Blatant Racism: Trump’s Unneeded Hand Of Rescue To South African Boers, Ignores Nigerian-American Yusuf’s Cry For Help
The Oasis Reporters
March 15, 2025
A few days before US president Donald Trump had given special refugee status to Afrikaners who claim their rights are being violated by Cyril Ramaphosa’s government in South African, Nigerian-American dual citizen’s wife of Professor Yusuf shouted her voice hoarse in a special SOS message to Donald Trump through the American embassy in Abuja for rescue for her husband from a Nigerian facility.
Her husband was detained there on the orders of a court because the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had hauled him before the law for corrupt practices.
Iftikar Abdallah Yusuf and her children had sent the joint appeal on the unassailable platform that they all hold American passports as well as Nigerian passports, of course.
The letter dated February 18, 2025 by the wife, Iftikar Abdallah Yusuf, and addressed to the American Embassy, is titled, “Re: Request For Consular Assistance For My Husband Professor Usman Yusuf,” and the letter jointly written by the three sons, Abdullah, Adnan and Luqman to the Senator for Chicago, Illinois, USA, Senator Richard J. Durbin is titled: “Re: Request for the immediate release of our father, Prof Usman Yusuf”.
Despite the urgency in the tone of their request, it seems that Donald Trump has turned a deaf ear to it.
Instead, Trump turned his attention southwards in Africa towards South Africa and the curious thing is that the Afrikaners that Trump is spreading the mat of welcome to, are rejecting it. They prefer to stay in their land of birth where the South African president Cyril Ramaphosa is moving on to redistribute land.
Full length video from Reuters. Watch:
Iftikar Abdallah Yusuf was very clear that the husband was facing persecution from the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whose economic policies have impoverished Nigerians, thus implying that her husband is under incarceration because he was opposed to Tinubu’s policies.
Meanwhile, The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has insisted that Professor Yusuf was detained over allegations bordering on embezzlement and conferment of undue advantage to himself, as the boss of the NHIS between 2016 and 2019, by approving the purchase of a vehicle at the cost of N49,197,750, against the budgeted sum of N30 million, among others.
Who is Professor Yusuf Usman?
Yusuf Usman was the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) Executive Secretary from 2016 to 2019 under the ministerial headship of Professor Isaac Adewoye.
ItIsaac Adewole, Minister of Health, had on July 6, 2017 suspended Yusuf over allegations of fraud levelled against him. However, the Presidency, in a letter to Adewole informed him of Yusuf’s reinstatement but failed to make reference to the allegations against him.
The background story is that Yusuf Usman is of the same Fulani ethnicity with then president Muhammadu Buhari. But when his reinstatement was announced, resentment and anger were on open display as some employees of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), under the aegis of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria and the Joint Health Sector Union, on Thursday, paralysed activities at the NHIS.The protest began about 40 minutes after the recently reinstated Executive Secretary, Prof. Usman Yusuf, resumed at the headquarters of the agency in Abuja.
Yusuf’s reinstatement triggered criticisms from many Nigerians but the federal government, in response, said the development does not stop his probe by the anti-graft agencies.
Following his resumption, the unionists, who sang protest songs, said the reinstatement of Yusuf would thwart his investigation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).They described the reinstatement saga as ‘Yusufgate’, said it was a mockery of President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption war.
Addressing journalists on the premises of the agency, the Chairman of the NHIS arm of the union, Mr. Razaq Omomeji, said the protests would continue until Buhari reversed Yusuf’s reinstatement. Omomeji said Yusuf had bastardised the scheme and his return would only worsen affairs at the agency, according to a report by THEWILL NIGERIA, an online newspaper based in the US.
Prof Usman Yusuf is unabashedly a pro Fulani activist. Highly educated Yusuf who is a medical doctor, believes very strongly in the ancient occupation of majority of his Fulani compatriots in open grazing of cattle. The people are always seeking fresh land with growing grass to graze their cattle.
He once joined his fellow compatriot, a cleric, and fellow medical doctor, Sheikh Dr Ahmad Gumi and declared “we have visited Igboho which is a muslim community, we can see some cattle grazing in their courtyard. This is a place called Ilesha, Burutta “this Igboho..made famous by a detainee in Benin Republic” You see Churches, mosques, Fulani, the natives Yoruba..it is the elites that are dividing Nigerians, not the common people. Nigeria is our country and we are working together to see how we can live together.. Not the poisoned Nigeria this… Igboho people.
Their visit in the South Western State of Oyo, a largely agrarian entity, was seen as intimidatory and provocative.
Former governor of Katsina State in North West Nigeria, Aminu Masari – a Fulani man, says the bandits killing and kidnapping people in the northern part of Nigeria are Fulanis:
“They are the same people like me, who speak the same language like me, who profess the same religious beliefs like me. So, what we have here on ground are bandits; they are not aliens, they are people we know, they are people that have been living with us for 100 of years”.
He said this on Monday 6 September, 2021.
He added further, “the infiltration we have from some West African countries and North African countries are also people of the Fulani extraction. Majority of those involved in this banditry are Fulanis whether it is palatable or it is not palatable but that is the truth. I am not saying 100% of them are Fulani but majority of them are, and these are people who live in the forest and their main occupation is rearing of cattle.”
Cattle-herding is indeed an ancient occupation and way of life that needs reform. Though strange to the people of Southern and North Central Nigerians who are largely agrarian farmers. The insistence by the Fulani herders and intelligentsia that Cows have the right to roam everywhere in the North Central belt and Southern Nigeria is causing internecine clashes and deaths on all sides because within a few hours, grazing cows can devastate the entire farmlands in a community that took three to nine months or more to cultivate or nurture.
It is introducing hunger, loss, penury, hopelessness and indebtedness to agrarian communities.
This is one of the problems that protagonists fail to understand and the government doesn’t know how to address it.
But Yusuf has a simple answer:
The one time Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, Prof Usman Yusuf stated on African Independent Television, AIT’s Kakaaki show one morning that, governors in the south must provide a place where herdsmen will graze their cattle.
How much land does the South hold and is it “increaseable”?
According to Usman in his answer to the ban on open grazing in Southern Nigeria.
He said, “Then Southern Governors must provide, they need to provide places where these Fulanis will graze their cattle”
The matter may still seem very far to resolve due to insincerity, whereas the answer could be in transiting to cattle ranching as it is practiced in many places all over the world.
