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President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to send US forces into Nigeria with “guns-a-blazing” if Africa’s most populous country does not stem what he described as the killing of Christians by Islamists.

 

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” he said on Truth Social.

“I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet.”

This is coming a day after the American President declared Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern” over killings of Christians, describing the situation as a “mass slaughter.”

“Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter,” Trump wrote.

 

He said the United States “cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening,” directing Congressman Riley Moore and House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole to investigate the matter.

‘Citizens’ Faiths Protected’

Responding on Saturday, President Tinubu, in a statement he personally signed, dismissed claims that Nigeria is hostile toward Christians, insisting the country remains committed to religious freedom and tolerance.

 

“The characterisation of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality, nor does it recognise government efforts to safeguard freedom of religion and belief.

“Nigeria stands firmly as a democracy governed by constitutional guarantees of religious liberty,” he said.

Tinubu explained that since 2023, his administration has maintained open engagement with both Christian and Muslim leaders while tackling security challenges affecting citizens across faiths and regions.

“Since 2023, our administration has maintained active engagement with Christian and Muslim leaders and continues to address security challenges affecting citizens across faiths.

 

“Religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so.

“Nigeria is a country with constitutional guarantees to protect citizens of all faiths. Our administration is committed to working with the United States government and the international community to deepen cooperation on protecting communities of all faiths,” the president said.

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How a state oil company’s scramble for refinancing in Riyadh - and Petrobras’s tentative re-entry - expose the paradox at the heart of Nigeria’s energy policy: great potential, shaky finances, and political risk concentrated in a single office.

 

The moment: a national oil company in a global lobby

In late 2025, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) quietly intensified a campaign that would once have been conducted behind closed doors: it began courting financiers and oil-market actors in the Gulf, scouting Riyadh for capital and credit lines. The move was not a routine funding exercise. It was a tacit admission that Nigeria’s flagship energy vehicle — the corporation designed to convert the country’s hydrocarbon bounty into national prosperity — was running short of the liquidity needed to keep oil flowing, refineries fed and policy promises afloat. Africa Intelligence reported the outreach as a “new refinancing campaign,” with NNPCL actively engaging Saudi institutions and trading houses in search of funds. 

 

That scramble coexists with other vivid signals: in mid-2025 Abuja negotiated, with mixed results, a proposed $5 billion oil-backed loan from Aramco that was later delayed amid depressed oil prices and lender concerns; Afreximbank and oil traders have been pressed into service in prior years to provide crude-backed prepayment facilities; and NNPCL has been allocating millions of barrels of crude to the Dangote Refinery in a crude-for-naira arrangement meant to buttress domestic refining. Together these episodes reveal a company reliant on ad-hoc, often expensive, financing structures to manage cash-flow and sovereign commitments. 

 

But these are not just accounting problems. They are political problems — because the man at the top of both the political and petroleum ladders in Nigeria is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who concurrently serves as Minister of Petroleum Resources. That concentration of authority turns routine commercial choices into questions of governance, patronage, and geopolitics. The implications for Nigeria’s fiscal health and for Tinubu’s political standing are far from trivial.

 

A short history of refinancing: from Afreximbank to oil traders

To understand the present, one must trace how NNPCL has been financed in recent years. After subsidy removals and policy shifts left the public purse exposed, Nigeria turned increasingly to prepayment facilities and crude-backed loans to raise hard currency. In 2023–24 Afreximbank led a syndicated prepayment facility of about $3.3 billion for NNPCL, tapping oil traders to underwrite part of the arrangement. Subsequent tranches brought the disbursed total close to $3.175 billion; a feature of the “Project Gazelle” facilities aimed at shoring up fiscal liquidity and stabilizing the naira. 

 

Parallel to these bank-led instruments has been a pattern of one-off deals: Nigeria has explored oil-backed loans with major national oil companies such as Saudi Aramco. Talks of a $5 billion Aramco facility - effectively an advance payment for future crude - made headlines in 2025 but stalled after lenders grew uncomfortable with the macroeconomic risk posed by falling oil prices and fluctuating production estimates. The pattern is now familiar: when normal sovereign borrowing markets are tight or prohibitively expensive, a resource producer can sell forward future output to secure liquidity today - but at the cost of future revenues and added conditionality. 

 

There is also the crude-for-naira initiative with Dangote Refinery, a flagship domestic policy that allocated more than 112 million barrels from December 2023 through September 2025 to ensure feedstock for local refining and to anchor a domestic fuel ecosystem. Politically popular as a pillar of energy security, the deal nonetheless strained NNPCL’s export availability and placed further emphasis on the company’s ability to balance immediate domestic needs against sovereign revenue flows. 

