Nigeria in the Eyes of Trump

20th Jan. 2016



An aspirant in the United States presidential election coming up later this year has lost global respect even before securing his party ticket.  He has hauled vitriolic expletives at women, religions, cultures, nations and races in the course   of running for office. He is more of liability than an asset to his party and country, the United States of America, a nation that is without equivocation the universal bastion of liberty.  His name is Donald Trump.

The loquacious King of hate speeches, and US Republican Party presidential front runner, Donald Trump, is known to have insulted the female gender, Islamic religion, Mexicans, Chinese, British and blacks amongst many others, seem to be doing everything obnoxious to attract media focus and has finally, to use the street lingo “called out” Nigeria.

Yes, the xenophobic property mogul and reality show host, who derives pleasure in demonising any and person, country, culture or race that tickles his fancy, has finally narrowed down his vicious attack from blacks and Africans by accusing Nigerians of stealing American jobs.

At a recent campaign rally, in Wichita, Kansas, the crude and rude Trump lashed out at Nigerians by spewing some of the most ignoble speeches made by a person of his stature against any country or race since Nazi Germany's Adolph Hitler's notorious hatred for the Jews that culminated in the Holocaust - the most notorious genocide in the history of mankind.

Trump said:  "We need to get the Africans out (of the USA). Not the blacks, the Africans, especially the Nigerians.  They’re everywhere. I went for a rally in Alaska and met just one African in the entire state. Where was he from? Nigeria! He’s in Alaska taking our jobs. They’re in Houston taking our jobs. Why can’t they stay in their own country? Why? I’ll tell you why. Because they are corrupt. Their Governments are so corrupt; they rob the people blind and bring it all here to spend. And their people run away and come down here and take our jobs! We can’t have that! If I become president, we’ll send them all home. We’ll build a wall at the Atlantic Shore. Then maybe we’ll re-colonise them because obviously they did not learn a damn thing from the British".

Now, some of my compatriots have argued that Nigeria deserves the bashing from Trump because Nigerians, as the fear -mongering populist demagogue alleged in his outburst, could be found working in places as remote as Alaska, USA stealing American jobs. However, my counter argument is that Americans are equally in far flung places like Eket, in Akwa Ibom and Excravos in Delta states in Nigeria where Exxon Mobil, an American oil major, and others have been prospecting for crude oil and gas for many decades. Yet Nigerians are not cursing them out for taking their jobs like Trump is doing.

It's a such an irony that Trump, who has often boasted that he made his billions building and selling luxury real estate properties to Arabs, Russians, Chinese and other affluent people from all over the world, is now so against globalisation that he is threatening to build walls shutting out non- Americans from the so- called 'God's Own Country' just because he wants to win votes by playing to the gallery of angry rightist Republicans who are riled by the seeming drop in US erstwhile Olympian position of influence in world affairs.

Although, fellow Republicans, including the well respected Governor, Nikki Haley of South Carolina, have denounced Trump's scapegoating of peoples, religions, races and countries just to gain cheap popularity, the United Kingdom, which has also been at the receiving end of Trump's caustic tongue, is now considering a law in parliament to ban the anti establishment renegade politician from visiting England.

It is worthy of note that the Wichita unwarranted ranting on Nigeria is not the first time that Trump would cast aspersions on Africans in the course of his inglorious run for the presidency of the USA- a country that was founded by immigrants and whose foundation is structured to welcome and integrate peoples from all over the world with legitimate quest for the proverbial American Dream.

It may be recalled that in a speech at Indianapolis, at the nascent stage of his campaign, Trump had similarly alleged "some Africans are lazy fools only good at eating, love making and stealing". In his warped views, "the best they can do is gallivanting around ghettoes... Look at African countries like Kenya for instance, those people are stealing from their own government and go to invest the money in foreign countries".

At that point in time, Trump only specifically mentioned Kenya because that country was in the news for the wrong reasons and it also happens to be the country of the father of President Barack Obama, Trump's political arch political enemy.

Trump is now focusing his publicity seeking antics on Nigeria through the diatribe about Nigeria and as a result, our nation is bearing the brunt of the Trump phenomenon since our country has overtaken Kenya as the embodiment of corruption and bad governance in Africa, due to the salacious details of the alleged disbursement of the $2.1 billion allocated for arms procurement now dubbed Dasukigate (diversion of defence funds into political campaign slush funds) which has recently become headline news items in the global media.

As evident in Trump’s vituperations, it is Nigerian authorities that, vicariously and inadvertently gave the reprehensible and petulant Trump the ammunition to shoot down Nigeria by raising so much negative dust about the integrity and leadership abilities of the immediate past administration which has attracted and magnified more public opprobrium and odium to Nigeria than respect.

What this implies is that the image we project in the public arena is what is used to define us as either human beings or as a nation and this validates the popular saying: “Be careful what you do to me because it might end up happening to you".

That also explains exactly why l have in previous media interventions emphasized the need to reduce tension in the polity to engender enabling environment for the urgently needed development of our dear country.

Specifically, l had recommended the toning down of corruption rhetoric and the parlous state of Nigerian economy while making a case for our leaders to roll up their sleeves and fight corruption fiercely but quietly and at the same time pursue progress and development with greater vigour.

According to the renown American human rights activist, Martin Luther King, whose birthday is celebrated with a public holiday in the USA January 18, annually, the  “ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy"

The underlying reasons for my pacifist advocacy are hinged on the fact that l am concerned about the potential backlash such as the current cyber warfare threat against Nigeria by the amorphous group, ANONYMOUS, which has vowed to hack into Nigerian data bases with a view to exposing sensitive details to the public but l never envisaged that Donald Trump would leverage on the unfortunate incidents of financial malfeasance in Nigeria in his infamous ambition of becoming the next president of the USA.

From the facts on the ground, the authorities don't share my sentiments about keeping injurious information away from the public arena as evident in the mind boggling figures such as the N1.34 trillion naira allegedly stolen by just 55 people between 2006 and 2013 that Information and Culture minister, Lai Mohamed, just released in a media briefing. I'm not with the minister on that initiative because, rather than burnishing Nigeria's image such exercise could serve the negative purpose of painting Nigeria with tarred brush as more often than not, it's mainly people like Donald Trump and cyber warfare group, ANONYMOUS, that end up exploiting such ruinous information, as it were, from the horse’s mouth. It would hurt rather than help Nigeria.

Among   the first casualties of the dissemination of such negative information about Nigeria, apart from Nigeria based businesses and economy, are the hordes of professionals in the diaspora like aeronauts in NASA, intellectuals and scholars in higher institutions as well as the myriads of doctors, architects, lawyers, accountants, nurses and engineers engaged in honest jobs in their various locations abroad but who now face the risk of being held in contempt. Needless to state the obvious, the gloomy global financial atmosphere; the admission of massive corruption and mismanagement of Nigerian economy by government; and the related tension in the socio-economic environment of Nigeria have combined to negatively affect the flow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Nigeria. This is because companies that engage in country rating rely to a large extent on information in the public arena to form their opinion.

In conclusion, my humble appeal is that we take a more holistic approach

To the war against corruption by considering the long-term development prospects of our dear country. We should recognise the collateral damages that some unmeasured utterances and unguarded actions could cause the future of our nation and thus moderate our actions accordingly.