, 2026 and sponsored by Republican lawmakers is considering sanctions, including visa bans and asset freezes, against him and others, citing alleged involvement in violations of religious freedom. The proposed sanctions also target the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), and a few others.
The former governor’s sin is his imposition of sharia law in Kano State. His New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) has rejected the allegations, labelling them ‘political blackmail’ ahead of the 2027 elections. The party insists Kwankwaso has no direct links to religious extremism and questions the evidence behind the allegations.
In these times no one wants to be isolated and stigmatised like Kwankwaso. Appearing on the Americans’ list automatically puts a negative mark on the former governor and damages his political brand. Who wants to pick a U.S. target as their presidential candidate? Who wants to be defined, fairly or unfairly, as the party promoting sentiments against which the swaggering Americans have gone on the war path?
This is a quandary not of Kwankwaso’s making, but it’s one that limits his options greatly and dilutes his potential influence ahead the 2027 polls.
As for the terrorists and their sponsors who had the Jonathan government in a bind and created the enabling environment for his defeat, they confront a totally different scenario today.
If they were thinking of pulling the same trick for the next elections, it’s time to return to the drawing board, because now an X-factor has been inserted into the calculations. It’s a power that’s not just tracking their actions, words and money flow, it’s an unpredictable and erratic force that acts without notice.