Incredibly, Donald John Trump won. But before some crowd renters get cracking for their protests in Nigeria, we should tell our people to be sober, look into the seed of time and come up with some lessons that we can learn from Trump’s school of politics. As I was saying four weeks ago in my simplicity, without realizing that the man would destroy some political theories, we need a Donald Trump in this country now to destroy the foundation of ‘political correctness”, that has kept us in this dark corner where we have been celebrating a culture of mediocrity that has been threatening to overtake corruption.
I mean before Prof. Wole Soyinka send invitation to the green-card-tearing ceremony, it is better to think out of the box where we always pontificate on Nigeria’s potential in agriculture, intellectual capital, mineral resources and all that stuff without any concomitant action plans on how to make Nigeria great.
Can we really add ‘again’? Have we really been great in its classical forms? As we wait for Nigeria’s president to launch economic blueprint after almost two years in office, it is relevant to think of how to Trump (disrupt) the foundation of arrogant political elite, the rent seekers, the ‘legislooters’, the ‘executhieves’ and the corruptible judges that have kept Nigeria in the realm of what a new generation church describes as “near success syndrome”.
As I was writing this, protests were spreading like wild fire in more than 25 of the 50 states, Washington D.C and Puerto Rico in the United States. Let no one be deceived here into organizing a bandwagon effect: it is part of democracy within the context of deep-seated division that the presidential election’s toxic campaigns have triggered. No matter the extent of damage from the angry half of the divide, there will be presidential inauguration on January 20, 2017. No aggrieved politician or civil right activist will obtain any injunctions from any judicial black market to stop the inauguration. Thank goodness, the one who would have gone to challenge the outcome of the election has won.
Besides, even the loser, Mrs. Hillary Clinton has gracefully conceded victory, reminding all those who would like to weep more than the bereaved that one of the strong pillars of the American democracy is peaceful transfer of power. The campaigner-in-chief for Hillary, President Barak Obama, has been described by the tempestuous Trump as “a good man” after a meeting.
And here is the thing, we do not have to like Trump, whose political genius has disrupted digital pollsters, defied powerful global media ambush, disrupted the Republican Party’s convention, successfully courted the resourceful evangelical churches in global context, and artfully dodged the revolt of even former presidents and secretaries of state to win the keenly contested U.S presidential election.
Instead of reading copiously from the book Lamentation can’t we learn from the strong institutions of democracy in the United States, notably the two major political parties, the Republican and the Democratic Parties. People felt that Bennie Sanders was literally ‘robbed’ of the Democratic Party’s ticket and would have done better but then he respected the people’s wish and did not go to court for the ticket.
What of the Grand Old Party (G.O.P)? Despite the altercation with their presidential candidate, Trump, they still maintained majority in both chambers of the Congress. In their quintessential representative democracy, the Congressmen who live among the people they represent know their people and their people know them. One significant element here is that the voters were unfazed by the G.O.P crisis since presidential primary: they voted massively for their representatives who have been representing them well. But in Nigeria, you may not need votes to win an election. The judiciary can ‘elect’ representatives for the people. After all, until governors and president are certified elected by the Supreme Court here, there is still a partial or no mandate. Which makes representative democracy a huge joke. What is worse, corruption of the democratic process has created a wealthy class of judges and lawyers who have made big money from election petitions. Most of the embattled judges are said to have courted trouble from politically exposed people who have suddenly made the courts to be more important than election management agencies.
The pertinent point here is that instead of Elder Audu Ogbe speaking in tongues about “retooling our foreign policy in readiness for the consequences of Donald Trump’s presidency,” we should move from rhetoric to action about our own domestic policy, which is a critical success factor for foreign policy. Instead of hating Trump for telling us while campaigning that “our people have stolen money and they should go back to their country and live”, we should reflect on the strategic message of Trump on “immigration”, “trade agreements” and terrorism”. As an elder said to me at the weekend on this score: “The message from Trump is very clear: make your own countries as beautiful and livable as America. Don’t mess up your own countries and come trying to also mess up America. You better get the message”.
There is a time for everything: a time to be politically correct and continue with the old order that has limited all the “pilgrims’ progress”, and a time to disrupt the existing political order that began this year with Brexit in the United Kingdom. And so the trumpet of Trump we should collect and blow should not be misunderstood. Nigeria, Nigeria, yes Nigeria needs a Trump to disrupt the current political order that cannot lead to thinking out of the box. The heavens know that Nigeria needs a political thinker an unconventional leader, not a politician who can forge a MOVEMENT that will mobilize Nigerians to understand what corruption has done to the country.
