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The consolation in Trump’s presidency — By Tochukwu Ezukanma

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As far as I am concerned, Donald Trump is grossly detestable. He is arrogant, megalomaniac and bumptious. He is a psychotic narcissist that, in the words of Mrs. Hillary Clinton, is “dangerously incoherent and temperamentally unfit to be the president” of the United States of America. He is a brazen racist and sexist. He is a crook, a fraudulent businessman that swindled banks and evaded taxes. He is a downright criminal. Was he not found guilty on 34 felony counts?

By temperament, he is an archetypal sit-tight Third World dictator. Following the 2020 presidential election election, which he lost, he strove to repudiate the will of the people and remain in power. He confected nauseating lies to discredit an unquestionably credible election. Finally, he incited his supporters to political barbarism, hitherto unknown in the annals of America: the invasion, vandalism and desecration of the bastion of American democracy: the US Capitol.

In the 2024 presidential campaign, attired in his old-styled, dark-coloured suits and over extended colourful ties, he took to the podium looking and sounding like a clown. With no coherent, cohesive political message, he stuck to his tempestuous demagoguery tailor-made for the prejudice and passion of conservative White Americans. He spouted his gallimaufry of falsehood, threats and innuendoes. With his barefaced mendacity, he frightened many American with the prospects of America being overrun by hordes of Black and Hispanic immigrants, whom he claimed were mostly criminals. He blabbed about immigrants eating dogs and cats. To the Americans, dogs and cats are pets, and, as such, something of members of the family. So, to them, eating dogs and cats is extraordinary cruelty. His wild anti-immigrant rhetoric struck a responsive chord in the minds of Americans, especially hunkerish White Americans.

But then, there is at least one consolation in Trump’s presidency. He is forthright, and does not flinch in telling African countries exactly what he thinks of them. He once referred to African countries, as “shit-hole” countries, which was politically incorrect and wholly undiplomatic. However, diplomatic nicety, and its attendant euphemism in depicting the problems of African and characterizing African rulers has not, in any way, helped Africans. It has actually encouraged the African’s penchant for lying to himself (self-deceit), refusal to take responsibilities for his blunders and blaming others for his problems. We blame our self-inflicted problems on a variety of factors, including colonialism and our ethnic cum cultural diversity. But then, some of the very successful countries of the world, for example, India, Malaysia and Korea had colonial pasts. And India, with her fifteen official indigenous languages and seven official religions is more heterogeneous than Nigeria.

Yes, many African countries are shit-hole countries. Nigeria is a shit-hole country. Nigeria is a country slated by Providence for greatness, but that reduced herself to a lumbering, floundering, blundering oil-rich country that is paradoxically, the world capital of raw-dirt, desperate poverty. Secondly, she has nothing to show for the billons of dollars that accrued to her from oil revenue over many decades, but suffocating levels of official corruption that is unravelling the sinew of the society; over bloated personal bank accounts of a series of kleptomanias that masquerade as public servants; frayed and broken public infrastructures; poverty-riven, hunger-stricken and dispirited populace; failed educational and health systems; anarchy and blood-curdling ravages of banditry and terrorism; social indexes comparable to those of war-ravaged countries and an economy perilously careering towards a collapse.

In addition, after 64 years of independence, Nigeria remains an artificial sovereignty, a morass of feuding tribal groups and conflicting and contradicting social interests, yet to define the object of her nationhood, evolve a unified sense of purpose and cultivate national social and cultural agglutinants to weld her different peoples into one unified country. Yes, despite her enormous human and natural resources, our beloved country is something of a failed state that lends credence to the long held White racists’ view that Africans cannot rule themselves.

If Trump’s bluntness will smack our inanities and blunders squarely on our faces, and jolt us off our self-deceit and blame game, then, it is good for us. It has been written that, “Revolution is the locomotion of history and the youths are the drivers of this locomotion”. Throughout history and across the countries of the world, it is the youth, in their hot enthusiasm and reckless idealism that rise up in challenge of the ruthlessness, avarice and blunders of power. For example, the Arab Spring, which deposed a number of entrenched dictators in the Arab world, including Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in 2011; and the Sudanese revolution of 2018/2019, which resulted in the resignation of an autocratic president and transition towards democracy were all fuelled by youth activism.

On the other hand, Nigerian youths are docile and cowardly, with a penchant for loafing around and mass desertion of their country (“Jappa”) in search of economic opportunities overseas, especially, America. If Donald Trump’s hardline anti-immigration policies make it harder for Nigerian youths to “jappa” to America, then, it is good for us. More Nigerian youths will be forced to remain in Nigeria, and languish in the encircling horrors of Tinubuism. Then, hopefully, at some unbearable point of hunger and anger, they will rise to tackle and dislodge Tinubuism, the most corrupt, clueless, irresponsible and inhumane government in the history of Nigeria.

Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria.
tezukanma@gmail.com
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