Taken together, these financing moves depict a state oil company that has increasingly relied on leveraging its future output to solve present-day fiscal problems; a high-risk, short-term strategy during a period of price volatility and rising international skepticism about fossil-fuel lending.

 

Why Riyadh? Why Petrobras? The geopolitics of partners

NNPCL’s outreach to Saudi institutions is logical in one sense: Riyadh controls vast capital pools and an ecosystem of oil finance that is comfortable underwriting energy projects. Saudi companies and banks also have a political interest in cultivating ties with Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer by reserves in many assessments, and a significant swing influence in global energy diplomacy. But courting Riyadh also brings trade-offs:

• Geopolitical alignment. Deep financial links with Saudi entities can complicate Nigeria’s relationships with other major partners, notably Western banks, the U.S., and European investors who are increasingly scrutinizing hydrocarbon finance for climate risk and governance standards.

• Commercial terms. Oil-backed facilities negotiated under duress (when a borrower urgently needs funds) often carry less favorable terms than market offerings, including steeper forward prices, shorter tenors, or governance conditions that reduce national flexibility.

• Risk of sovereign exposure. The more future barrels are pledged in prepayment deals, the tighter Nigeria’s fiscal space becomes when prices fall or output slips.

 

At the same time, Tinubu’s visit to Brasilia in August added another twist: Petrobras — Brazil’s state-owned energy champion — signaled willingness to re-enter the Nigerian market after a five-year hiatus. Petrobras brings technical skills in deepwater exploration and gas monetization that Nigeria needs if it is to convert its estimated 210 trillion cubic feet of gas into domestic industry and export revenue. Brazilian and Nigerian officials signed five memoranda of understanding covering broad cooperation, with President Tinubu enthusiastically urging Petrobras’s “quick return.” 

 

A Petrobras partnership is attractive for three reasons. First, it promises technology and operational expertise in high-risk deepwater developments where Nigeria’s major IOCs have sometimes been wary. Second, it diversifies international partnerships beyond the usual Anglo-Dutch-American league of oil majors. Third, a successful Petrobras engagement could unlock gas projects needed for domestic industrialization and export pipelines such as the African Atlantic Gas Pipeline concept.

 

Yet Petrobras’s return is conditional: it will look for policy stability, contractual clarity, and a reliable fiscal and foreign-exchange regime. In other words, the technical fix cannot substitute for structural reform. Without transparency and predictability, Brazil’s state champion - like any sophisticated operator - will hesitate to commit tens of billions to long-term projects.

 

The Tinubu dilemma: minister, president, and political risk

The political geometry of these deals matters because President Tinubu also holds the petroleum brief. That duality concentrates decision-making power in a single office: approvals of major deals, terms of crude allocation, negotiation posture with foreign partners and lenders, and oversight of NNPCL all sit within the president’s purview.

 

There are three immediate governance concerns.

First, conflicts of interest and accountability. When the same individual sets policy and oversees its operational delivery through a state-owned enterprise, lines of accountability blur. Decisions that should be adjudicated across ministries, technical agencies and independent oversight bodies risk being centralized and personalized. That matters for investor confidence and for civil-society scrutiny.

 

Second, political exposure to failure. If an Aramco loan collapses, or if a Petrobras partnership sputters due to regulatory ambiguity, the political fallout will be personalized. Tinubu’s government could find itself blamed for mortgaging future output or for failing to secure tangible investments, undermining a presidency that came to power promising economic competence and “renewed hope.”

 

Third, strategic trade-offs between short-term liquidity and long-term sovereignty. Rollovers and prepayments patch budget holes today, but they reduce crude available for future auctions, limit export flexibility, and can raise the specter of conditionalities that impinge on national decision-making. With Tinubu steering both the political and petroleum ships, the temptation to prioritize visible short-term gains over durable structural reforms is politically seductive, and fiscally perilous.

 

Economic risks: FX scarcity, debt rolls and the oil price hangover

Nigeria’s macro picture intensifies the urgency. Although crude prices had recovered from depressed levels in previous years, the oil market remains volatile. When prices slump, forward sales and oil-backed prepayments lose their buffer, and lenders grow jittery - a factor that scuppered parts of the Aramco negotiations in mid-2025. 

