Nigerian President Bola Tinubu did not attend the United Nations General Assembly. His planned meeting and photo opportunity with United States President Donald Trump were reportedly canceled. Officials now say Tinubu is viewed as a liability to the United States.
The Nigerian Ambassador to the United Nations Jimoh Ibrahim earlier boasted that Tinubu would sit very close to Trump. After that claim fell apart the ambassador offered a new reason for the absence saying Tinubu simply was not present at the UN gathering.
Despite reports of nine million dollars spent on lobbying efforts a large scale campaign to damage the group’s credibility with decision makers and seven hundred billion dollars in Nigerian mining interests Tinubu stayed away. The canceled Trump meeting and the liability assessment stand as the key factors given.
Tinubu was allegedly involved with a criminal organization that moved heroin from Nigeria into the United States during the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. If those claims hold true he represents a major risk to American integrity at the level once associated with Jeffrey Epstein and must stay far from Trump.
The dispute has gained renewed attention as Nigeria and the United States expand cooperation in the mining sector. The two countries signed a mineral investment framework in New York covering geological information, exploration, mineral development and processing, infrastructure and technical capacity.
The combination of the canceled Trump meeting, the unresolved records dispute and the new mineral cooperation has intensified questions about the nature of the US Nigeria relationship and whether further details of the mining framework should be made public.
The central issues remain whether the reported Trump meeting was canceled and why, what the US government records concerning Tinubu contain, and what specific commercial opportunities could emerge from the Nigeria US mineral framework.
The group Von Batten Montague York L C released the statement to correct earlier posts and stress that the charges against Tinubu remain alleged.
