President Bola Tinubu has shrugged off Donald Trump’s tariff offensive, declaring that Nigeria’s economy is too strong to be rattled by Washington’s trade war tactics.
Speaking at the Presidential Villa in Abuja on Tuesday, Tinubu said his administration had already hit its 2024 revenue target in August, months ahead of schedule, thanks largely to growth in the non-oil sector.
“Today, I’m standing before you. I can brag that Nigeria is not borrowing a dime from a local bank,” Tinubu said. “We have met our revenue target for the whole year; we met it in August, non-oil. If the non-oil revenue is doing well, then we have no fear of whatever Trump is doing.”
The United States slapped a 15 per cent tariff on Nigerian exports earlier this year, rattling global supply chains. But Tinubu dismissed the move as inconsequential, saying the country’s fiscal resilience had rendered Washington’s policies toothless.
Still, data from the National Bureau of Statistics tells a different story. Its rebased GDP report last month revealed that the economy shrank sharply in 2024 due to the naira’s steep depreciation, warning that Nigeria’s gains looked impressive only in naira terms but “in dire straits” when measured in U.S. dollars.
On the diplomatic front, Foreign Affairs Minister Yusuf Tuggar disclosed that Washington had pressured Abuja and other African nations to accept Venezuelan prisoners, an offer Nigeria rejected.
The U.S., however, denied any link between that rejection and its recent decision to cut visa validity for Nigerians.
