Trump’s World Cup stress test and prospects of Europe’s boycott

Portrait of Ugo Onuoha, Nigerian writer and public affairs commentator.

As the United States prepares to co-host the expanded 2026 FIFA World Cup, political realities threaten to intrude on football’s biggest stage. From visa restrictions and immigration enforcement to fears of boycotts and declining global appeal, Ugo Onuoha argues that Donald Trump’s America poses a defining test for FIFA’s promise of unity through sport.

The buffoonery of so-called ‘Don-roe Doctrine’

Donald Trump’s attempt to rebrand the historic Monroe Doctrine as a personal “Don-roe Doctrine” is not a statement of strategic vision but an act of geopolitical buffoonery. Cloaked in the language of American tradition, it reduces foreign policy to oil seizure, military bravado, and selective morality—exposing the hypocrisy and authoritarian impulses driving U.S. actions in Venezuela and beyond.

The Misuse of “Genocide” in Nigeria’s Public Discourse

Contextualizing The Horrific Killings in Nigeria Within The International Convention Against Genocide By Wale Alonge Since President Donald Trump’s 2020 threat to “invade Nigeria” to stop what he called “the targeted genocide of Nigerian Christians by Muslims,” the term genocide has gained sudden, viral currency across Nigerian social media. It is now used casually, cavalierly, and often without any understanding of its historical roots or the international legal framework that defines it. When such a morally charged word is used loosely, it dilutes its moral and legal force — and makes enforcement far more difficult in genuine cases of genocide. That is why it is critical to define and apply it precisely, something sorely lacking in Nigeria’s public conversations. It is deeply ironic that the same President Trump who refuses to describe the state-sponsored mass killing, starvation, and displacement of Palestinians in Gaza as genocide was so quick to use the word for Nigeria’s communal violence. I am a Christian, so this is not a case of a non-Christian downplaying the killings of Christians. There is no doubt that many Nigerian Christians have been victims of murderous attacks by Islamist jihadist groups — often targeted specifically in their houses of worship. Only yesterday, reports emerged from Kwara State of Christians being slaughtered and kidnapped in church. But so have Muslims — indeed, in larger numbers according to widely available data — including many attacked in mosques. These killings are largely random, carried out by non-state insurgents and criminal militias using hit-and-run, opportunistic tactics, often also targeting government forces. There is no demonstrated element of state-sponsored intent to destroy a protected group, which is central to any credible genocide claim. What “Genocide” Actually Means The word itself derives from the Greek genos (“tribe” or “race”) and the Latin caedere (“to kill”). Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined it during World War II, and in 1946 the United Nations General Assembly first recognized genocide as an international crime. It was later codified in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Article II of the Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group: The most difficult and crucial element is intent. Genocide requires a proven intention to physically destroy a protected group — not merely to displace it, weaken it, or target individuals for other reasons. This “special intent” (dolus specialis) distinguishes genocide from other international crimes. Nigeria’s Reality Every innocent life unjustly taken is one life too many. Nothing in this analysis minimizes the suffering of Nigerian Christians killed or displaced by jihadists or murderous Fulani militias that have devastated farming communities — particularly in the Middle Belt — through cycles of violence stretching back decades. But as horrific as these crimes are, to call them genocide is to misapply the term. The Genocide Convention arose from the ashes of the Holocaust — the targeted, systematic, state-orchestrated extermination of millions of Jews by Nazi Germany. That context matters. Nigeria’s insecurity is a grave humanitarian crisis, but not one that fits the legal or moral definition of genocide. The danger in misusing the word lies not just in linguistic carelessness, but in the erosion of its power to mobilize international justice where it is most needed — in places where governments, not bandits, plot the destruction of entire peoples. If we are to confront Nigeria’s violence meaningfully, we must name it for what it is: terrorism, mass atrocity, and state failure — not genocide. To do otherwise cheapens both the suffering of the victims and the gravity of one of humanity’s most serious crimes. Adewale Alonge, PhD, Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org, writes in from Dadeland, Miami, Florida, USA.