 

Foreign-exchange scarcity amplifies the problem. Even if traders or banks extend credit, converting local proceeds into dollars for international obligations remains complicated in a regime of currency controls and an often-thin official FX market. That tension helps explain why NNPCL and the federal government have used crude-for-naira swaps and syndicated oil financings: these mechanisms were engineered to ease FX pressure and support the naira. But they also shift liquidity strain onto future budgets, creating a treadmill of refinancing.

 

Debt sustainability becomes a question of timing. If the crown jewel of national revenue — crude exports — are repeatedly pledged forward, and the domestic economy remains underperforming, the state risks a debt profile that constrains public investment and social spending. For a country of Nigeria’s size and demographic dynamism, that is an economic and social hazard.

 

Governance reform: the missing ingredient

Technical partnerships, whether Saudi financing or Petrobras expertise, will matter little unless they are embedded in broader governance reforms. Investors demand transparent contracting, clear local-content rules, reliable dispute-resolution frameworks and predictable fiscal terms. Nigeria’s history of contract disputes, combined with a tendency for policy oscillation, has deterred some long-term investments even when resource potential is high.

 

Reform implies: clearer ring-fencing of state-owned enterprises, competitive procurement practices, independent oversight of major deals, and a transparent account of how crude allocations (such as those to Dangote) affect export revenues. A robust institutional architecture would protect both national interests and the credibility of incoming partners. Without it, the nation risks swapping one form of dependency for another.

 

Strategic options for Tinubu and the country

Faced with this tightrope, Abuja has a constrained menu:

1. Use refinancing to buy time — but couple it with credible, time-bound governance reforms. If NNPCL must raise cash from Riyadh or traders, the government should simultaneously publish an independent fiscal-revenue plan tied to scheduled reforms, oversight arrangements and public disclosure of terms.

2. Prioritize gas monetization as a strategic pivot. Unlike oil, responsibly developed gas projects can underpin industrialization and generate foreign exchange through LNG or regional pipelines. Petrobras’s expertise is most valuable here — but only if fiscal terms and FX convertibility are credible.

3. Diversify funding sources while limiting forward sales of crude. Long-term resilience requires the revival of market access to global capital, including sovereign bond markets, multilaterals and concessional lenders. That in turn requires sound macro policies and transparent debt management.

4. Decouple ministerial power from operational oversight. Restoring a modicum of institutional checks — by delegating technical oversight and creating clearer governance boards for NNPCL — would reduce the political risk that accrues to the presidency and make the company more palatable to sophisticated investors.

 

The political ledger: why this matters for Tinubu

Politics is the arithmetic of perception as much as policy. Tinubu campaigned as a reformer; now, the optics of him as both president and petroleum minister weighing deals with Saudi banks and courting Petrobras will shape his political capital. A successful Petrobras deal and prudent Riyadh financing could cement his legacy as the leader who reignited investment and industrial growth. Failure — manifest as a bad loan, an unfulfilled investment promise, or a tightened fiscal squeeze — will be seized on by rivals and civil society. Moreover, the concentrated decision-making model fuels a narrative of elite control: in a country where oil revenues have historically funded patronage, the optics of opaque deals will undermine claims of broad-based reform.

 

Conclusion: opportunity shadowed by risk

Nigeria’s predicament is stark: vast gas and oil resources, weak fiscal buffers, and a political architecture that concentrates energy policy at the presidential level. NNPCL’s Riyadh outreach and the flirtation with Petrobras’s re-entry are both opportunities and symptoms - opportunities for fresh capital and technical help; symptoms of a country that has run short of conventional fiscal options.

 

The immediate task for Abuja is simple to state and hard to accomplish: secure credible financing while binding it to transparent governance reforms. Do that and Petrobras, Riyadh, Afreximbank and the rest may be partners in a national renaissance. Fail to do so and Nigeria risks mortgaging its future for immediate liquidity, leaving the people to pay the cost.

 

For President Tinubu the calculus is personal and national. He holds the levers of power; with that power comes a corresponding duty to ensure that every deal is negotiated with transparency, prudence and a clear view of intergenerational equity. The nation’s oil is not an emergency piggy bank. It is a public inheritance. How Tinubu manages this season of refinancing will shape Nigeria’s economic fate for a decade — and define his legacy in the annals of a country that cannot afford missteps.

