Scriptures say heaven and earth may pass away, but not one jot of the word of God will go without fulfilling the purpose for which it was sent (Matthew 24:25). So also did the Preacher say there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1; 9). What is happening today has happened before and there is nothing new regarding the decision of the electorate in the United States to reject Kamala Harris while electing former President Donald Trump. That decision has biblical antecedents.
Read the whole story in the Gospel according to St. Matthew chapter 27: despite the spirited efforts of Pilate to set Jesus Christ free, an innocent man wrongly accused by the Jews, the mob insisted that he be crucified but that Barabbas, whom the bible described as “a notable prisoner”, a robber known as such to everyone, be set free. All attempts made by Pilate to let them see reason fell on deaf ears. In the end, Barabbas the thief was released while Jesus the innocent man was crucified.
Does this sound familiar with the unhappy ending, to many, of the just-concluded United States election? What bricks and mortars did they not throw at Donald Trump, the eventual winner of the election! How many criminal convictions did he not suffer! I do not think there has been any American candidate so hunted, so rend apart as Trump; yet, he came out tops.
It looks like our own 2023 presidential election. Few people thought Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu would surmount the obstacles stacked on his way, first to the party primaries and then to the election proper. His entire life history and political career were turned inside out. What crime was he not accused of? Where did his detractors not contact to seek damaging evidence against him? Exactly, the same thing was suffered by Trump. I think on the weight of probability, the incriminating documents mounted against Trump made a child’s play of those that Tinubu had to contend with.
What lessons do we learn from this? If we say a man with the weight of baggage Tinubu was alleged to carry sailed through because we are a Third World country where democracy and civil education are yet to take firm roots and where corruption is rife, what do we say of the United States of America, the so-called bastion of democracy and civil rights movement?
And my mind went back to those polemics during our Philosophy and Political Science classes at the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Ile-Ife of the distinction/dichotomy between politics and morality, politics and religion, religion and morality, etc. Nicollo Machiavelli is very popular with his statement: the end justifies the means. Politics, as we say here, is a dirty game not suited for bishops and popes! And it is not only in politics that this holds true. Neither is it only political leaders that throw moral scruples to the dogs.
The US election demonstrated quite clearly what we know here: that every politics is local. The issues that determined the winner were local issues. Gone are the days when foreign affairs dominated the politics and elections of the US; now, stomach infrastructure, as we call it here, does! In the US, they call it the economy. Trump campaigned principally on the twin issues of the economy and immigration, both of which dovetailed into each other.
The economy was deemed by many Americans to have performed better under the former president’s four-year rule than under Joe Biden/Kamala Harris. It is very instructive to note that the economic downturn that we complain bitterly about here in Nigeria is not limited to us alone. If you have people in the Diaspora, ask them; they will tell you they now spend three or four times more on goods and services than they did four years ago.
Where people feel the impact of the government most is their pockets and pot of soup! Trump is deemed to have performed better here than Biden/Harris. Talks by the Democrats about protecting democracy sounds highfalutin to a hungry stomach. It is the living that protects democracy, not the dead.
When an economy begins to bite hard, the first scapegoats are immigrants and Trump made this drum beat louder than any excuse the Democrats could make about protecting fundamental rights. This is not limited to the US alone. It happens all over the place. We have recently seen such backlash against immigrants in Britain and France. Years back, we saw it rear its ugly head against Nigerians and east Africans in South Africa.
This is not to forget that when we first had our own economic downturn in the early 1980s during the Shehu Shagari administration, an estimated over two million undocumented migrants were sent packing in what came to be (in)famously called “Ghana Must Go” perhaps because majority of the immigrants so sent packing were Ghanaians. This is a natural phenomenon which everyone involved in the “Japa” syndrome, be it locally and be it across borders, must take into consideration.
If you abandon your own territory and run to another person’s, one day you will be asked to leave, regardless of the law and regardless of the number of years you have spent there or of the investments you might have made there. The Yoruba have a saying, to wit, ultimately, the houseboy will leave!
Many are already apprehensive that Trump will come down heavily on immigrants; he said repeatedly during the campaign that he will. He has also said so in his acceptance speech. He said, though, that only illegal immigrants have cause to fear but many people believe every immigrant has cause to worry. White Americans want to take “their” country back. They are alarmed at the rate immigrants are overwhelming their own White population. So, if nothing is done, they will become a minority in their own country and will have nowhere to go.