US Vice President, JD Vance, wife visit Greenland amid annexation tensions

U.S. Vice President JD Vance announced that he would accompany his wife, Usha Vance, on her planned visit to Greenland later this week. “There is so much excitement around Usha’s visit to Greenland this Friday that I decided I didn’t want her to have all that fun by herself, so I’m going to join her. I’ll be visiting some of our guardians in the Space Force on the northwest coast of Greenland, and also just checking out what’s going on with the security there,’’ JD Vance said in a video posted on X. He went on to mention the Pituffik Space Base, a significant U.S. military installation in Greenland. Originally, Usha’s travel plans included visits to historic sites and participation in a traditional dog-sledding race. However, the White House announced a change in the itinerary, canceling the dog sled race and replacing it with a meeting with U.S. military officials. “Speaking for U.S. President Donald Trump, we want to reinvigorate the security of the people of Greenland because we think it’s important for protecting the security of the entire world,’’ JD Vance stated. Trump has repeatedly mentioned wanting to assert control over Greenland, citing national and international security concerns. However, Greenland’s politicians and most of its population oppose the idea of it becoming a U.S. territory. In a related development, the Greenland government denied claims made by Trump that a U.S. delegation, including Usha Vance, had been invited to the island. The government in Nuuk clarified that no official or private invitation had been extended. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen also criticized the visit, emphasizing that Greenland did not welcome such a gesture. She noted that both Greenland and Denmark were under undue pressure but would stand firm. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., had previously visited Nuuk earlier this year, further drawing attention to the tense relationship between Greenland and the U.S.

As Trump tariff on UK steel kicks in, industry trembles

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on UK steel “couldn’t come at a worse time,” the industry has warned as the levy on U.S. imports is introduced. The British steel and aluminium industries are braced for the impact of the U.S. president’s tariffs, which came in at midnight in the US, around 0400 GMT. The UK government is unlikely to immediately retaliate to the 25 per cent import tax, with officials stressing the need for a “cool-headed approach”, after last-ditch efforts to persuade Trump to spare British industry from his global tariffs appeared to have failed. The European Union announced it would be implementing counter tariffs on 28 billion dollars worth of goods starting on April 1. Gareth Stace, the director general of trade association UK Steel, branded the Trump administration’s move “hugely disappointing.” READ ALSO: National Assembly commemorates Commonwealth Day 2025 He added: “President Trump must surely recognise that the UK is an ally, not a foe. “Our steel sector is not a threat to the U.S. but a partner to key customers, sharing the same values and objectives in addressing global overcapacity and tackling unfair trade. “These tariffs couldn’t come at a worse time for the UK steel industry, as we battle with high energy costs and subdued demand at home, against an oversupplied and increasingly protectionist global landscape. “What’s more, the EU is also pushing ahead with trade restrictive action that will amplify the impact of U.S. tariffs.” Stace added: “It is essential that the UK Government not only continues efforts to negotiate exemptions with the U.S. but also takes decisive action to bolster our trade defences. “We greatly appreciate all the efforts that have been made so far and will continue working closely with our Government to secure the best possible outcome.” The aluminium industry body had earlier warned the looming import taxes were already having an effect. Nadine Bloxsome, chief executive of the Aluminium Federation, said: “The UK aluminium sector is already seeing the first impacts of these tariffs. “The sharp rise in U.S. premiums has created new incentives for scrap exports, raising the risk of significant domestic scrap leakage. This not only weakens the UK’s recycling capacity but risks undermining our sustainability objectives and circular economy targets. “Additionally, the uncertainty around potential trade diversion is placing considerable pressure on UK producers, especially as semi-finished goods may flood the UK market at lower costs. READ ALSO: Five candidates to contest for AfDB Presidency “This could severely destabilise the competitiveness of UK aluminium manufacturers, who are already contending with high energy costs and complex regulatory challenges.” William Bain, head of trade policy for the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said the decision plunged both countries “into a new age of uncertainty.” He said: “BCC research shows that 63 per cent of our manufacturing exporters were concerned about the impact of tariffs before their introduction. “But today’s setback does not mean we have reached the end of the road in terms of negotiations. Tariffs can be lifted at any time. “Businesses will be looking to the UK Government to continue dialogue, with the U.S., to resolve this situation and restore certainty for firms, which has been badly lacking over recent weeks.” He continued: “Against this background, a series of tit-for-tat tariffs could easily spiral into an all-out trade war and would do the UK little benefit. “We must keep talks alive and retaliatory tariffs should only be used as a means of last resort. “If talks succeed, it would be a win-win, bringing welcome stability and pro-growth economic conditions for both sides.” The issue was discussed in a call between UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Trump on Monday, and ministers and officials have been in frequent talks with their U.S. counterparts since the measures were first proposed in February. The UK prime minister’s official spokesman said the government was “engaging closely with the U.S. and we remain prepared to defend the UK’s national interest where it’s right to do so.” He added: “The Government’s committed 2.5 billion pounds (3.2 billion dollars) of investment to rebuild the UK steel industry and support communities now and for generations to come.” The government estimates around 5 per cent of UK steel exports and 6 per cent of aluminium exports by volume go to the U.S., although the aluminium industry body said the U.S. market accounted for 10 per cent of exports – valued at 225 million pounds Trump has previously threatened to impose tariffs on other countries and then relented, but he remains wedded to the overall idea of making the U.S. richer through taxing imports. In a sign of the U.S. leader’s unpredictable approach, on the eve of the tariffs coming into force, he threatened to double the rate for Canadian metal imports from 25 per cent to 50 per cent, before backtracking at the last minute. Downing Street said there were “multiple engagements at multiple levels” with the U.S. administration as the Government attempted to spare UK exporters from the tariffs.