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Nigeria’s oil sector is a study in paradox, and the Tinubu administration appears content to watch the contradiction unfold. More than a year after the removal of fuel subsidies and the passage of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), the country’s ambition of achieving fuel self-sufficiency remains a mirage. Instead of moving toward energy independence, Nigeria finds itself deepening its dependence on imported crude and refined petroleum products; a situation that is unsustainable, economically reckless, and politically perilous; a grotesque testament to government’s failure to marry policy with execution. 

 

Consider the stark reality: Nigeria spent over N4 trillion on fuel imports while local refineries struggle for crude allocation. Over N4 trillion wasted on petrol imports in six months alone should be a national outrage. The Dangote Refinery, heralded as the beacon of hope for ending fuel imports, imported an estimated 60 million barrels of crude oil in the first half of 2025 alone. Yet, the NNPC prioritizes export revenues over domestic refinery supply, forcing Dangote, and by extension, the nation, to beg foreign markets for crude while Nigerians pay more at the pump. The administration’s so-called reforms amount to little more than paper promises and photo ops. Rather than reducing foreign dependence, the government’s policies have done little to reconcile local refining with domestic crude supply. Dangote himself revealed in July 2025 that his company now purchases 9–10 million barrels of crude monthly from the US and elsewhere, highlighting a systemic failure in domestic crude allocation and market management. This is fiscal recklessness on a national scale.

 

Despite the PIA’s promise to rationalize Nigeria’s oil industry, the reality is that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) continues to prioritize foreign exchange-earning exports over feeding local refineries. The result: Dangote Refinery, designed to transform Nigeria’s fuel landscape, is forced to import crude to stay operational, while the nation simultaneously imports billions of naira worth of refined petroleum. This grotesque contradiction exposes the emptiness of policy pronouncements against the backdrop of weak implementation.

 

Fuel importation is no longer a minor inefficiency; it is a fiscal hemorrhage. In Q2 2025 alone, petrol importation accounted for N2.3 trillion, forming a significant portion of Nigeria’s 28.95% share of mineral fuels in total imports, eclipsing machinery and chemicals. Meanwhile, bottlenecks at Lagos ports compound the economic cost, increasing prices, delaying commerce, and straining an already fragile supply chain. The implications of this mismanagement are dire. Nigeria’s oil production in August fell to 1.43 million barrels per day, below its OPEC quota of 1.5 million bpd, and far short of the 2.06 million bpd benchmark underpinning the 2025 national budget. Coupled with the global volatility of crude prices, this underperformance threatens fiscal stability, foreign exchange reserves, and economic growth. If unchecked, the nation could face runaway inflation, further erosion of government revenues, and deepening public discontent.

 

Every day this persists, Nigeria hemorrhages foreign exchange, loses credibility with investors, and sees inflation inch upward. The economic consequences are stark: foreign reserves are drained by billions of dollars spent on unnecessary imports, weakening the naira; GDP growth is stunted as money that should fuel domestic industry exits the economy. Fuel price volatility threatens consumers and businesses alike, driving inflation and raising transportation and production costs. Investor confidence is eroded, discouraging both domestic and foreign investment in a sector that should attract capital. Let it be clear: subsidy removal and legislation without implementation are meaningless. 

 

The Tinubu administration must confront the uncomfortable truth: policy alone cannot resolve the downstream crisis. Subsidy removal, the PIA, and aspirational rhetoric are insufficient. What is required is decisive action: ensuring consistent crude allocation to local refineries, modernizing infrastructure, incentivizing domestic production, and imposing accountability on regulatory bodies and state-owned enterprises. This is not just policy failure—it is economic malpractice. If this untenable state continues, Nigeria risks a catastrophe: depleted reserves, runaway inflation, continued dependence on imports, and a betrayal of the oil wealth that should be a national treasure. The government must act decisively. The nation cannot afford another year of contradictions and squandered opportunities.

 

Nigeria’s oil sector demands leadership, not lip service. Anything less is a dereliction of duty. Failure to act will not only perpetuate wasteful imports but will also squander the potential of Nigeria’s oil wealth, undermining economic sovereignty and the credibility of government reform. The time for platitudes has passed. Nigerians deserve an oil sector that fuels the economy, not one that drains it.

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Without a shred of doubt, he is a Nigerian of note, intellect, and integrity. If you call him a starry cognoscente of literary moxie and intrepidity, you aren’t out of line. He is a professor of too many laudable things. I was a baby when stories of his exploits in nation-building filtered into my infantile ears. He is Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka. My reverence for this professor is utmost.

