Strategic Autonomy and Nigeria-U.S. Bilateral Cooperation:  The Issue of Chinese Disinvestment

Bola A. Akinterinwa

President Donald Trump’s policy of ‘America First’ and ‘Make America Great Again’ are manifestations of strategic autonomy per excellence. The design of ‘America First’ is preventive: that America must never be allowed to be second to any state or people in the world. In the eyes of President Trump, there was the time America was the primus inter pares (first among equals) or when America was second to none. In the contemporary world of pluripolarity, President Trump, rightly or wrongly, believes that America is no longer great and the leader of leaders, and therefore, efforts should be made, by hook or by crook, to make America return to the status quo ante of glory. This largely explains the current belligerent and interventionist attitudes of the United States under President Trump in international relations.

Most unfortunately, however, President Trump has not limited his belligerency and interventionist disposition to his immediate neighbourhood of influence. He is unnecessarily projecting U.S. influence forcefully in Africa, and particularly in Nigeria, and thus raising new critical questions on Nigeria’s bilateral cooperation with the United States. The issues and questions involved do not bother, strictly speaking, on Nigeria-U.S. bilateral common interests, but essentially on the implications of the increasing influence of China in Nigeria, particularly in terms of land acquisition and exploitation of resources in the northern part of Nigeria.

Without any shadow of doubt, Northern Nigeria has been found to be playing host to strategic mineral resources, prompting the multinational companies to bring fresh investments to the region. In this regard, the United States of Donald Trump wants to partner with Nigeria in resisting the advancement of the Chinese. Making Nigeria an ally to fight China is consistent with the policy of MAGA but it directly conflicts with Nigeria’s current quest for strategic autonomy or self-reliance. Put interrogatively, under what conditions can Nigeria initiate any form of Chinese disinvestment at the instance of the U.S.?

Nigeria-U.S. Bilateral Cooperation

U.S. policy attitude towards Nigeria appears to be largely driven by threats of conditionality which underlie MAGA. President Trump’s foreign policy attitude is largely driven by how to ‘Make America Great Again.’ In this regard, how should a country be made great? Should the approach be by use of force? Why is a competitive method not endorsed in making America great? There have been several reports of how critiques of the big powers were killed by poison, assassination, sponsored coups d’état, direct bombing, etc. Why should anyone be preaching the sermons of human rights and at the same time engaging in inhuman killings and kidnapping of opponents? These questions point to why there is an emerging problem that will make any Nigeria-U.S. cooperation very problematic in the near future. The method of achieving the objective of MAGA is by manu militari, and therefore, illegal in technique. It involves disregard for international rule of law by fiat. It is a manifestation of braggadocio. It promotes the diplomacy of issuance of military conditionality that has the potential to threaten Nigeria’s national sovereignty. 

And true enough, the second coming of President Trump has clearly demonstrated the forcefulness in the implementation of MAGA as a foreign policy. For example, hundreds of Venezuelans were killed when the U.S. launched an aggression on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in an attempt to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro. The arrest of President Maduro and wife, coupled with their court trial, has not in any way eased U.S. pressure on Venezuela, or solve the unrest in Venezuela, in spite of the re-direction of the aggression to Iran.

Additionally, President Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico and calls it Gulf of America. The renaming directly confronts the sovereignty of Mexico and poses a major confrontational challenge to the U.S. allies in Western Europe. It should be recalled that the Gulf of Mexico has existed for over 150 million years. Gulf of Mexico, which is oval in shape and over 900 miles wide, is a 1.5 million km2 miles marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean. It is bordered by the United States (Texas to Florida), Mexico, and Cuba. More important, it is linked to the Atlantic Ocean via the Straight of Florida and to the Caribbean Sea via the Yucatan Channel. 

What is noteworthy about the Gulf of Mexico, is not only that it was named after Mexico by the Europeans, meaning the Land of Mexico, ‘because mariners needed to cross the Gulf of Mexico to reach that destination,’ in the words of Google, but also that the name has been the most common name since the mid-17th Century, when it was accepted as the Spanish Sea. Historically therefore, it is difficult to see where the US has acquired sovereignty over the gulf beyond the factor of its geographical nearness or contiguity to the U.S. 

Whatever is the case, in 2025, the U.S. Department of Interior was directed to rename the gulf. Even if the gulf were to belong to the U.S., there is no need for renaming of the gulf by fiat. The U.S. would have done better by explaining to the world why the renaming is a necessity. The U.S. should lead the world by education and attitudinal decency. However, to show U.S. readiness for belligerency, the Department of Defence was also renamed Department of War in 2025. It is against this background that Nigeria’s bilateral cooperation with the U.S. should be explained and understood. 

