THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR NIGERIA

The post-midterm relationship between Nigeria and the U.S. will be more institutional and demanding, contends FOLAWIYO KAREEM OLAJOKU
On Tuesday, November 3, 2026, American voters went to the polls in what has now become one of the most consequential midterm elections in modern American history. When the results began to emerge in the early hours of Wednesday morning, it was clear that something fundamental had shifted in the political landscape of the United States. Democrats had not merely won a narrow victory, they had swept into power in both chambers of Congress, reclaiming the House of Representatives with a decisive majority and flipping at least seven Senate seats to secure a 54-seat majority in the upper chamber. The scale of the victory was felt in places long considered unassailable Republican strongholds. In Texas, James Talarico became the first Democrat to win a Senate seat since 1988. In Kansas, Adam Hamilton broke a Democratic drought stretching back to 1932. In South Carolina, another seat long written off as safe for Republicans fell. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed made history as the nation’s first Muslim United States Senator. In Texas, Gina Hinojosa became the first Hispanic woman governor, and in Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman governor. Vice President JD Vance, speaking in the aftermath of the defeat, pointed to the war in Iran as the principal reason for the Republican collapse, but voters in exit polls told a much more domestic story. They spoke of the cost of living, of grocery prices that had not come down, of housing costs, of a sense that power in Washington had become too concentrated, and of a desire to restore balance and oversight to government. It was, in the classic American pattern, a rebuke to the sitting president, but the depth of the rebuke was extraordinary.

For Nigeria, this was not a distant American drama to be watched with detached curiosity. It was a turning point in its most important bilateral relationship outside the African continent. Nigeria and the United States have a relationship that is long, complex, and at times contradictory, shaped by oil, by migration, by security, by religion, by trade, and by the sheer weight of Nigeria’s demographic and economic importance. What happens in Washington does not stay in Washington. It reaches Abuja, it reaches Lagos, it reaches the battlefields of Borno and the creeks of the Niger Delta, it reaches the visa queues at the American embassy, and it reaches the trading floors where the naira is priced against the dollar. To understand what the midterms mean for Nigeria, it is necessary first to understand where the relationship stood just one year ago, because only then can the scale of the shift be fully appreciated.

In October 2025, the relationship between Nigeria and the United States was at one of its lowest points in decades. The Trump administration had designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern for religious freedom under the International Religious Freedom Act, a label reserved for states judged to tolerate systematic religious persecution. The designation was accompanied by strong public language from Washington about the plight of Nigerian Christians, and by threats of possible military action. In Abuja, there was shock, anger, and a deep sense of being misunderstood. The Nigerian government insisted, with considerable justification, that the violence in the country was not a simple religious war, but a complex tapestry of jihadist insurgency, banditry, farmer-herder conflict over land and water, criminal kidnapping networks, and the spillover of instability from the wider Sahel. To reduce it to a single narrative of Christian persecution was, in the view of many Nigerians, not only inaccurate, but dangerous, because it obscured the real drivers of violence and made them harder to solve.

What followed was a remarkable exercise in Nigerian diplomacy, one that deserves to be studied as a case study in crisis management. President Bola Tinubu did not respond with public confrontation or with angry rhetoric. Instead, he sent his most trusted hand into the room where the narrative was being written. National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu led a delegation to Washington, moving methodically through the White House Faith Office, the State Department, the National Security Council, the Department of War, and the corridors of Congress, the very institutions where the CPC designation had taken shape. His task was not to deny that Christians had suffered, because they had, but to reframe that suffering as one component of a shared threat rather than the whole of it. He spoke of Boko Haram and Islamic State, of Muslim victims as well as Christian victims, of the thousands of Nigerians of all faiths who had been killed, displaced, and traumatised. He presented data, he presented evidence, and he presented a plan. Within weeks, both governments had agreed to establish a Joint Working Group, co-chaired on the Nigerian side by Ribadu, bringing together defence, intelligence, foreign affairs, police and humanitarian officials under a single coordinating structure. The momentum continued into July 2026, when the newly confirmed Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Frank Garcia, made Nigeria the centrepiece of his first official Africa tour, holding extensive talks with Ribadu on security, justice-sector reform, digital transformation and regional stability.

