Compass point

Let's start with our first story.

I mean, it's really critical where we're seeing the US House vote to stop aid to Nigeria.

I mean, I think it was last year, the beginning of last year, January, where we saw President Trump cut a lot of funding to Africa.

We also saw a lot of foreign aid organizations being removed, and that caused like a kind of problems, especially to funding that Africa used to get from other countries.

Now we're seeing a different one with Nigeria.

What do you think is the main reason behind the US House decision to approve a measure that stops aid to Nigeria and what is likely to be the effect? Is this something that, I mean, it's not going to affect Nigeria because we saw it coming or we are already finding other sources of revenue.

And is this going to affect our relationship with the US that, I mean, we've been having, especially after the US has been intervening in the security challenge facing Nigeria?

I mean, it's a, I would like to call it trying to rationalize where we are heading to.

I think it's something we can just look at the, we can look at the rear view mirror and look potentially at the impact that this could have one way or the other in terms of our socioeconomy, in terms of social organization, and other things.

But just to quickly mention that this ban had not gone.

Of course, the House Bill, HRZ 8595, which is scary.

We felt it was coming.

It's simply just look at federal support, the central government support to Nigeria.

They've not expanded it to include U.S. charities, foundations, churches, and other donations from individuals.

And the truth is that the U.S. can decide to expand and bar them one way or the other from throwing any kind of support to Nigeria.

So what we see is not something to just push away.

I think that's important to measure.

Now, the reason why this decision is being taken is this perception that Christians in Nigeria are being persecuted, especially in the Middle Belt and region, and the government is doing nothing, next to nothing, to protect them.

That's the narrative.

It's a simple, clean-up narrative.

And those narratives come in conflict also with some of those geopolitics that we are seeing in Iran, in Iran, the way they will call it in the US, we call it Iran, and then we're seeing it also playing out in the Middle East.

To clarify, Nigeria has a population of 240 million.

And then if you put it side by side with that of the Middle East, you'll see Nigeria simply have a lot of people.

And it could become a very nesting ground to win arguments, ethno-religious arguments, geo-religious arguments, just to use that word loosely.

And so what you see happen is that some class of people in the U.S., they believe that why the left, in quotes, quote-unquote, the left, that's what they call them, seems to be interested in the challenges that is going on in the Middle East.