By Kayode Emola
Last week Friday, we saw how the Trump team humiliated the Ukrainian president in the oval office before an international audience. After that bitter encounter, the Ukrainian president had no option than to leave the white house and immediately headed to the UK.
The Trump team were very adamant that the Ukrainian president must sign minerals deal before any form of negotiation. Trying to drive a hard bargain, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky insisted that there must be security guarantees before any of deal can be considered.
Alas, the US president was not keen to negotiate, his was an order that must be followed to the letter. Sign the deal and the rest can come later, he even openly said that the Ukrainian president does not have any cards in which to play and cannot dictate the terms.
Trump went on to say that should the Ukrainian president not sign that deal; he was playing with World War III. Was Trump serious about pushing the world into another war or is he just using it as a threat to force the Ukrainians to the table. Only time will tell, but as far as Donald Trump is concern, the US has invested heavily in the Russia/Ukraine war, and it is payback time now.
To be frank, people should ask the Ukrainian leadership how they intend to win the war despite not been able to get any of the land Russia took from it since the beginning of the conflict despite receiving over $300bn in aid from the US, Europe and other allies. Where has those monies gone into? Is the Russia/Ukraine war a make belief or an avenue for some people to cash out.
Some prominent US commentators like Scott Ritter has stated that the US doesn’t need minerals deal with Ukraine. That doing minerals deal with Ukraine is a favour to the Ukrainian government just for them to save face. In his recent broadcast, Scott stated that the US has already done a deal with the Russian government worth $7tn and that this is the direction the US is heading towards.
We know that Trump has stated on numerous occasions that he is no longer interested in funding NATO. Trump believes that NATO has outlived its usefulness, and the world should move to more economic alliance rather than a military alliance. No wonder Trump is slamming tariff on any country that the US has a trade deficit with.
Some few days ago, Trump suggested that nuclear powers should start thinking of denuclearisation of their arsenals. If this is followed through, then Trump would have made history as the president who changed the world’s direction towards peace.
Not many people knew that the current trajectory of the world was not sustainable. America alone owes over $35tn and rising with no intention or means of paying back, yet it continues to accumulate debt on a large scale. If that trend was not halted or reversed, it risked sending the world financial markets into a complete meltdown somewhere down the line.
Should that happen, only countries with strong economic base will be the ones with any means of withstanding a shock from such a global meltdown. Hopefully, if Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) can reverse the downward trend of America, then the world may have a chance to withstand any future financial crisis.
We Yoruba need to understand that in international diplomacy, no country will stand up for us if we continue to let our heritage go into ruin by the Nigerian government. We have lost our economic base built in the 1950s by Chief Awolowo and his team and now we are about to lose our existence and land.
We need to understand that the Ukrainians relied on the US government to help them fight and win their war with the Russians without adequately preparing for the war themselves. Despite several warnings over several years before the Russian invasion in February 2022, the Ukrainians did not take the threat of an invasion serious until a full-scale war started.
We Yoruba must not through ignorance let our guard down like the Ukrainians and end up where we do not expect. The Ukrainians downplayed the threat of losing their lands to the Russians and ended up in a war they weren’t prepared for. Despite all they have lost in the war, they are now going to cede their mineral resources to the US in the name of finding lasting peace.
If NATO were to be disbanded or Russian being allowed to join the alliance and with no real enemy in Europe to war against, then the Ukrainians fight against the Russians would have been for nothing.
I hope and pray that our Yoruba people would not wait for us to get to the stage where we are at the brink of losing everything before they react. Most Yoruba are not good at anticipating what is to happen in the present time let alone predict what is to happen in the future.
We need to double our effort in future proofing our Yoruba economy and put on our thinking cap to know that the world is changing rapidly so that whatever happens, we are not left behind. We must be prepared to face the daunting challenges that stares us in the face and be ready to confront it with the courage that it deserves and pray that God in His infinite mercies will grant us the grace to succeed.