The results of that diplomatic effort were concrete and, by any measure, significant. The United States deployed Special Operations Forces, including elite units, to train and equip Nigerian troops under what Trump termed the historic US–Nigeria 2026 Defence Cooperation Roadmap. Joint operations followed, including coordinated strikes against Islamic State elements in the northwest in December 2025, and a further coordinated attack on ISIS hideouts in the Lake Chad area in May 2026. A five-year US–Nigeria health cooperation agreement valued at approximately 5.1 billion dollars was concluded. And in July 2026, Trump wrote a letter to Tinubu that was made public by the Presidency, praising his decisive leadership, calling it a true honour to stand with Nigeria against terrorism, and describing the relationship as crucial. From formal rebuke to formal commendation, from the language of concern to the language of comradeship, in the space of nine months, Nigeria and the United States had travelled a remarkable distance. The midterms now interrupt that trajectory, not to end it, but to complicate it, and to test whether a relationship built in a moment of crisis can survive a change in the political weather in Washington.

The first and most immediate change that a Democratic Congress brings is the return of oversight and conditionality. A Republican Congress, particularly one aligned with a Republican president, had given Trump wide latitude on foreign policy, allowing him to conduct security cooperation with Nigeria largely on the basis of executive authority and personal rapport. A Democratic Congress will not do that. It will insist on its constitutional role. For Abuja, this is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, oversight may slow down security cooperation, it may introduce bureaucratic delays, and it may create moments of political embarrassment when difficult questions are asked in public. On the other hand, oversight may also institutionalise the relationship, moving it from a presidential understanding between Trump and Tinubu to a legislated, bipartisan framework that survives beyond 2028 and beyond the personalities who created it. A partnership that is debated, authorised, and funded by Congress is, in the long run, a more durable partnership than one that rests on a letter.

The second change concerns religious freedom, an issue that will now return to the centre of the relationship with renewed force. The CPC designation was never fully lifted in political terms, even as the diplomatic tone softened. Democratic members of Congress, particularly those with strong human rights constituencies and close ties to faith-based advocacy groups, are more likely to press Nigeria on religious freedom, on farmer-herder violence, and on the protection of minorities. They are more likely to demand reports, to invite witnesses, to hold hearings, and to link future assistance to demonstrable progress. Nigeria will need to do what it did successfully in late 2025, which is to tell its own story with data, not with defensiveness. The narrative that insecurity is driven by banditry, by resource competition, by arms trafficking, and by jihadism, and not by a state-sponsored religious war, must be sustained in Congress, not just in the White House. That will require a sustained presence in Washington, not a one-off delegation, and it will require the Nigerian government to be able to show, with credible evidence, what it is doing to protect all its citizens, of all faiths, in all parts of the country.

The third change concerns immigration and the diaspora, and for many ordinary Nigerians, this may be the most immediate and personal consequence of the midterms. The Trump administration instituted immigration policies that restricted travel to the United States by Nigerian nationals, among others, including for students, for businesspeople, and for family members seeking to visit relatives. Those policies have caused real pain, separating families, disrupting businesses, and making it harder for Nigerian students to access American universities. A Democratic Congress is likely to push back on travel bans, on visa restrictions, and on mass deportation policies that have disproportionately affected Nigerians. It is likely to demand greater transparency in visa adjudication, to challenge the use of sweeping security justifications for broad bans, and to advocate for pathways that recognise the contribution of the Nigerian diaspora to American society. For the more than five hundred thousand Nigerians living in the United States, a vital source of remittances, of investment, and of advocacy for Nigeria, this could be the most immediate relief from the midterms, a loosening of the pressure that has weighed on their daily lives for two years.

