Our ref: maga/myga/210425
21 April 2025
President Donald Trump
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20500
c/o Ambassador Jane Hartley
United States Embassy
33 Nine Elms Lane
Nine Elms
London
SW11 7US
Dear President Trump
Re: Making America and Yorubaland great again
For the second time in its history, America could benefit from Yorubaland; this time not as slaves, but as partners. The reality for America is that China will not relent in its quest to economically cripple, dominate and emasculate America. America is in conflict with its allies, in particular Canada and Europe, and those countries will not be easily assuaged to make them come to the aid of America. Asia needs China more than it needs America.
Africa with its population of 1.5 billion, the second most populous continent in the world, offers America limitless economic opportunities. Yorubaland, with the largest population of mono-ethnic peoples, offers the most unique opportunity of all, in providing the most educated workforce. Yorubaland has the most university graduate per head of population compared with others, including America itself. The Yoruba are an ancient civilisation that predated Chinese and Indian civilisations. Yorubaland was an independent sovereign State of several thousand years before Britain unlawfully usurped it on 1 January 1914.
Yorubaland is a state of instinctively progressive people. Ajayi Crowder was ordained a priest in 1843, and he was consecrated a Bishop at the Canterbury Cathedral on St Peter’s Day in 1864. Broughton Davies obtained the MD of the Edinburgh University by examination in 1859. By 1862, Dr Harrison, a CMS medical doctor, had established the first medical school on the continent of Africa in Abeokuta to train African doctors; Nathaniel King, the son of an African missionary, was one of the four first students. Alexander Sapara Williams was called to the English Bar at the Inner Temple in 1879. Onesimus, a Yoruba slave, mitigated the impact of a smallpox outbreak in Boston (USA) when in 1721 he taught the Yoruba smallpox vaccination technique to American physicians; in 2016, Onesimus was voted one of the ‘Best Bostonians of All Time’.
Yorubaland is a state of talented people. The Yoruba Egungun festival was the origin of ‘carnivals’ staged yearly all over the world, particularly in Brazil, Cuba, and Trinidad and Tobago. Other cultural imprints were reflected in the arts, literature (Wole Soyinka is a Nobel laurate) and music (Fela Kuti was an international music icon). The Yoruba have produced nearly all of Africa’s Grammy Award winners – Sade (1986), Babatunde Olatunji (1991), Sikiru Adepoju (1991), Seal (1996), Wizkid (2021), and Temilade Openiyi aka Tems (2023). The Yoruba have produced some very talented athletes, including Anthony Joshua, who held the WBA (Super), IBF, WBO, and IBO heavyweight titles, and Tobi Amusan, the current African, Commonwealth and World champion in the 100m hurdles. Kemi Badenoch, a Yoruba, and the current Leader of the UK Conservative Party, held ministerial positions in the last conservative government.
Yorubaland is a state of stability. There has been no wars or violent conflicts in Yorubaland since the 1800s. The Omoluabi ethos and philosophy have made us Yoruba a cultured people, civil, congenial, generous and hospitable. Traditional Yoruba communitarian philosophy provided the individual with three basic or fundamental human rights, namely, the right to be, the right to do and the right to have.
i. The right to be was comprised of the right to life, the right to love and affection, and the right to education and training (that is, the wherewithal to succeed in life).
ii. The right to do was comprised of the right to work and earn, and the right to freely express one’s self (‘as the elder has wisdom, so does the child’), to move, to associate and to assemble.
iii. The right to have was comprised of the right to marriage and family life, the right to fair hearing (‘the elder who decides after hearing one side, does injustice to both sides’), the right to be treated with dignity, and the right to develop to one’s full capacity.
The Yorubaland is a state of natural traders. The Yoruba peoples have similar entrepreneurial spirits as Singaporeans and South Koreans. Like you Mr President, we Yoruba are masters of the art of the deal, and here are what we propose to start with:
1. Free, preferential trade for America, unfettered with politics, in exchange for America recognising Yorubaland as an independent sovereign State, as it was before the British government unlawfully usurped it in 1914 in defiance of an 1888 treaty under international law as well as two Orders in Council legislated by England’s Queen Victoria in 1899.
2. Establishment of a naval base for America, to complement Diego Garcia, in exchange for America developing the marine economy of the 1000km long Yoruba coast with its deep sea, at an estimated cost of $100 million per year over 5 years.
3. Exclusive access to large deposits of yet to be explored and mined solid minerals for America in exchange for America industrialising Yorubaland including transfering from elsewhere the manufacture of components for American factories and other industries.
Mr President, you are a great student of history. You know that America participated in the 1884/5 Berlin Conference where the Europeans decided to carve up Africa as their own. To America’s credit, the government refused to sign the subsequent Berlin Act on the grounds that whilst America supported free trade, it could not support colonisation. Mr President, by recognising Yorubaland as an independent sovereign State, you would be confirming that American philosophy, which separated you from others, and you would be establishing yourself as the best friend Africa ever had.
Mr President, we Yoruba seek this deal to make both America and Yorubaland great again.
I am Sir, looking forward to hearing from you.
Respectfully yours
Baasegun (Dr) Olusola Oni
Leader, The Yoruba Party in the UK