He is so powerful that he made the president of the United States of America commit munitions and resources worth more than $80 million on an operation in Sokoto State, Nigeria. According to The New York Times, the person who made the most powerful president in the world commit such huge resources to an operation in Nigeria is a man who sells screwdrivers in Onitsha.

He must be such a powerful screwdriver seller! To have the reach, access and intelligence to influence the president of the United States, this must be a different screwdriver seller; he must be a human screwdriver, and one which remotely influences the mind and decisions of the most powerful leader in the world today.

I had never thought a day would come when I would be in doubt about an editorial material with the imprimatur of The New York Times. In trying to deflect culpability from the Nigerian State, this paper threw logic and commonsense to the wind. The writer approached the job (a hack one) with a well-defined intention to make the Igbo man culpable of the bombing in the north and also to diminish the value of the Igbo economy in the wider context of Nigeria.

I doubt if any person hired and trained by the New York Times would write such an article, and I doubt if an editor paid by this paper would allow such material pass through his or her tight editorial sieve. It could only happen, I had been thinking, if it was an advertorial, in which case, the paper should have imposed a caveat on the article.

Has the New York Times fallen so low as to become and treat serious editorial issues like content creators? Have things become so bad that a medium as serious and reputable as the New York Times has begun to treat editorial content as commercial material without warning its readers that the material was commercial?

To diminish this city of sprawling commerce, this writer reduced the entire city by casting its most influential figure as a screwdriver seller. Onitsha might not pass for a city from which men of diplomatic and global political influence would emerge from today, but let it be recalled that although he was not a trader and chose to operate mostly from Nsukka, where he built Nigeria’s premier university, and Lagos where he won elections into the western regional parliament, the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was from Onitsha. Although Zik was never a trader, he influenced the developments that made Onitsha the big commercial capital it is today in the Southeast.

As observed by Emmanuel Orjih, another Nigerian who is aggrieved by the article, The New York Times failed in its own editorial criteria by approving that article for publication. It fell painfully short when put to the tests of accuracy, fairness, and risk exposure to the subject and a wider ethnic community.

I do not want to dwell for long on the risk exposure, but I doubt if the writer has any respect for the office of the President of the United States. To even suggest the occupant of such an office was so dumb as to be influenced by an ordinary seller of screwdrivers in Nigeria was baffling. How could the New York Times have been comfortable with such an association?

I would want to believe that the New York Times, by publishing that article, intended to insult President Donald Trump and bring him and his office down in the estimation of right-thinking people. Trump, this paper must think, operates in such low circles as to pay heed to a lowly trader.

This is without regard to the plethora of reports of religious, political and civil society groups, who have made representations in the media and in several places in Washington. If these groups did not influence Trump, then pushing the narrative of a screwdriver seller is both unintelligent and intentionally an attempt at setting up a group for possible aggressive consequences.

The choice of the Onitsha imagery was clear evidence of the writer’s ignorance of the nuances and imagery of Nigerian cities. Onitsha conjures the imagery of commerce among Nigerians. Nobody knows Onitsha as capable of birthing anything relating to international diplomacy and intellectual works. Framing the influence and trigger that ignited Trump around Onitsha makes the writer appear like a liar. It is almost like framing Paris as a technology epicentre, or trying to make a fashion capital out of Silicon Valley.

And that is why I also suspect that the New York Times reporter credited with writing that article was not the original writer. Whoever wrote that article had the unmistakable intention of diminishing the economic power of the Southeast, among other not-too-noble missions.

Onisha is the largest market in Africa, where businesses of all kinds take place. From manufacturing through all forms of commerce, the city attracts traders from across the entire West and Central Africa. Onitsha Main Market, which has birthed other markets such as Nkpor, Relief Market, Ochanja, Okpoko, Ogbo Ogwu, Building Material, and many others, is reputed to have an annual sales volume of more than $10 billion.

To diminish this city of sprawling commerce, this writer reduced the entire city by casting its most influential figure as a screwdriver seller. Onitsha might not pass for a city from which men of diplomatic and global political influence would emerge from today, but let it be recalled that although he was not a trader and chose to operate mostly from Nsukka, where he built Nigeria’s premier university, and Lagos where he won elections into the western regional parliament, the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was from Onitsha. Although Zik was never a trader, he influenced the developments that made Onitsha the big commercial capital it is today in the Southeast.

For a trader, nope, a screwdriver seller that runs a small shop in Onitsha to be so powerful as to make Donald Trump commit American war assets worth more than $40 million (each Tomahawk missile is estimated to be with $2 million) to bombing Islamic insurgents in Nigeria, speaks of the rare power of this lowly screwdriver seller. For Trump to back his rhetoric with such huge resources speaks a lot more about his reach, intelligence and influence than it does about whatever narrative the article wants to push.

That article was published to serve several purposes: use the Igbo people of the Southeast as a vote-bait for the north, who are visibly not impressed by the current order in Nigeria. It’s election season, and there is pressure from all corners on the current regime. With the pressure coming from the Donald Trump administration, there is every likelihoodthat the current vice president will not be on the ticket for the 2027 election. To keep the north trusting and voting, therefore, a scapegoat has to be found for the bombing by the US in Sokoto, the north’s sacred religious capital.

That scapegoat has to be the Igbo people. Unfortunately, pinning the blame on the Igbo intelligentsia was a tough call, since most of them are either not in politics or already supporting the ruling party. But a scapegoat has to be found somehow.

So the head of the screwdriver seller had to be forced into the pyre for the sacrifice designed for the North’s appeasement. The Igbo people were forced to fight a genocidal civil war triggered by a coup hatched by elements in the Nigerian military against the administration of Tafawa Balewa. The coup was conveniently baptised an Igbo coup, and rivers of Igbo blood flowed to quench the fire lit by elements who think Igbos are the problems of the country.

Those same people are back, nearly 60 years later, with the same subterfuge.