Nigeria and the lessons from American politics

By Rotimi Fasan

Just hours after the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump, an anonymous “travel advisory” found its way into the internet. It was at once satiric and tongue-in-cheek in its advice to Africans, not citizens of particular countries of the continent, to be wary of travelling to America at these times. The advisory expressed concern about the state of American politics and the level of violence it had manifested in recent days, all of which culminated in the attempt to assassinate the 45th president of the US. It goes without saying that the composers of the advisory are only paying America and Americans back in their own coin, albeit, in jest.
Such advisories have been sources of anger and aggravation to the countries at the receiving end of their negative messaging. Which is not saying that they are absolutely out of order in identifying potential troubles and flashpoints in the country, it’s the manner they go about it, very often showing them up as savouring the situation and giving them more than enough room to exert their influence on and take unfair advantage of the country, that is worrisome. How many travel advisories have the American Mission in Nigeria issued since fringe elements like the Unknown Gun Men, Boko Haram, the bandits of the North-West and other enemies of the state started their attacks on Nigerians?
What were the words from them concerning the conduct of the 2023 elections and others before that, words that could only but serve to magnify the degree of whatever trouble they foretold and scare away investors and visitors interested in doing business with Nigeria? In the wake of the Bola Tinubu presidency, a certain tribe of political malcontents that sees bigotry in every action and utterances of Nigerians from other parts of the country, especially those of the same ethnic origin of the president- they evince a sense of victimhood and perceive group-gang-up against they and their interest even while many of them daily go over and beyond the call of decency in their attacks on others- these conclave of online trolls particularly relish such travel advisories and scare mongering as evidence of how deplorable life has become in their self-conceived zoo.
They even hold up Donald Trump as a supporter of their separatist cause and celebrate him as a Christian president of America, a kind of political messiah, to free them and their war-mongering separatist leader still in detention from the bondage of their self-made haters. America for them is the destiny of their separatist goal even if that rabble-rouser of an ex-president has a long personal history of disdain for African-Americans not to mention Africans from what he once called a s—t hole. Now we know better- at least since 2016 when Donald Trump became president before his defeat in 2020. He had like the self-same supporters of an ethnic and religious manipulator of a presidential candidate, masquerading as a nationalist, refused to accept his obvious defeat in the 2020 presidential election. He would rather have the country go up in flames.
Although not the oldest, America’s practice of democracy is often celebrated as the most advanced and mature in the last three centuries. From 1776 when it broke away from the stranglehold of Britain, it has held itself to standards that others have found both far-sighted and admirable, much in the same way as the South African post-apartheid constitution has been far ahead of those written before it. This, because of its history of race-relegation, the worst form conceivable. It takes the worst sometimes to produce the best and, in this regard, both America and South Africa stand out.
America’s liberal, live-and-let live disposition to politics, sometimes rivalled and surpassed in certain respect, by the South African approach, is one of its trademark, a sign that sets it apart from other democracies. Its search for and upholding of democratic principles have been tested beyond the limits of anything that can be found in other parts of the world, all thanks to its manner of emergence as a one-time colony of Britain in the crucible of a bitter war of independence, a civil war precipitated by the struggle to end slavery, the Jim Crow years, the civil rights movement, the emergence of the first president of Black ancestry and the backlash from that.
Its history and legacy of slavery and racial injustice against people of African descent as well as the indigenous population of America and its readiness and ability to accept its complicity in these dark stains on her democratic pretensions while engaged in the ongoing work of fashioning a nation out of its patchwork of tribal and racial affiliations and enclaves, are some of what signpost America’s exceptionalism. But that sense of difference, of high achievements, have been sullied in the wake of the Barack Obama years. There has been a gradual but steady roll back of the great achievements of the past and if there was any doubt about this, the emergence of Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed, right-wing supremacist with his Make America Great Again, MAGA, rallying call has erased all of that.
Donald Trump is White America’s response, a measure and sign of their displeasure, that a Black man became a President for eight years of that country’s symbol of White supremacy, a product of Black labour, the White House. That fact alone is a bitter pill for some to swallow and it continues to rankle extremist Americans who have transformed Trump into a tool of flagellation for the betrayal of their children, the younger demographic of Americans, that constituted the bulk of Obama’s base. So, Trump emerged, spewing all the hate rhetoric that he could muster, throwing racial slurs on Blacks and other minority populations even as he proclaims himself their main supporter.
From January 2016 to January 2020, he did all he could to make America great again in his own language by making racial minorities, especially the Blacks, smaller. Ultimately, he led the onslaught on the Capitol and now a gun man, Thomas Matthew Crooks, probably a product of his hate rhetoric, has turned a gun on him and the whole world has rightly condemned the attack. Would Trump have done the same without equivocation had his opponents been at the receiving end? What did he do during the January 6, 2021 attack? Only three weeks ago we saw how he and Biden refused to shake hands (not the first time for Trump) and openly abused each other, each calling the other a liar, during a so-called presidential debate. What would the traducers of the zoo have said or done had this happened here? They would have turned it into a tribal narrative. Wish some people would learn and learn fast too.

Rotimi Fasan is a Public Policy Analyst.