Just days after the US President took office in 2025, the story began to spread: Nearly 4,000 Nigerians were about to be deported.
It was true.
The cruelty of the Donald Trump leadership would be unveiled at home and abroad in the year that followed, including against American citizens. Some have been killed, even in front of cameras, and many more injured.
The injuries and pain we do not see on television screens include job losses and millions of slammed doors.
.USAID was dismantled, leaving large international funding craters. The US was Nigeria’s largest donor. In 2024 alone, it contributed approximately $876 million, and its exit has left a massive funding and operational void and triggered a severe humanitarian crisis. 89 national agencies have been forced to close, and between 500,000 to 1,000,000 lives are being lost annually due to current spending declines.
While Nigerian leaders continue to enjoy the privilege of healthcare overseas, travelling in charter and executive jets, our losses sadly include the collapse of life-saving infrastructure for HIV/AIDS, COVID-19, malaria and tuberculosis.
Across the country, particularly in the North, there is escalating food insecurity and malnutrition, and the grounding of humanitarian logistics.
Consider that the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), the primary lifeline for aid distribution to remote locations, has been forced to stop operations following US defunding.
Among others, this has cut off access for nearly 7.8 million Nigerians in need, particularly in areas controlled by armed non-state groups.
The cuts have also resulted in essential Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene infrastructure projects being left frozen or half-finished across northern Nigeria.
According to reports, this threatens to increase the 250,000 annual preventable deaths caused by poor hygiene and contaminated water. For HIV & AIDS, there is the risk of nearly 1 million new infections if prevention funding is not restored.
Nigerian leaders are still on their jets, allegedly seeking “help.” This has always been the default response, but what practical measures are they taking on the ground?
Think about it: this is 2026. Nigeria being denied, and Nigerians being deported, ought to be seen as a historic opportunity, a turnaround moment to turn to Nigerian citizens and resources.
The United Nations, which is itself running out of funds, is sounding the alarm: “The era of internationally financed, internationally delivered humanitarian operations in Nigeria is drawing to a close. The next phase belongs to Nigeria itself.”
Early in 2025, in the face of a “massive funding, morale, and legitimacy crisis,” the UN humanitarian community moved to a “humanitarian reset” mode. By definition, the situation in Northern Nigeria, exacerbated by the nation’s ramshackle leadership, was about to get worse.
It has, and Nigerian leadership is challenged, but how do we make a blessing of the US deportations and international development support? This is what journalists and voters should be asking politicians over the next year as elections loom. Being deported does not mean being a criminal, unskilled, or a failure. And losing foreign aid support should not cripple a people as creative and powerful as we are.
What could we do if leadership were not consumed by greed and a convoluted sense of its place in history?
- As one who previously wrote about ending Nigeria’s insecurity and offered realistic amendments to President Bola Tinubu’s weak plans in that regard, Nigeria could establish:
- A government-backed ($500m–$1bn) Diaspora Reintegration Venture Fund specifically for returning Nigerians to establish businesses, with streamlined business registration, relocation grants, tax holidays and mentorship networks. This would leverage deportees’ international experience, including sponsoring remote service fellowships for diaspora professionals to work with Nigerian institutions. It would enable immediate skills transfer without dependence on mass migration.
- A Community-Based Security & Intelligence Compact to rebuild security from the ground up through law-backed community intelligence units and technology-enabled anonymous reporting, alongside performance-linked funding to states and local governments. This would disrupt insecurity using local knowledge rather than an over-centralised force.
- A National Human Capital Corps as a paid, merit-based national service for graduates and skilled non-graduates, focusing on teaching, healthcare support, community policing and digital public services. Model it after Rwanda’s service corps and India’s digital volunteers.
- A government-coordinated but industry-led Tech Talent Export Cooperative, through which Nigerian tech professionals contract internationally while remaining domiciled in Nigeria and retaining foreign-currency earnings. This would address brain drain while maintaining international market access.
- A National Creative & Knowledge Export Strategy Digital Public Works Programme, perhaps as part of the Cooperative, replacing “roads-only” public works with knowledge infrastructure. Focusing on film, music, gaming, writing, animation, legal drafting, software and data services, this would position Nigeria as a net exporter of intellectual and creative services.
- A National Apprenticeship & Master-Craft Revival to restore dignity and scale to vocational excellence. Model it after Switzerland’s vocational education system, in which about 70 per cent of youth enter apprenticeships, or Germany’s dual education system, which has over 1.3 million apprentices across 324 recognised occupations.
- Agricultural Value-Chain Clusters, designating at least 50 specialised agricultural processing zones with reliable power, security and export infrastructure. Focus on cocoa processing, cashew finishing and tomato paste production, moving from raw exports to finished goods within two years.
- A Nigerian National Maintenance Corps to systematically document and address the nation’s maintenance crisis efficiently.
- The point is that there are many areas in which the government, if it were half as interested in service as it is in power and privilege, could intervene at this sensitive moment.
- But with elections right around the corner, this is also the appropriate moment for voters, as well as the media (mass and social), to raise the temperature publicly, demanding programmes of this nature and independent enforcement bodies with constitutional protection as in such places as Singapore, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
- This, not when votes are being bought and offices sold, is the time to ask government officials and politicians the hard questions.In Nigeria, we always know that they are coming, even when they have not been home since they emerged from Abuja or the state capital four years ago, before beg, borrow or buy votes. And this applies to politicians of every hue: APC, ADC, PDP, and others.
- We may not like what Trump is doing, but he is doing it with the authority he was given, even by deluded people.The question, then, is simple: what will Nigerians do with the opportunity to avoid having to blame others or beg them for survival or sustenance?
