Professor Lai Olurode, a former National Commissioner of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, has cautioned Nigerians against turning to external powers for solutions to the country’s deepening insecurity, pointing to the United States’ recent actions in Venezuela as a stark warning.
In a statement circulating in Osogbo on Sunday, the respected academic urged a fundamental rethink among those appealing to President Donald Trump’s administration to intervene and “rescue” Nigeria’s Christian population from alleged genocide or internal threats.
Olurode’s intervention comes amid rising voices—particularly from some Christian advocacy groups and diaspora communities—calling on the Trump administration to address Nigeria’s security crisis, framed by critics as targeted persecution. But the professor draws a sharp line, arguing that recent events in Venezuela expose America’s true priorities. “With the invasion of Venezuela and the seizure of President Nicolas Maduro together with its oil fields, the very notions of sovereignty, tolerance of diversity, and democracy have been reduced to a balderdash,” his statement reads.
He dismisses claims of altruistic motives, asserting plainly: “It is now evident that America is neither after weapons of mass destruction nor interested in the claim of Christian genocide in Nigeria. America’s primary concern and motivation is the control of global energy resources.” Unlike most predecessors, Olurode charges, “President Trump does not respect the right of nations to be themselves. The notion of sovereignty of nations isn’t in his dictionary.”
To grasp the weight of Olurode’s critique, Nigeria’s history with foreign interventions offers sobering context. From the CIA’s covert role in the 1966 counter-coup that fueled the civil war to Britain’s colonial partitioning that sowed seeds of ethnic mistrust, external powers have long shaped the nation’s fault lines—often advancing their own resource interests under humanitarian guises. The Biafran War itself saw superpowers like the UK and Soviet Union back rival factions, ostensibly for stability but unmistakably tied to oil stakes in the Niger Delta.
Venezuela’s crisis echoes this pattern on a modern scale. Nicolas Maduro assumed power in 2013 amid crippling economic sanctions from the US, which escalated under Trump. By 2020, American forces had launched what Olurode and others describe as an outright invasion, seizing Maduro and control of the country’s vast Orinoco Belt oil reserves—the world’s largest proven deposits. Official US records frame it as a “humanitarian liberation” from socialism, yet critics worldwide, including United Nations rapporteurs, have decried it as a naked resource grab, trampling Venezuela’s sovereignty and leaving its people in deeper chaos.
Olurode sees parallels for Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer. “He is desperate to return the world to the era of Darwinism, indeed, the survival of the fittest,” the professor warns. “The rights of small and weak nations are vulnerable to being trampled upon at will under Trump. Ostensibly, Trump’s target energy resources, but it’s obvious that this is even a smokescreen for global hegemony in knowledge production, communication and culture.” He portrays Trump’s realist philosophy as a direct threat: “Trump wants to erase diverse lenses of viewing the world… With Trump’s aggressive behaviour, no country, even in Europe, will ultimately be safe.”
Nigeria’s insecurity marked by banditry in the northwest, farmer-herder clashes in the Middle Belt, and insurgency in the northeast has indeed sparked desperate pleas abroad. Public statements from groups like the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law have invoked “Christian genocide,” urging Trump-era policies reminiscent of the US’s designation of Nigeria on a religious freedom watchlist in 2020. Yet Olurode insists these appeals misread the playbook. “Nigerians who are calling on America to come to Nigeria and rescue its Christian population and protect Nigeria from internal colonialism, should have a rethink,” he writes. “America and its cronies in and outside Nigeria are narrowly for America’s Caucasian population and not the generality of even Americans.”
The professor’s statement doubles down: “America’s attack on Venezuela and the seizure of President Nicolas Maduro is indefensible on any rational ground.” He appeals broadly: “I thereby call on all civilised nations to join hands in the promotion of civilisation, global peace and the right of nations to govern themselves, and thus the commitment to popular empowerment.”