They are both wrong and right! Wrong because they stole the country in the first place from its rightful and original owners and developed it with the sweat and labour of others, especially the sweat of Africans shipped there as slaves. So, the descendants of those people have a stake in the US. We are also aware that the “Shitholes” that the immigrants are running away from have been made and kept so by the policies, wars and exploitation of successive United States governments. The reparation they have refused to pay to the continents they pillaged is what the peoples of those places are trying to take back in the form of “Japa”.
A lesson for us here in Nigeria is that there is no “no man’s land” anywhere. If you pour your population there today, no matter how huge, the owners of the land will always remain the silent majority. The day they stir is the day they will show you the door. The votes of Blacks, Latinos, Jews and others were overwhelmed by those of silent White Americans who keyed into Trump’s battle cry of “Take our Country Back” and “Make America Great Again”! Harris and the Democrats had no answer to Trump’s battle cry which resonated well with White Americans and those impoverished by Biden’s economic – and also foreign – policies.
The war in Ukraine, into which Biden has poured billions of US dollars, must partly account for the Democrats’ failure. So is the war in Gaza. The Democrats’ effort to rally Arabs and Muslims failed spectacularly. It is believed that Trump has a better plan and bigger heart to stop the senseless wars and save the US the billions it is pouring into the war efforts in those two places. The Russia/Ukraine war especially has affected food chain supply across the globe. It is one reason why some food items like wheat and dairy products have become scarce and expensive in a place like Nigeria, for instance.
Stomach infrastructure apart, what role did gender and ethnicity play in the results of the election? Black evangelicals and conservatives who could not stomach Kamala’s same-sex orientation also drove themselves into her opponent’s arms. Trump must be accounted as a giant female-killer! He defeated Hilary Clinton to win his first slot as president and has now defeated another woman to make his come-back. Na only women you fit fight?
Male chauvinism is still alive and well in the US while gender equality is light years away. While they might not have been the dominant factors in the election, they, nonetheless, played a part. Racism is yet to be completely erased from the United States’ day-to-day existence. Combining both minuses – gender and race – did not do Harris any good. The fact that she carried the baggage of Biden – like Tinubu carries Buhari’s – made her case worse. Had Biden heeded calls for him to exit the race earlier and had the Democrats the opportunity to throw their net farther afield in search of a replacement, maybe the outcome of the race would have been different.
We have many lessons to learn from the US election: Stop wasting time on the opponent; sell yourself instead. In the last election here, the other presidential candidates focused all their attention and attack on Tinubu and had little or no time to sell themselves. They failed. In the US, the Democrats did similarly with Trump. They failed. Morality and politics may not be bedmates. Rather than focus undue attention on the baggage of a candidate, focus attention on issues that affect the populace.
In Nigeria today, the biting economy is one such issue. Can anyone tell me what the opposition leaders have told us they will do differently if they get into office tomorrow or if they were the ones there right now? I don’t know of any, other than saying blandly they would act differently from what Tinubu is doing? How? In what areas?
Incessant power outages, weak currency, skyrocketing food and fuel prices are scourges that seem to defy solutions. What are the plans of the opposition and where do they differ from what the government is pursuing? Let them learn from Trump who left no one in doubt concerning what he would do. He clearly outlined his policies regardless of whose ox is gored. Not the kind of unserious politics that we play here with serious issues. You know Trump is coming for you; so, get ready for him. He did not have a word for everyone on everything simply to win an election.
Trump’s second coming will be action-packed on the foreign scene as well. To repair the United States’ damaged economy, he must cut costs on the foreign scene. Europe will not have it easy with him as they will be required to cough out more for their own security. China must sit up as Trump will fight to re-establish America’s hegemony. He will most likely also call the bluff of Israel’s Netanyahu. Ukraine should be imagining what hit it right now: Negotiate with Russia to end the senseless war or carry the can on your own. For African countries, you know what he thinks of you: Trump’s America has no time – and no milk – for whining babies!
LAST WORDS: What if President Joe Biden resigns as president today and Vice President Kamala Harris is sworn in as president – and occupies the office if only for two months? That will be a perfect ambush of those repugnant to the idea of a US woman president! Not only that, history will also be made as the US will have its first full-blooded immigrants’ offspring as president. Whereas former President Barack Obama’s father was African (from Kenya), his mother was American (white). Kamala’s parents are both recent immigrants: Her father (Jamaican) and mother (Indian).
- Former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/ Editor-in-chief of The WESTERNER newsmagazine. He writes the ON THE LORD’S DAY column in the Sunday TRIBUNE and TREASURES column in NEW TELEGRAPH newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.