A Century of Plunder and a Tale of Two Leaders – Awolowo and Tinubu
By Damilola Omosebi
Let us not be children. Let us not be fooled. When the master who has whipped you for a century suddenly offers you a sweet, it is not love. It is a new strategy.
The recent, highly publicized phone call from former US President Donald Trump to President Bola Tinubu, filled with promises of a “stronger alliance,” should not be met with cheers, but with a deep, historical suspicion. This is not a sudden discovery of affection for Nigeria. This is the calculated panic of a system that sees its carefully laid plans of a century unraveling. To understand this “phantom love,” you must understand the story they have tried to bury—the story of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the man who is now changing the narrative.
The Blueprint: How the West Systematically Underdeveloped Nigeria
From the moment the British drew lines on a map, Nigeria was not a nation to be built, but a resource to be plundered. Our cocoa, our groundnuts, our palm oil, and finally, the black gold that would become our curse—crude oil—flowed out in a relentless torrent to fuel Western industries. The economy was engineered for one purpose: to serve external interests. The search results confirm this, pointing to an economy established for “resource extraction” and the export of “raw materials.”
But control of resources is not just about stealing from the ground; it is about controlling the minds and the politics of the people. The West needed a Nigeria that was perpetually off-balance, perpetually led by men who understood that their power depended on foreign approval.
The Silencing of a Giant: Why They Feared Awolowo
This brings us to the great “what if” of Nigerian history: Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Here was a man of formidable intellectual capability, a visionary who spoke of free education and a self-reliant economy. He presented a blueprint for a Nigeria that could stand on its own, that could process its own resources, that could educate its masses to become innovators, not just servants.
A Nigeria that thinks for itself is a direct threat to an empire built on plunder.
And so, the devices of the crafty were set in motion. As the search results note, Awolowo was jailed on sedition charges in 1963. It was a masterstroke. The one leader with a clear, independent vision for national development was removed from the chessboard. His imprisonment was the West’s insurance policy. They knew that with Awolowo sidelined, Nigerian politics could be more easily manipulated, its resources more easily accessed, and its destiny kept tethered to their interests.
For decades, this held true. The “resource curse” they helped create took hold, with over 90% of our national income coming from oil, turning our politics into a violent, zero-sum game for control of the central treasury, as the search results indicate.
The Upset: Tinubu and the Unscripted Narrative
Then came President Bola Tinubu. A political strategist from the progressive school of thought that traces its lineage back to Awolowo himself. He came, in the eyes of the West, “from nowhere”—meaning, he came from a place outside their direct control. His early policies, however controversial, signaled a shift. The removal of the petrol subsidy was not just an economic decision; it was a severing of a decades-old umbilical cord that fed a parasitic system benefiting both local and international cartels.
This is what has upset them. This is the source of Trump’s “sudden love.” It is the panic of a plunderer seeing the vault doors being changed. Their meetings are being scattered because the narrative they have written for Nigeria for over 60 years is being rewritten. The call from Trump is not a congratulatory handshake; it is a reconnaissance mission. It is an attempt to understand this new variable, to co-opt him, to lure him back into the old fold of dependency.
A Word to the Gullible Nigerian
To my fellow Nigerians who are swooning over this American attention, I say this: Open your eyes to history.
Do not forget the decades of economic policies dictated by the IMF and World Bank that impoverished our nation.
Do not forget how our resources were stolen while they called us”corrupt.”
Do not forget how they turned a blind eye to dictatorship as long as the oil flowed.
Do not forget how they denied us a visionary leader like Awolowo, only to now embrace a narrative that challenges their hegemony.
This “phantom love” is a trap. It is designed to make us drop our guard, to make us believe our salvation lies in Washington instead of in Abuja, in Trump instead of in ourselves.
President Tinubu must be wise to this. We, the people, must be vigilant. The sudden love of the eagle is not for the well-being of the chicken. Let us support our own, let us critique our own, but let us never again mortgage our destiny to a partner whose love has always been, and will always be, conditional on our weakness.
Our money, our resources, our future—it is time for a total release. And that release will not come from a phone call from Mar-a-Lago; it will come from our own intellectual and political will, finally free from the shackles they placed upon us.