Before discussing the question of Chinese disinvestments in Nigeria, there are many critical issues and areas of collaboration in Nigeria-U.S. bilateral cooperation. First is the issue of how to foster national security and bring terrorists to their knees. For various reasons, the collaboration has not achieved the objective of sustainable security. To foster national and regional security, the United States tried to convince Nigeria about the need to host the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) in the mid-2000s. The efforts failed because the politico-intellectual elite was against any foreign military base in Nigeria. By that time, the U.S. was contemplating relocating the AFRICOM from Stuttgatt, in Germany, to Africa. Some smaller countries wanted the AFRICOM but the choice of the U.S. was, and still is, Nigeria. Since there was stiff opposition to AFRICOM in Nigeria, the U.S. simply suspended the idea of relocation for ten years. Ten years of delay have come and gone again. The way forward is not yet clear.

It is on record that the U.S. has provided a lot of equipment, such as the A-29 Super Tucano aircraft to fight the Boko Haramists and the ISIS West Africa. The U.S. has also been training Nigerian military, as well as providing maritime security, but this has also been affected by the Leahy Law concerns about human rights abuse by the Nigerian security forces. To what extent can there really be any meaningful management of intelligence sharing? What about the question of humanitarian crises?

Without iota of doubt, there are many areas of diplomatic and political differences between Nigeria and the U.S. Nigeria’s foreign policy is generally hostile to the use of Africa as a source of raw materials for the development of Europe but to the detriment of Africa’s survival. Nigeria’s is hostile to the establishment of foreign military bases in Africa. As the U.S. is talking about MAGA, so is Nigeria similarly talking about her own strategic autonomy in all its ramifications.  

Even though the two countries operate a presidential system of government, there is no disputing the fact that they have different approaches to political governance. Their approaches to the management of migration and visa issues are also different. The U.S. often complains about the behaviour of the Nigerian military but the same Nigerian military officers are rated superbly well at the level of the United Nations. If Nigerian military is good in the eyes of the U.S. why are they not good in the eyes of the U.S. of Donald Trump? Perhaps one should also state that, in spite of the negative perception of the Nigerian military, it is important to also note that the U.S. has been providing assistance to Nigeria in the area of health and social infrastructure. The two countries have signed an MoU on a 5-year $5.1 billion health partnership. Will the current situation of the relationship be good enough to make the Chinese accept disinvestment in Nigeria? And perhaps most importantly, what is the conditionality given to Nigeria before she can truly accept the U.S. as a helper?

Strategic Autonomy and Chinese Disinvestment

In understanding the relationship between strategic autonomy and Chinese disinvestment, it is useful to first understand the agreement between Nigeria and the U.S. on bilateral cooperation. First, as told in a press release by the Special Adviser to the President (Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, on November 24, 2025 a high-level delegation of Nigeria, led by the National Security Adviser, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, ‘met with senior officials across the US Congress, the White House Faith Office, the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Department of War.’ 

At the end of the discussions, the Washingtonian authorities showed readiness to deepen security cooperation with Nigeria, especially in terms of ‘enhanced intelligence support, expedited processing of defence equipment requests, and the potential provision of excess defence articles – subject to availability – to reinforce ongoing operations against terrorists and violent extremist groups.’ More important, Bayo Onanuga also had it that ‘both countries agreed to implement immediately a non-binding cooperation framework and to establish a Joint Working Group to ensure a unified and coordinated approach to the agreed areas of cooperation.’

As good as the understanding reached with the U.S. may be, there are many reasons explaining why Nigerians are opposed to U.S. intervention in Nigeria. First, it is on record that Nigeria and the U.S. have a Status of Forces Agreement which establishes a legal framework for cooperation since 2000. And true enough, Nigeria has been engaged in, and benefitted from, several U.S. security frameworks and financial allocations to fight terror. For instance Nigeria received about $5m from FY 2019-2023 within the framework of the International Military Education and Training (IMET); and about $500,000 to support instructor and curriculum development in various Nigerian military schools since FY 2016 within the framework of the Africa Military Education Programme (AMEP). 

The unanswered question in this case is that, with the many forms of assistance to Nigeria, and with Nigeria’s membership of the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP), under which Nigeria got over $8 million worth of training, equipment, and advisory support for counter-terrorism efforts between FY 2019-2023, why is terrorism on the rise? How do we explain the fact that Nigeria purchased in 2017 twelve A-29 Super Tucano aircraft worth $497 million for the purpose of fighting Boko Haram and ISIS West Africa and there is yet to be a definite end to terrorism? Additionally, Nigeria paid in August 2025 for 12 AH-1Z Attack Helicopters at a cost of about $997 million, and yet, there is no solution to the problem of terror.

Secondly, it is observed that there has never been peace in all the countries the U.S. had intervened in, even though such cases are those of civil war while the current U.S. cooperation framework is about joint action against terror. In other words, should the U.S. be allowed to put its boots on the Nigerian soil? Allowing the U.S. in Nigeria means preparedness to condone instability as a legacy to be left behind.

