Tinubu: Nigeria Met Non-Oil Revenue Target Early, Unfazed by U.S. Tariffs
President Bola Tinubu on Tuesday declared that his administration remains resilient and unshaken by U.S. President Donald Trump’s new trade policies, including tariffs targeting Nigerian exports.
Speaking at the Presidential Villa in Abuja while receiving a delegation of The Buhari Organisation led by former Nasarawa State Governor, Senator Tanko Al-Makura, Tinubu said Nigeria’s growing non-oil revenues provide a buffer against external shocks.
“If non-oil revenue is growing, then we have no fear of whatever Trump is doing on the other side,” the President said, noting that Nigeria had already met its 2025 revenue target by August and that the naira had stabilised at around ₦1,450 to the dollar, up from ₦1,900 when he assumed office in May 2023.
Trump, in his second term, has rolled out sweeping trade measures under the “America First” agenda, including a 10 per cent baseline tariff on nearly all imports and additional country-specific levies of up to 50 per cent. Nigerian exports now face a 15 per cent tariff effective August 7, though energy products like oil and gas remain exempt.
Tinubu also cited his government’s agricultural reforms and nationwide mechanisation drive as part of efforts to ensure food security. “If we remove hunger, we have defeated poverty,” he said.
On a lighter note, the President recalled internal clashes with the late Muhammadu Buhari during the 2013 merger talks that birthed the All Progressives Congress (APC). “We even argued over a symbol. He insisted on parliament, and I insisted on broom. He’s so stubborn,” Tinubu recounted to laughter.
The meeting, which also had in attendance Katsina State Governor Dikko Radda and former Governor Aminu Masari, is seen as part of efforts to consolidate APC’s northern bloc ahead of the 2027 elections.
Rep. Liz Cheney, the third-ranking House Republican, said Tuesday she will vote to impeach President Donald Trump, as at least four GOP lawmakers will move to charge the president from their own party with high crimes and misdemeanors.
She is the highest-ranking Republican to call for the president’s impeachment in the wake of last Wednesday’s deadly Capitol Hill riot, which Trump helped incite with lies and incendiary rhetoric.
Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., earlier said he would support impeachment after the president stirred up a mob that attacked the Capitol while Congress counted President-elect Joe Biden’s presidential win. Reps. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., later joined Cheney and Katko. The riot left five people, including a Capitol police officer, dead.
In a statement, Cheney said Trump “summoned this mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”
“Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President,” the Republican conference chair said.
“The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday evening that he will not try to remove Trump from office by invoking the 25th Amendment.
“I do not believe that such a course of action is in the best interest of our Nation or consistent with our Constitution,” Pence wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Pence did not specifically mention the impeachment push. However, he did urge Congress “to avoid actions that would further divide and inflame the passions of the moment” as “we prepare to inaugurate President-elect Joe Biden as the next President of the United States.”
The House plans to vote Wednesday on whether to charge Trump with high crimes and misdemeanors. Democrats have said they have enough votes to impeach the president for an unprecedented second time.
In a statement Tuesday evening, Pelosi named nine impeachment managers for the impending trial. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., will serve as the lead manager. He will be joined by Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., Stacey Plaskett, the Democratic delegate for the U.S. Virgin Islands, Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., and Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa.
Once the House impeaches Trump, the Senate will decide whether to convict him. The chamber may not have time to vote to remove him from office before Biden takes office a week from Wednesday.
Even so, conviction in the Senate would prevent Trump from holding elective office in the future and he could lose perks given to former presidents.
The House Republicans revealed their stances as The New York Times reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has told associates he thinks Trump committed impeachable acts. The newspaper did not detail whether McConnell would vote to convict the president if the House sends articles of impeachment to the Senate or whether he would urge Republicans to vote the same way.
More Republicans could join Cheney, Katko and Kinzinger in backing the effort. No House Republicans voted to impeach Trump in 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
“Good for her for honoring her oath of office,” Pelosi said in response to Cheney’s support for impeachment. “Would that more Republicans would honor their oaths of office.”
The move by Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, breaks from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has opposed impeaching Trump. He and Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., objected to counting Biden’s certified election victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania after the attack on the Capitol.
Cheney is the daughter of former vice president and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. He joined the nine other living Pentagon chiefs earlier this month in warning against involving the military in disputes over election results. The Washington Post op-ed came three days before the Capitol attack.
Trump earlier said Democrats’ push to impeach him was dangerous and could spark more violence. Some of his Republican allies have argued the effort would hinder attempts to reduce tensions in the country.
Impeachment supporters have said Congress should not move on until they hold Trump accountable for his supporters’ attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.
The impeachment article Democratic leaders have appeared to back, titled “Incitement of Insurrection,” accuses Trump of committing high crimes and misdemeanors by encouraging an attack on a co-equal branch of government. It says the president, by lying to his supporters about the election results for two months and then encouraging them to fight the outcome shortly before the invasion of the Capitol, helped to spur the riot.
With days to go before Trump leaves office, the House rushed through the traditional process to bring impeachment to a swift vote in the full chamber. In a report supporting the impeachment measure, House Judiciary Committee staff said Tuesday that Trump “repeatedly sought to overturn the results of the election” and “continued a parallel course of conduct that foreseeably resulted in the imminent lawless actions of his supporters.”
The report goes on to say: “President Trump committed a high Crime and Misdemeanor against the Nation by inciting an insurrection at the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. The facts establish that he is unfit to remain in office a single day longer and warrant the immediate impeachment of President Trump.”
One of the leading prophetic voices in Christendom, Prophet TB Joshua has finally open up on the forthcoming presidential election in America between Joe Biden and Donald Trump
The clergy Said: “What is happening in the American election is as a result of the power in the tongue. The word we speak determines the life we enjoy (Proverbs 6:2). The tongue can either work for us or against us – death and life lie in the tongue (Proverbs 18:21).
We Christians would have loved it to go the way we wanted. But the Bible says it is never proper to base our faith on our improvement after prayer. We should not worry. The joy is that the new Supreme Court Judge, Amy Coney Barrett, will be an instrument of check.
Finally, let us learn how to believe that God hears us when we pray – it is a much greater blessing. There is likely going to be pockets of resistance here and there but nothing will change. Let me reserve what I am seeing until the inauguration of the new president.”
– Prophet TB Joshua (November 1, 2020
