Sunday Southerner
JUSTICIA
Sunday, December 7, 2025

Barely forty-eight hours after he launched a racist rant surreptitiously referring to Somali Americans as garbage and unworthy to be American citizens or live in America, Donald J Trump, President of the United States, was awarded the First Ever FIFA Peace prize, which Trump accepted with exaggerated guffaw as the” greatest honour” of his life; perhaps greater than his elction as the President of the United States.

Having been denied the Nobel Peace prize, which he openly coveted, Trump, who, about a month ago, while addressing the Israeli Knesset, confessed to aiding and abetting the Gaza genocide, is suddenly the peacemaker. The body counts, the mass graveyards, the bodies left in the rubble in Gaza, the grieving mothers, the plight of prisoners left behind, and the anguishing trauma of those released from decades of incarceration, and the second phase of the genocide now being executed in the occupied West Bank by Israeli Defence Forces, were suddenly forgotten.

FIFA and the world football afficianados had sacrificed the next World Cup on the altar of an egomaniacal, convicted felon, a xenophobe, and a racist who has launched a vicious war on immigrants and persecutes his political opponents.

Thank God, painful as it is, Nigeria would not be part of a compromised ritual. A hollow and desecrated ritual, made worse by rubbishing the hope of footballers of all countries.

Before the FIFA award, the de facto Saudi Ruler, Mohammed Bin Salman, who authorised the murder of a journalist and had his body dissolved in acid, paid a visit to the White House, genuflecting and celebrating Trump as if he were Almighty Allah.

The meeting ended with billions of dollars in arms sales. On the trail of the Saudi tyrant were Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his archenemy, the besieged President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Felix Tshisekedi, who reported for duty in Washington, claiming they had signed a ceasefire in a war for land and vast, rare-earth minerals that had been raging for over 30 years.

To observers and discerning minds, it is clear this ceasefire will only last long enough to allow American mining companies to move in. Trump made his motive clear early enough. As the world watches this unfolding drama, it is becoming increasingly clear that with the resurgence of imperialism, it might just be possible to reintroduce slavery and oppression of the “inferior races”.

It is therefore imperative that civil society organisations that have receded to the sidelines and morphed into increasingly ineffective conferences and seminars reassess their strategies and wake up to the emerging challenges.

The mission, to me, is simple: to fight for those Trump refers to as garbage of this world and restore their human dignity, in other words, to reinvigorate the struggle for human rights, respect for the rules based international order and respect for national borders, state sovereingty, and control of the national endowments and resources of nations and states by the citizens of those nations and their elected leaders and representatives.

President Trump, like Hitler, was being appeased. This appeasement could lead to global consequences. Once he is done with Venezuela, he will refocus attention on Nigeria and South Africa, while persecuting his political opponents at home. He would gain international followership, not only from adherents of white supremacy in America, but from fascist groups in Europe, Asia, Africa (including Nigeria), and the Middle East.

If Trump does not accomplish the first phase of his mission before 2028, his apostles, such as JD Vance, the US Vice President, and others, would not relent.

This is the time to re-energise the global human rights movement, adopting new strategies to see and confront the dangers ahead and to prepare to engage and defeat them. This is a wake-up call.

I can see clearly that many nations in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East are vulnerable. Nigeria, with its myriad of problems, is vulnerable. This is not 1976, when General Murtala Muhammed could tell the US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, not to visit Nigeria because we could not guarantee his security, nor when he told the world that Africa had come of age. We matched our words with action, and colonialism began to collapse.

We spoke, stood firmly behind the people of Angola, and Angola won its independence. We nationalised British Petroleum, BP, and Margreth Thatcher blinked. Zimbabwe gained its independence. This is not our ECOMOG hour. Nigeria and West Africa are weaker now and under siege. Democracy is in retreat, imperialism is on the rise, and jihadists from the North of the Sahara have laid siege.

The capacity of nations, especially in Africa, to confront these emerging challenges will depend mainly on each nation’s internal cohesion, its ability to provide for its people, the efficiency of its constitutional order, and the unity of its people.

All these can only be attained if the human rights of citizens are seen as sacred, inalienable, and to be protected and defended. If the rule of law is weak, the arms of government are corrupt, ineffective, and unresponsive to the needs and aspirations of the people. If the electoral system is corrupt and ineffective, it thus weakens the potential for renewal and change.

The nation will be imperilled, waiting for the hovering vultures to pounce and devour. Last week, Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission marked its 30th anniversary, and it was a time for reflection on the era of General Abacha’s tyranny.

To date, it has become clear that the struggle for human rights, in all its ramifications, needs to be re-energised. The Commission released statistics about horrendous killings arising from insurgencies, terrorism, the increase in ungoverned spaces, the entrenchment of the culture of impunity, the absence of remedy for various wrongs, and the apparent unawareness about these, which are weakening the democratic process by state institutions.

The positive side of the Commission’s report is that, despite these inhibitions, there is a growing awareness among the people about their rights. The Commission reported that it receives an average of 2 million petitions each year, highlighting public faith in the Commission and the possibility that, for every wrong, there is a remedy.

These petitions range from domestic violence, rape, and other gender related violence, exploitation of the working people by employers, failure of the law enforcement and custodial system, which prey on the people, the failure of access to justice, dehumanizing conditions arising from poverty, and the anguish arising from internal security problems, to failure of governance and leadership.

The Commission also highlighted the determination of activists to reverse this trend, citing the case of Professor Joy Ezeilo of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, who, in over thirty years of outstanding work, has provided pro bono legal services through her organisations to over one fifty thousand women, and subsequently, became Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice in Enugu State and a UN special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, and BBC’s 100 Women recognition.

Her recent desire at UNN to be the Vice Chancellor was rebuffed by the governing council, which is believed to have been compromised. Also cited for outstanding work were numerous human rights activists like Mrs Ayo Obe, Hajia Saudatu Mahdi, for spearheading the rights of women in the Northern States and for saving two women, Amina Lawal Kurami and Safiyatu Hussaini, from being stoned to death for alleged adultery.

Prof Wole Soyinka, the first African Nobel Laureate in Literature whose American visa was recently cancelled by the Trump Administration; Dr Jake Epelle, who brought the plight of Albinos in Africa to the global stage as a human rights issue were equally honoured.

Although the Civil Society Movement in Nigeria has diversified its operations by focusing on all aspects of governance, it is becoming necessary to return to the basics by refocusing on where we started almost forty years ago.

Although the tools used in engaging the military administration may not be appropriate as we seek to consolidate democracy, to ignore blatant violations of human rights would make resorting to those tools inevitable. The battle to secure the 2027 elections, even as we fight insurgents, should go beyond monitoring elections as we did in 1998 and 1999, and subsequently; it might require mass action to prevent a rigged election from gaining legitimacy or a rigged candidate from taking office.

It requires the mass mobilisation of the people to vote and defend their votes; it would require vigilance and action to ensure that elections are free of violence and the outcomes dispute-free, so that all elections end at the ballot box instead of the courts.

The next battleground will determine whether we are a strong or a disgraced nation, as you know, as Donald Trump described us. With the appointment of a new Minister of Defence and ambassadors to our foreign missions, Nigeria may yet take the battle to our enemies and position us in the eyes of the comity of nations. Nigeria must prevail.