By Vitus Ozoke, PhD
When Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu lands in Washington to meet with Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday, it will be a masterclass in awkward diplomacy – two governments swapping notes on who violated more human rights and broke more court orders before breakfast.
Let’s not sugarcoat it: Tinubu comes from Abuja, where human rights go to die quietly in detention and democracy limps along on crutches. But he arrives in a Washington that is now under the Trump administration’s second coming. He arrives in a capital where human rights are no longer a creed but a campaign slogan, and where the “rule of law” has become a choose-your-own-adventure novel.
The irony is thicker than the Potomac fog. Tinubu, whose government has kept Mazi Nnamdi Kanu illegally detained despite multiple court orders, will meet a Trump administration that has turned the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency into a vengeance squad. While Abuja perfects the art of ignoring its courts, Washington now treats judicial rulings as polite suggestions. When it comes to contempt for the law, the teacher and the student are now indistinguishable.
If Tinubu plays his cards right, this could actually turn out to be the most relatable meeting of the decade. He won’t even need to rehearse the talking points. Both capitals now share a favorite political language – selective justice.
Let’s review the hypocrisies. In Nigeria, Christian communities have been slaughtered by terrorists while the state twiddles its bureaucratic thumbs. The government’s response? A silence louder than gunfire. In the United States, refugees fleeing that same terror find themselves facing deportation flights without due process. Washington condemns extrajudicial killings abroad while its own forces conduct them quietly in the open waters off Venezuela. It’s the same old sermon – America preaches what it no longer practices.
That’s why Tinubu’s visit poses a moral dilemma for both sides. Washington holds all the leverage – military, financial, diplomatic – but not the moral card. Its human rights record under Trump is a study in how quickly a democracy can lose its soul. Family separations, ICE raids, “law and order” by decree, and journalists branded as enemies of the state – this is not moral high ground; it’s moral quicksand.
So, what does Tinubu do? He has two options: punch or punt. He can punch – call out Washington’s hypocrisy, point to the mass deportations, the defiance of court rulings, the culture of retribution and revenge, the Venezuelan sea graves. He could look Vice President Vance in the eye and say, “Sir, if this is your idea of the rule of law, Abuja is in good company.” It would be audacious, almost poetic.
But Tinubu won’t punch. He can’t. He dares not! Because even in moral limbo, Washington still holds the upper hand. The United States may be bruised and hypocritical, but it remains the superpower – the “bigger man,” as they say. Tinubu can’t walk into the Oval Office and moralize about human rights while Nnamdi Kanu sits in a Wuse cell, court orders gathering dust like forgotten Bibles.
So, he must punt – lower his gaze, play nice, and hope nobody mentions Wuse or Kuje or Kaduna. Hope that JD Vance, himself the product of a populist rebellion against reason, is too busy lecturing China to ask why a Nigerian citizen is being held in defiance of Nigeria’s own courts. Because if that question comes – and it will come – Tinubu will have nowhere to hide. Washington may have lost its moral authority, but Abuja has lost its moral memory. One forgot what justice means; the other never learned. And that is the tragic symmetry of this Tuesday meeting. Two governments staring into the same mirror, seeing only the other’s reflection.
So, Mr. Tinubu, you may find comfort in Washington’s moral decline, but don’t mistake it for vindication. Corruption does not cancel corruption; it compounds it. The sins of Washington cannot absolve the crimes of Abuja. If anything, they illuminate them. So, as you cross the Atlantic, remember this: the distance between Washington and Wuse is shorter than you think. One holds a man without charge; the other deports him without trial. One disobeys its courts; the other dismantles them. One pretends to uphold human rights; the other pretends to believe it ever did. If irony had a passport, it would be stamped both Abuja and Washington.
So, safe travels to DC, Mr. Tinubu, as I finish my open letter to Vice President Vance, asking him to include your criminal detention of Nnamdi Kanu in his meeting notes with you tomorrow.
Dr. Vitus Ozoke is a lawyer, human rights activist, and public affairs analyst based in the United States. He writes on politics, governance, and the moral costs of leadership failure in Africa.
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