Trump planned to stop $1.5bn aid to Nigeria, says Bolton, ex-US NSA

John Bolton, a former United States national security adviser, has alleged that President Donald Trump once argued that the $1.5 billion annual aid given to Nigeria should be stopped.

Bolton, in a book titled “In the Room Where It Happened”, alleged that the president also said funding for military operations in Afghanistan and Syria should be cut but wanted funds released for the US-Mexico border wall.

According to Bolton, the president wondered why America was still providing aids to Africa and “made it clear he wanted out of Africa altogether”.

He said Trump complained of how Nigeria receives $1.5bn annual aid from the US and still refused to buy its agricultural produce.

“Following more chatter, Patrick Shanahan (then US Defence Secretary) turned to the cost reductions that maintaining the counter-terrorism capability would entail. But before he got too far, Trump broke in to complain about Congress’ refusal to fund the Mexico border wall,” he wrote.

“Then he was off, ‘Why can’t we just get out of Syria and Afghanistan? I never should have agreed to the other two hundred (in Syria), and it’s really 400 anyway…’ Then after literally 45 seconds back on Afghanistan, Trump asked, ‘Why are we in Africa?’

“He soon made it clear he wanted out of Africa altogether, expounding for some time on our $22 trillion national debt, followed by the problems of our balance-of-trade deficits, followed by complaining, again, about how Nigeria received $1.5bn annually in foreign aid, as he said the President of Nigeria had confirmed to him in an earlier visit, even though they wouldn’t buy US farm products.”

Trump’s administration had made attempts to prevent the release of the book which is scheduled for June 23 but a US court ruled against that.

Royce Lamberth, a judge, said the government failed to prove “irreparable harm” by halting the book’s publication since much of its contents have already been disclosed through media reports.

The book depicts Trump’s foreign policy as “reckless and driven by personal interest” among others.