American Schizophrenic Politics and Foreign Policy

It is so confusing how to square the release posted by the Obama White House in 2014 (see link below), at the height of the kidnap of the Chibok Girls by Boko Haram, during which Michelle Obama played a crucial role to bring global attention to that crisis, with the bombshell allegation by Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry’s that the USAID under the Obama and then the Biden presidencies was actually financing the Boko Haram terrorist group. It makes absolutely no sense except within the context of Elon Musk’s DOGE team and their MAGA supporters dropping whoppers of falsehood, outright lies, and disinformation to justify their gestapo approach to “reforming” the U.S. public service. Engaging in mindless firing of government officials, disbanding government agencies and conducting loyalty test within the Justice and security agencies. It is impossible to differentiate facts from fictions. Remember the story about $59 million condoms in Gaza!! READ THIS: FACT SHEET: U.S. Efforts to Assist the Nigerian Government in its Fight against Boko Haram President Trump just a few days ago blamed President Biden for instigating the Putin invasion of Ukraine when everyone knows that Putin has had his eye on Ukraine for years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin invaded and took over Cremea without provocation during Obama regime. Obama made a strategic mistake by doing absolutely nothing about it other than imposing ineffectual sanctions which probably emboldened him to invade. We all need to take a deep breath and treat with more than a grain of salt anything coming from the MAGA crowd which believes in flooding the zone with disinformation and outright falsehoods. They will do or say anything to justify the destruction of what they perceive as the disloyal woke deep-state. Otherwise, why would a Republican congressman openly declare that the U.S. government sponsored ISIS, Alkeida (two sworn enemies of the U.S.) and Boko Haram. One would have expected such a statement from the likes of Bonnie Sander and the ultra liberal Ocasio not from a conservative pro-national security Republican congressman from Pennsylvania. This is turning politics over its head. It makes absolutely no sense just like what’s happening in the U.S. is mind-numbingly nonsensical. You have the U.S. government trusting Putin over its long term allies in Europe. The U.S. VP openly castigated European governments in Munich and openly supported an ultra-right, fringe Nazis political party in Germany as it prepares for an election. Totalitarian Orban of Hungary is a darling of Washington DC. Elon Musk is openly campaigning and offering financial support for political parties aligned with Nazis ideology. We are truly in schizophrenic uncharted political territory. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Scott Perry’s “Africa Lovefest and the Character Assassination of President Barack Obama Isn’t it curious that both the do-gooder US democrat liberals who are scrambling to save the USAID and the Republican conservatives who are hell bent on destroying it are both using their gullible whipping boy Africa to make their case? The democrat liberals, many of who simply play to the gallery to hide their racist condescending disdain for Africa are storming the USAID HQ claiming that without the USAID all African children would starve to death and our contagious Eboma will jump over the Atlantic and devastate their American Homeland. The conservative Scott Perry and his White Supremacist Apartheid South African Elon Musk argue that they are trying to demolish USAID to safe Africa from Obama and Biden’s USAID which is the sponsor and financial backbone of Boko Haram. Yet rather than been outraged by this constant negative narrative and weaponizing Africa poverty by the West to push their theory of the racial inferiority of Africans, we are falling one another to push this same negative narrative. What is so demoralizing as an African is that African elites and so called intellectuals are playing true to type to the Whiteman’s characterization of us as gullible people who are driven by their emotion rather than their intellect. That is what is so frustrating with how African intellectuals have fallen head of heel spreading the disinformation by Scott Perry that Obama and Biden were sponsors of Boko Haram. Politics makes for strange bedfellows. Who could have imagined in a million years that a Republican for that matter would be the one “spilling the beans” about how the U.S supposedly sponsors terrorism all over the world. Has anyone wondered why this new “activist” in defense of Nigeria. Scott Perry just selectively and conveniently decides to expose the evil that the USAID does just as Elon Musk was driving his bulldozer over the USAID and it just happens that it was during Barrack Obama and Biden presidency that the USAID was sponsoring Boko Haram. What happened during the transition from Obama to Trump before Biden took over. Apparently, Trump the lover of Africa and her shit-hole countries stopped the funding of Boko Haram and Biden continued from where his former boss, Obama stopped. Is that logically? But in the post-truth era where confirmation bias is king people no longer critically analyze facts before running to town with disinformation, propaganda and fake news. That exactly is the reason Congressman Scott Scott Perry, could get away with accusing the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, of funding terrorist organisations, including Boko Haram. Just like Trump just blamed Biden for instigating the Russian invasion of Ukraine when in fact Russia took over Cremea way back in 2014. Truth does not matter anymore if you can flood the social media airwave with falsehood, fake news, half truths, and disinformation. The Blackman capacity for self hate is mind-numbing. The Nigerian social media has been overtaken with the caricaturitization and character assassination of the Barrack Obama the historic first Black US president. Who did this to us? Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

