NADECO-USA has penned a rambling, legally unmoored letter asking Donald Trump to impose visa bans on Senate President Godswill Akpabio, Speaker Tajudeen Abbas, and Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas — over the state of emergency in Rivers State, Nigeria. The only use of this asinine letter, signed by Dayo Kayode, Director of Strategies and Communication, is that it serves as further evidence that a lizard in Nigeria does not become a crocodile simply because it has crossed the Atlantic. Geography does not upgrade intelligence. A fool in Nigeria, when armed with delusions of grandeur abroad, often becomes a greater menace — a diplomatic embarrassment in the diaspora.
Let’s break down this piece of pitiable ignorance — a masterclass in how diasporic foolishness often travels farther than sense.
First of all, the President of the United States does not wake up and issue visa bans because Dayo Kayode asked him to. The U.S. government is not a personal fiefdom where foreign agitators submit complaints like children asking a headmaster to cane their classmates. Who, on God’s green earth, is Dayo Kayode? Or better still, who does he think he is?
Visa bans — especially on foreign public officials — follow intelligence briefings, diplomatic protocols, inter-agency consultations, and, often, Congressional inputs. To reduce all of this to a silly, melodramatic letter from an unofficial diaspora group is not only naïve; it is a pitiable display of ignorance about how global diplomacy works.
To begin with, what happened in Rivers State is an internal affair. If anything about it was unconstitutional or unlawful, it would be subject to scrutiny by Nigerian courts. Has NADECO-USA initiated any legal action against the Federal Government? No. In their hubris and delusion, they have constituted themselves into a kind of Super Supreme Court — interpreting the Nigerian Constitution from abroad and seeking to execute judgment from Washington, using Trump as a pawn in their ridiculous chess game.
What nonsense.
Responsible diaspora groups — like the Jews — promote transparency, reform, dialogue, and economic development in their homeland. They do not call for visa bans on their own leaders, because their activism is driven by patriotism, not vendetta. Consider this: between October 7, 2023, and February 2024, diaspora Jews donated approximately $1.41 billion (NIS 5.11 billion) to various Israeli causes — from emergency relief to non-profit support. Half of that total — around $700 million — came through the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA).
What do we get from our own North American journeymen who call themselves NADECO-USA? Not development. Not charity. Not civic engagement. Instead, we get political blackmail — a desperate hunger for attention and a disturbing desire to settle tribal or partisan scores using foreign platforms.
What ignorance or malice makes these people think Donald Trump — amid America’s domestic and global challenges — will drop everything to punish Nigerian lawmakers over a local administrative matter? Apparently, everything they know about diplomacy can fit into a nutshell, and still leave space for the nut. They may as well ask Trump to deploy a B2 stealth bomber to kill an antelope in Yenagoa.
What makes them think they can weaponize foreign platforms to attack fellow Nigerians with impunity? This is not the NADECO of old. The real NADECO was a beacon of democratic resistance during military rule. What we have today is a hijacked shell — a parody of its past — now misrepresenting facts, calling for foreign interference, and undermining the very democratic institutions it once sought to protect.
That’s not activism. That’s treason.
Nigeria’s democracy may be imperfect — like every democracy — but it is sovereign. It cannot and should not be subject to the whims of diasporan loudmouths who imagine their private grievances can be mailed to the White House like birthday cards.
I pray Donald Trump sees that letter, feels the insult, and instructs immigration authorities to scrutinize whether these rabble-rousers deserve continued residence in the United States. Let them return home and contribute meaningfully — or at least learn how adult democracies work before embarrassing us all.
All this letter proves is that geography cannot launder ignorance; it merely relocates it — from the village square to the international stage.
