The return of Donald Trump to the Oval Office at the White House on January 20, 2025, may mean an attrition of Nigeria’s $20bn annual diaspora remittances, two United States-based scholars have said.

The two US-based scholars, Prof Aminu Gusau and Prof Nimi Wariboko, were guests on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television on Friday.

“One vital issue that I need to mention is the issue of immigration and how it will affect Nigeria. If Trump decided to do what he did the last time of massive deportation, of course, it would affect the economy of Nigeria because the remittances of Nigerians (abroad) to Nigeria would drastically go down,” said Prof Gusau, a scholar and research affiliate at the University of Kansas.

Wariboko, a Social Ethics Professor at Boston University, United States, corroborated Gusau’s view, saying Trump is determined to promote white supremacy and this may affect the Nigeria-US economy.

“His antecedent tells us that this is a man that is going to promote white supremacy or even in another form: ‘America First’ in everything and that might not augur well for Nigeria or for Africa,” Wariboko said.

Trump, the 45thPresident of the United States (POTUS), staged a comeback when he wrested power from incumbent Joe Biden after he trounced his vice, Kamala Harris, at the November polls.

The Republican powerhouse is billed to be inaugurated as the 47thPOTUS come January 2025. One of his campaign promises was a sweeping overhaul of US immigration policy with mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. He has threatened to carry out what he described as the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history”, one that has sparked global conversations.

Trump’s latest threats is a reminder of his immigration policy during his first term as POTUS. In 2020, the Trump administration added Nigeria to a list of countries whose citizens will in some way be restricted from entering the United States because Nigeria didn’t comply with identity management and information sharing criteria.

Approximately 376,000 Nigerian immigrants live in the United States as of 2015, according to official sources. Nigeria is the largest source of African immigration to the United States.

The United States Is one of the top destinations for migrating Nigerian youths and the middle class in search of greener pastures. Nigerians in America form a bulk of the total diaspora bulge which contributes more than $20bn annually to Nigeria’s economy, according to the 2023 data from the World Bank.

‘Nigeria Can Recalibrate Relationship With US’

Prof Wariboko said Nigeria has a chance to recalibrate its foreign policy objectives and overall relationship with the US under the Trump presidency.

“The good is that Nigeria has a chance to recalibrate its relationship with the US government. President Trump is a very transactional person. So, he might be working with Nigeria and they can iron out things that may be of benefit to Nigeria. That is a good prospect that is here.

“But the bad thing is that Donald Trump cares about countries with economic strength and military strength, and these are things that Nigeria does not have so we may not envision much in his calculation. We may want him but the question is: does he really want us?

“One of the ways Nigeria can do that is to tap into the huge diaspora population that are in the different aspects of the US society, from academics to technology to business, to politics. It’s for this government to find a way to say: one of the ways to approach the US government is not only by government to government but using Nigerian diaspora, the citizens here, to be a form of advocacy for the issues of Nigeria, for the issues of Africa, for the issues of the black nations.”

On his part, Prof Gusau said though many didn’t expect Trump to win, the reality is that Americans have made a choice. He noted that there is a sudden emergence of emotional intelligence in Trump going by his recent victory speech.

He said, “Nobody would ever expect that a convicted felon, somebody who had been impeached by the House of Representatives would come back to become the President of the United States but the American people spoke and the American people decided they needed a change and that happened.

“There is one reality that we cannot shy away from: people will be asking is it the same Trump that we know who became President in 2017 to 2021 or is it a different Trump coming back now? When he made his (acceptance) speech, he was for the first time talking about unity, and global issues and that he is willing to handle it.

“So, going through what he went through – attempted assassination, hopefully, Trump will look at things from real perspectives rather than from a stereotypical perspective.

“If it is the same Trump that we had from 2017 to 2021, I will really say that there is no hope and the fact here is that whatever we say about Nigeria’s relationship is just speculative; people would be using the psychology of what they know about Trump to talk.

“There will be two issues that will be affected. One is the issue of investment or relationship in terms of trade. If Trump continues with his America-first isolation and protection, then, honestly speaking, there will be a problem.” (Channels TV)