 

I heard that during the Nigerian Civil War, the Nobel Laureate didn’t hesitate to take sides. Soyinka was almost a lone voice in the wilderness appealing for a ceasefire in the brutal battle where over 2 million people died. An allegation that he conspired with the Biafran rebels was levelled against him by the Nigerian government. And for taking sides, he was slammed in the calaboose and held as a political prisoner for 22 months. In the struggles for nation-building, human rights and demand for justice and fairness, Soyinka has always been amid it all. He is a jolly good fellow in the hearts and minds of millions of Nigerians home and abroad. I am one of his torrid tub-thumpers.

 

A few days ago, I watched his press briefing video regarding a letter of his B1/B2 visa revocation from the US Consulate in Lagos. The professor has been told to bid bye-bye to America. His intellectual property on high demand at Harvard, Emory, Yale, Duke and Marymount Loyola in the US, where he once taught, will have to go somewhere else. Soyinka must have been expecting this boisterous blowback.  In 2016, he publicly announced that he had cut into tiny pieces his Resident Alien Card (Green Card) granted him while he worked in the US. He said he was fulfilling his pledge to throw away his US residency privilege and leave the country if Donald Trump won the presidential election. Shortly before the vote, he had vowed to give up his permanent US residency over a Trump victory to protest the Republican billionaire’s campaign promises to get tough on immigration. Trump won, and this is how Soyinka responded when questioned: “I have already done it, I have disengaged (from the United States). I have done what I said I would do… I had a horror of what is to come with Trump… I threw away the (green) card, and I have relocated, and I’m back to where I have always been,” meaning his homeland, Nigeria.

 

Soyinka was tired of living and doing business in America because of the man who won an election and now sits in the White House. That he politically disagreed with the whizzing wind blowing across America in this season is understandable. He is one among millions. A few American citizens, like Talk-Show hostess Ellen DeGeneres and Comedian Rosie O’Donnell, have both voluntarily fled America and jetted out somewhere else because Donald Trump is president. Many more have threatened to do the same. But none of these personalities cut up their passports. I was astonished that Prof has no idea that America does not fool around with its symbolism-the flag, the passport, the green card, even an effigy of the president. Maybe he does. Americans will plunge into a ‘cold war’ over any of these. When Soyinka shredded his green card, he saw the ‘cold war’ coming. His 2016 action was not seen by Americans as a symbol of protest. It was a public declaration of contempt, insult, and assault. A Green Card is a symbol of trust and privilege, a covenant of respect between the holder and the grantor nation. When Soyinka publicly shredded and cut the green card, it was seen as a rejection and defilement of the trust that existed between the two parties in the agreement of sorts.

 

Soyinka is a high achiever. A good and great man who will, for a long time, be remembered for his works and impacts around the world. But that 2016 move was an insult to a country that was hospitable to him in his challenging times with the military. In 1994, he escaped on the back of an Okada to the neighbouring Republic of Benin, and America was his destination. And Americans welcomed him with open arms. Soyinka is an ‘Omoluabi’, and it’s not for nothing. Omoluabis are known to be grateful to their helpers in times of trouble. America was good to Prof., and he is allowed by law to abandon his green card. What is required is simply filling out Form I-407 without paying a dime. Prof. shouldn’t have desecrated the document publicly the way he did. He should feel forever indebted to America, despite the man in power who will not be around forever. I respect and love Prof, but this move was dingy.

 

I live and do business in America, and I got my Green Card 27 years ago. It was an emotional war and a gruesome process. It drained me psychologically and financially. Ask anyone who has had to go through the process; you will always remember the scars of that battle. It was a battle, and always one if you are not a Wole Soyinka. Prof probably got his on a platter of gold because of his status and literary and intellectual ambient. I’m not sure if he fought the war that many of us had to fight to secure this privilege. He shouldn’t have torn up that card the way he did. He could have just surrendered it according to the dictates of the law without making a mess of the great and good gesture America accorded him.

 

Despite scattershot shenanigans you see in politics and governments, despite the sitting of one man at the White House who came and will one day leave, would I have done the same? Definitely not. I do what I do around the world today because America gave me the opportunity. For that, I am eternally grateful.

 

To Americans, desecrating American symbolism is like sending a cruise missile into mainland America. With its might, the country will respond quickly and justifiably in defence of its homeland. Will Prof’s Green Card be reinstated even if Democrats return to power? At 91 years of age, what will Soyinka need a Green Card for?  I’m certain he’ll keep travelling the world, or still just stay quietly at his country home in Abeokuta and wait for the fingers of God to point him in the next direction away from this cruel and troubling world.

 

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