July 28, 2026 by Olakunle Abimbola
Did Saul just turn Paul?
Did Saul just turn to Paul, in US President Donald J. Trump?
The sitting order exhales with glee, pride and oomph. The opposition sinks into a pall, drowned in pain and deep mourning. Different folks, they say, different strokes!
Imagine the entire Presidency breaking into Nyesom Wike’s audacious ditty, of intrigue, punch and barbs, all the more cutting in its pidgin wit: “As e de sweet us, e dey pain dem, as e dey pain dem, omo, e dey sweet us.”! Surreal?
Why, the irony between Saul, old and new, couldn’t be more hilarious — except you’re in the political opposition, ever-ready to fleece political gains from compatriots’ pains!
Saul was at full gallop to Damascus, to repress yet more Christians, when he ran into a blinding flash. There and then: Saul, the rabid Christian Persecutor, turned Paul, the eternal Christian Proselytizer.
Trump, the Saul, was no less dramatic.
Fed with junk intel by IPOB activists, he fumed and swore he would, “guns-a-blazing”, bomb Nigeria into smithereens, for killing Christians — and he indeed fired a fearsome salvo! That was November 2025.
But by July 2026, Saul — beg your pardon, Trump! — had run into his own blinding flash. That flash smashed the IPOB scale — of lies and darned more lies — in his eyes.
No Christian — or any faith — persecution here: only blood-curdling horror from terror, from which no faith or creed is immune!
So, from Trump, the snarl to kill and maim just morphed into a coo, for a sweetheart Nigeria-America alliance to kill global terror. Hardly illegitimate!
Indeed, every lie has an expiry date — so does IPOB’s!
“The United States-Nigeria relationship is crucial at a time where conflict has spread across West Africa and around the <a href="https://absafricatv9491.live-website.com/world-cup-2026-brutally-exciting/” title=”World Cup 2026: Brutally exciting”>world,” President Trump had replied an earlier letter by President Tinubu, “… and it is a true honour to stand with you in the fight against terrorists and to make the Federal Republic of Nigeria stronger and more prosperous.”
Though this extract grafts different parts of the letter, it shows the logical progression from Trump’s initial thumping ignorance, fed him by IPOB’s lying overseas lobbies.
Indeed, Trump hinted at that still — some fictive Christian genocide by Nigeria — in his latest letter: “I applaud your resolve to tackle the issues plaguing your nation, especially the violence affecting Christian communities …”
Again, there was no Christian genocide anymore than a Muslim or other faith genocide!
But not even the Trump u-turn could turn US Senator Ted Cruz from cruising to new, dizzying heights in wilful and combative ignorance.
In a grouch on X, he claimed the Nigerian government “looks the other way at jihadist atrocities” — yet another fib. But Cruz’s real pain seems a December 2025 US$ 9 million lobbying contract, that Nigeria awarded the DCI Group, a DC-based firm of political and sundry lobbyists.
Still, pray: how much was the Biafra lobby contract that pitched Cruz — and turned him into a shrill, chirping canary on Nigerian affairs, even if what comes off that canary’s beak is bigoted and unbridled ignorance, so pitiable, if not so condemnable?
John James, a US congressman — and another clear joke — ordered Nigeria to release Nnamdi Kanu or risk aid cuts! Just like that?
Does he think Nigeria is Venezuela; or even America itself that couldn’t enforce its own conviction on a felon, simply because he got elected as president? James typifies that hubris that has turned Trump’s America into the butt of global derision!
Indeed, another big lie just landed from the rump of Simon Ekpa’s Biafra Republic Government in Exile (BRGIE)!
Ogechukwu Nkere, its “Prime Minister”, just told the US State Department’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee, to junk its Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Nigeria, on archeological and ethnological matters.
Nkere alleges the Nigerian government persecutes Christians and pro-Biafra groups. But beyond the all-too-familiar din of the South East victimhood orchestra, that’s another fib. Indeed, the contrast is the case.
Ekpa, BRGIE’s first “PM”, now cools his heels in a Finnish jail — for exporting terror into his native Igboland. The coward lied he was creating social media content!
Kanu is testing the mike in Sokoto, for his life-jail for terrorism — if the higher courts don’t change that verdict to a death sentence, as the prosecution pushes at the cross-appeal.
So, it’s rather IPOB and BRGIE terrorizing Nigeria — IPOB thugs goring their fellow Igbo — and other Nigerians — at home; BRGIE zealots feeding lobbyists with fiction abroad.
Why, how might the BRGIE propaganda machine have bristled: had Kanu been a Fulani, Hausa or Yoruba; and his brazen and mindless zombies had torched, maimed and killed in the South East, not in Lagos, during the #EndSARS riots of 2020!
Yet, neither IPOB nor BRGIE has apologized to anyone on Kanu’s felony. Indeed, Peter Obi, boxing himself into a corner by thinking clannish votes could fetch him the presidency, continues to claim Kanu has done nothing wrong! The law says otherwise.
To be clear: these wild opportunists, home or abroad, hardly represent millions of other Igbo: decent, law-abiding, forthright, honest — and no less victims of IPOB terror. Which is why these folks should continue to speak out against IPOB nihilism.
Still, away from IPOB, BRGIE and allied conspiracy theorists! For a polity with rather short institutional memory, remember: Trump’s hauteur and hideous threats actually worsened the terror bind.
He wasn’t short of opportunistic local support, though: not the least that Plateau cleric, Ezekiel Dachomo, that swore killings in Plateau, and much of the Middle Belt, were jihadist; when he knew they were ancestral native-settler feuding, hiding behind Christian-Muslim local tension.
Before you knew it terror, hitherto progressively tamed by greater state force, was unhinged again. Indeed, the Trump threat galvanized the violent felons — jihadists, bandits and free-wheeling kidnappers — into more audacity and mischief!
But all appears cooling off now: that vile marcato of violence everywhere! The political opposition had hoped it would linger — so they could cash in on the chaos for electoral gain in 2027. Tough luck!
The Oriire, Oyo State, abduction and glorious resolution had put paid to that. Too bad!
To be sure, it’s not yet total victory — the Askira-Uba, Borno State, pupils and teachers (kidnapped by Boko Haram, on May 15, as the Oriire bunch), and too many victims nationwide, still languish in captivity. The government must not rest until all are freed.
Still, the Oriire rescue, and the Trump letter, have cooled the temperature a bit, grafting a general can-do spirit; and a gung-ho anti-terror capability in the security forces. There really should be no retreat until terror is totally smashed in our land.
Which is why the present government should press the Nigeria-America anti-terror alliance into ruthless service to root out banditry and jihadist terror.
Elections after 2027 should be driven by informed debates to aid clear electoral choices; not crafted deliberate bogeys that impair voters’ rational choices.
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