Thirdly, the U.S. and France had military bases in Niger Republic and have not been able to effectively contain terrorism in the West African region and in the Alliance of Sahel States sub-region. Mali, even though the French put in place Operation Serval in Mali in 2013-2014, and Operation Barkhane from 2014 through 2022, the country was always under terrorist trauma before the French were compelled to completely withdraw their last troops from Mali on August 15, 2022. Apart from being unhappy with the coups in Mali in 2020 and 2021, the French had to quickly withdraw because of the growing influence of Russia through the Wagner Group or the so-called Africa Corps and mounting public hostility towards France. In September 2025, France officially suspended all counter-terrorism cooperation.

Fourthly, and most importantly, there are the requests from the US Congress that one of the conditions Nigeria must meet in order to enjoy meaningful cooperation with the U.S. is to devalue her ties with the Chinese. The U.S began the promotion of its national interest and this conditionality by first identifying Nigeria as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ (CPC) in 2009 when the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended Nigeria’s designation as a ‘Country of Particular Concern.’ By then, 53,000 Nigerian civilians were brutally killed. The Annual Report of the USCIRF published in March 2026 has provided a detailed analysis of the many religious-driven attacks in Nigeria (vide p. 36 et s of the report).

At the level of the US Congress, the Government of Nigeria is specifically required to address the problem of religious persecution, unacceptable abuses of human rights, and rising tide of terrorism. Evidence of threatening sanctions must be shown to the U.S., and so must the funding restrictions. The Congress is also much interested in the need to reform laws that are misused for persecution and the need to enhance the security for vulnerable communities. More interesting in this case is the need to reduce Nigeria’s reliance on Chinese and Russian partnerships to the advantage of US security cooperation.

Put differently, the designation of Nigeria as a CPC requires doing many things in order to be out of the CPC sanction list. Nigeria must accept to carry out legislative reforms, by particularly repealing the Sharia-based and blasphemy laws. Without doubt, the word Sharia, or Islam or Muslim appear more than 60 times in the 1999 Constitution as amended but nothing of such happens to Christian in terms of mentioning the name in the Constitution. The Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration is required to be more security accountable. It must tackle extremist groups as well as manage internal security challenges and ensure that there is nothing like intelligence leaks to the terrorists. Above all, PBAT must tackle illegal mining, and reduce, if not totally remove, the adversaries of the U.S. such as the Chinese and Russians.

Reportedly, Nigeria had no qualms with this conditionality as Nigeria has accepted the conditions, provided that Nigeria’s territorial integrity and sovereignty are duly respected. In this regard, by accepting U.S. conditions, has Nigeria not subjected her own sovereignty to that of the U.S.? By accepting to reduce the influence of China and Russia in Nigeria what is the meaning of territorial integrity and sovereignty?

True enough, Chinese influence in Nigeria is quite considerable and growing. Nigeria-China trade ties are evaluated at $22 billion. Infrastructure, manufacturing, and energy are the main products of the trade. China is Nigeria’s leading supplier. China is the chief funder of the key projects in Nigeria. The concerns of political observers are about the extent to which Nigeria will be able to sustain her debt payment and deindustrialisation. China is on record to have funded the construction of the $874 million Abuja-Kaduna rail line, the $1.2 billion Lagos-Ibadan expressway, and many airport terminals like in Abuja and Lagos. The China National Offshore Oil Corporation has significant stakes in Nigerian offshore oil fields. In fact, China is also on record to have aided Nigeria in developing the telecommunications, especially the NIGCOMSAT-1R satellite. China is also deeply involved in local surveillance technology.

If Nigeria is indebted to the tune of $3.48 billion how can Nigeria do away with China unless by payment of the debt and by not incurring new loans? And true, there have been several complaints about the poor quality of Chinese products as well as the limitation of employment of local people in Chinese firms in Nigeria. One explanation often given by the Chinese regarding quality of their products is that all Chinese products have quality specifications and that Chinese products are made for various categories of people on the basis of affordability. In other words, it is what is ordered for that is supplied. China should therefore not be held responsible for supplying what is asked for and supplied. 

Thus, Nigeria is at the middle of the China-U.S. dog-fight which now requires the application of the principle of strategic autonomy. Strategic autonomy is a redefinition of the principle of non-alignment which does not mean that Nigeria cannot or should not align. As defined in 1960 by Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, it is Nigeria’s national interest that would determine whether or not to align. The nature of the national interest carries along the freedom of choice, freedom to identify who to align with and who not to align with. In the same vein, strategic autonomy is about self-preservation and self-reliance. It is also about freedom of choice. As Nigeria-U.S. bilateral cooperation has now been subjected to a new requirement by the United States that Nigeria must first revisit her ties with China to the advantage of U.S. interests, the instant observation here is that the U.S. appears to be looking for how to engineer a regime change and remove President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Asking for devaluation of the presence of China cannot but be a mountainous task. Nigeria has a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ with China. The partnership is designed to deepen economic integration, infrastructure development, and industrial capacity-building. The partnership emphasises technology transfer, digital economy growth, agricultural modernisation, economic growth and industrialisation. Should Nigeria prefer the U.S. that will not transfer technology or know-how? Jimmy Cliff once said, time will tell. For now, it is not only time, national interest and strategic autonomy will also tell.