INEC in America’s November election (1)

“America has many contradictions in spite of its claim to exceptionalism.“ THERE will be a significant election this year in a significant country which prides itself as the greatest democracy on earth. That country, a super power, claims that the election will be consequential, and will have ramifications for its citizens, and the whole world. For about two centuries this country has held this poll on the first Saturday in November in the election year. For this year, that date falls on November 5. The election was initially slated to be a fierce battle between two old men, one in his late 70s, and the other in his early 80s. It was supposed to be a rematch, sort of, because the duo had battled each other four years ago with the older prevailing. You already know because that country is the United States of America where the then incumbent president, Donald Trump, was defeated in 2020, and his successor, Joe Biden, was defeated from seeking a second term by a disastrous presidential debate outing on June 27. Biden came under intense pressure from his party people, and had to ‘pass the torch’ in July to his vice president Kamala Harris who is younger and more energetic. America has many contradictions in spite of its claim to exceptionalism. There’s is no record that it has been governed by any other means except through the ballot box, at least not in the last 200 years. It lays claim to democracy but it fails to meet the key ingredient of rule by the majority of its citizens voting in an election. Certainly, not for the election of its president. The classical definition of democracy is government of the people by the people for the people. In many climes, it is also governance by representatives who had been elected by a majority of voters during any election. Not so in the United States. In 2016, Hillary Clinton, candidate of the Democratic Party lost the presidential election in spite of winning three million more popular votes of the electorate. His rival, Donald Trump, of the Republican Party with an inferior popular votes tally was returned as the winner. The unique but apparently an undemocratic (to many outsiders) Electoral College gave victory to Trump. The candidates and the parties in that contest knew the rule and so could not complain. “The constitution in its 12th Amendment recognised ‘electors’. And the ‘electors’ for each of the 50 states have been determined, and the number of ‘electors’ for each state may be reflective but not necessarily proportional to the population of the state. Any candidate who secures a minimum of 270 Electoral College votes wins the presidency irrespective of the outcome of the popular votes.“ The name, Electoral College, which determines who is elected as the US president is not in that country’s constitution. History has it that the founding fathers of the country inserted this mode of electing a president as a compromise between election of the president by a vote in Congress (parliament), which used to be the practice, and the election of the president by a popular vote of qualified citizens. Until the 1960s not many people were qualified to vote in elections. There was no universal suffrage. The constitution in its 12th Amendment recognised ‘electors’. And the ‘electors’ for each of the 50 states have been determined, and the number of ‘electors’ for each state may be reflective but not necessarily proportional to the population of the state. Any candidate who secures a minimum of 270 Electoral College votes wins the presidency irrespective of the outcome of the popular votes. The Electoral College has been a vexatious subject in American politics for centuries. And that explains why surveys showed that in the past 200 years more than 700 proposals had been introduced in Congress to either reform or eliminate the Electoral College. Probably, to underline its undemocratic nature, it has been recorded that there have been more proposals for constitutional amendments on changing the ‘electors’ method for determining the winner of the American presidency than on any other subject. Apart from politicians, America’s body of lawyers, the American Bar Association, has had cause to criticise the Electoral College as “archaic” and “ambiguous”, and its polling showed that 69% of lawyers favoured abolishing it in 1987. In addition, public opinion polls showed that Americans favoured abolishing it by majorities of 58% in 1967; 81% in 1968; and 75% in 1981. The conventional wisdom is that any candidate who wins a majority or plurality of the popular votes nationwide has a good chance of winning in the Electoral College, but there are no guarantees as implicated in the presidential election results of 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016. It has been suggested that the Electoral College was contrived by the founders of the US to stem the possible agitations for separation from the Union by less populated states who may feel cheated and excluded in producing the president of the country. In effect, the Electoral College was informed by the need for the accommodation of all segments of the society. However, some scholars argued that the ‘electors’ scheme was indeed the handiwork of a segment of the elite among the founding fathers who did not want to totally relinquish the election of the president to the masses. On November 5, two candidates  Harris (Democrat), and Trump (Republican ) will lock horns for who occupies the American presidency which is generally regarded as the most powerful office in the world. Third party candidates are usually inconsequential since none has won the office ever. Harris appears to have an edge in the race at this time but election watchers reckon that in reality, the two candidates are running neck-and-neck. The proposition for the moment is that any of Harris or Trump can win the election. And this uncertainty is down to the complexities of the Electoral College. In 2016, polls and pundits put Hillary Clinton ahead by