The fourth change, and perhaps the most consequential for Nigeria’s economy, concerns trade, tariffs, and the African Growth and Opportunity Act, known as AGOA. This is where the midterms could hurt or help most, depending on how Abuja responds. Under Trump’s April 2025 tariff action, Nigeria faced a fifteen percent tariff on exports to the United States, although petroleum products were exempt. After a February 2026 Supreme Court ruling invalidated those tariffs, the President imposed temporary tariffs under a different statute, leaving Nigeria with a ten percent tariff on some exports. AGOA itself expired on September 30, 2025, and Congress reauthorized it in February 2026 through the end of the year, making benefits retroactive. That reauthorization, however, expires in weeks, and the new Congress will have to decide whether to renew it, and for how long. A Democratic Congress is historically more supportive of AGOA and more sceptical of unilateral tariffs. That creates an opportunity, but also a danger. If Nigeria waits, if it assumes that a Democratic Congress will automatically renew AGOA out of goodwill, it may find itself caught in a crowded legislative calendar where Africa is not the priority. Nigeria has a narrow window, before the new Congress is sworn in on January 3, 2027, to lobby for a long-term, multi-year AGOA renewal, not another short-term extension that leaves exporters in uncertainty. If Abuja misses this window, Nigerian exporters in agriculture, in textiles, in light manufacturing, in the creative industries, will face renewed uncertainty, and the hard work of building non-oil exports to the United States will be undermined.

Despite the blue wave, however, there are three fundamentals that have not changed, and it is important for Nigeria not to overreact to the midterms. The first is that America still needs Nigeria. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, its largest democracy, its top oil producer, and the United States’ second-largest trade partner in sub-Saharan Africa. No United States strategy for West Africa, on terrorism, on critical minerals, on countering Russian and Chinese influence, on migration, on health security, works without Abuja. The United States knows this, and the Democratic Party knows this. The second fundamental is that Trump still controls foreign policy for two more years. Congress can investigate, it can fund, and it can block, but the President remains Commander-in-Chief. The Defence Cooperation Roadmap and the Joint Working Group are executive creations. They will continue, but now under congressional scrutiny. The third fundamental is that Nigeria’s own 2027 elections are now the test. Washington, under either party, will watch Nigeria’s own elections closely. How Nigeria conducts its 2027 polls, whether they are credible, transparent, peaceful, and broadly accepted, will determine whether the next Congress sees Nigeria as a democratic partner to invest in, or as a problem to manage. Nigeria cannot demand democracy promotion from Washington while failing to practise it at home.

What, then, must Abuja do now? The midterms reward preparation, not panic, and they reward a strategy that is patient, institutional, and forward-looking. The first task is to engage the new Congress early. The Ribadu model worked with the executive. It must now be replicated with the incoming leadership of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with the new chairs, with the new ranking members, and with the freshmen who have just been elected and who will be forming their views on Nigeria for the first time. The second task is to lock in AGOA, and to make a bipartisan case for it. AGOA is not aid, it is American jobs and Nigerian jobs, it is American consumers getting affordable goods and Nigerian producers getting access to the world’s largest market. The third task is to institutionalise security cooperation, to move from letters and personal rapport to formal agreements, to reporting requirements, and to joint benchmarks that a Democratic Congress can defend to its voters. The fourth task, and perhaps the most important, is to lead on the narrative. Nigeria cannot allow its security story to be written for it in Washington again. Data on civilian protection, on inter-faith peacebuilding, on prosecutions for violence, on the work of the military and the police, must be presented proactively, consistently, and credibly. Nigeria must be its own best advocate, in Washington and in the world.

In conclusion, the pre-midterm relationship between Nigeria and the United States was warm but personal. It depended on Trump’s letter, on Ribadu’s shuttle diplomacy, on a moment of crisis that brought two governments together. The post-midterm relationship will be cooler, more institutional, and more demanding. Congress will ask harder questions. Assistance will come with conditions. Security cooperation will face oversight. Trade will be debated, not decreed. That is not a setback. It is a maturation. If Nigeria navigates it well, if it engages early, if it tells its story honestly, if it conducts its own elections credibly, the result could be a Nigeria–United States relationship that is no longer hostage to one election in Washington or to one personality in Abuja, but anchored in shared interests, in shared laws, and in shared democratic accountability. The midterms did not end the partnership. They tested whether it can survive democracy in both countries. That test starts now, and how Nigeria responds in the next ninety days will shape the relationship for the next decade.

 Olajoku, Ph.D, writes from Abuja, 

folajoku@gmail.com