We need a Trump who can commit class suicide by exposing the ‘principalities and powers’ we call Mafia that exists in every region in the country. We need a resourceful leader who has the resources to use the big data age advantage to mobilize the South West citizens, for instance, to the existence of Yoruba Cabal that has held the region hostage since the death of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. We need a Trump who can use the power of intelligence gathering to prepare a dossier on the Kaduna Mafia that has made the Nigeria’s Northern region part of the poorest in region in Sub-Saharan Africa. We need a charismatic leader who can use a cult following to tell the poor lot in the North that they need more schools than mosques for development without offending religious sensitivities. We need a Trump-like Movement to tell the young and the old in the South South region to ask what former President Jonathan achieved for the volatile Niger Delta area for the more than five years he was in office as President. We have been hypocritical for so long and the media cannot reach the beat to discover the monumental failures of 36 state governors in Nigeria. All our major reporters are in Abuja. We are in a recession but our governors’ lifestyles have not changed a bit.
They buy bullet-proof cars instead of constructing roads and equipping schools and hospitals. They continue to be profligate in all their ways and their political parties have failed to call them to order. We need a Trump who will gather data on the unorganized commercial activities of our Oriental brothers (south easterners) that cannot fight for integration and inter-state roads in the East. For five years, President Jonathan could not complete East-West roads in his own area. Most times they complain of low income. Yet Jonathan’s wife has a gift of more than $34 million in just one bank account.
We need a Trump to gather big data on why our more than 150 universities cannot produce world-class graduates in this age that knowledge drives. We need a Trump who will mobilize citizens to know that some of our past leaders organized self-help while in government and established universities for themselves instead of developing the state-owned ones to world standard. We need a Trump-like audacity to recreate a Movement that can uproot a new culture of mediocrity everywhere in Yoruba-land that used to be a pacesetter region. The current leaders need a mobilized people who have enough understanding to drive them away politically.
For those who are still wondering about what we can get from Trump, who many thought had a crisis of character too and so lacked executive intelligence to be the president of United States, the following are facts we must face and absorb, according to the media now smarting from the shock of the Trump’s surprise victory: Anger has sown hatred in America. Feeling themselves victims of an unfair economic system, ordinary Americans blame the elites in Washington for being too spineless and too stupid to stand up to foreigners and big business; or, worse, they believe that the elites themselves are part of the conspiracy. They repudiate the media…for being patronising, partisan and as out of touch and elitist as the politicians. Many working-class white voters feel threatened by economic and demographic decline.
Some of them think racial minorities are bought off by the Democratic machine. Rural Americans detest the socially liberal values that urban compatriots foist upon them by supposedly manipulating the machinery in Washington. Republicans have behaved as if working with Democrats is treachery… (The Economist)
Now analysts are revealing that Mr. Trump harnessed this popular anger brilliantly. Those who could not bring themselves to vote for him are still wondering how their compatriots were willing to overlook his treatment of women, his pandering to xenophobes and his curious disregard for the facts.
The Economist supreme intelligence says there is no reason to conclude that all Trump voters approve of his behaviour. For some of them, his flaws are insignificant next to the One Big Truth: that America needs fixing. It is on point too that Nigeria too needs fixing now.
So, Nigeria needs a charismatic Trump in 2019 who will show the willingness to break taboos as a proof that he is a stranger. As some commentators have put it, voters took Mr Trump seriously, not literally. But to their chagrin, his critics took him literally, not seriously. The weeping Hillary Clinton might have won the popular vote, (47.7 % to Trump’s 47.5%) but she stood for everything angry voters despise. Most of our leaders in Nigeria too stand for everything the people despise. That is why we need a Trump to disrupt our culture of low expectation from our dealers called leaders. Can we ever have a Trump in Nigeria? The answer should not be allowed to blow in the wind for too long.
Inside Stuff Grammar School:
Seasonal Greetings in Advance:
On Saturday July 23, 2016, this school posted that it is not part of the English culture to: wish people Merry Christmas or Happy Easter “in advance”. The school monitor has spotted some errors, in this regard, as we approach Christmas. That is why we have to post the lesson again: Note:
Wrong: Darling/Dearie, I wish you Merry Christmas ‘in advance’.
Correct: Darling/Dearie, I wish you Merry Christmas.
Note: Do not think of the time you are sending the good wishes. You should delete ‘in advance’ from the sentence. It is redundant.
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