Nigeria will be 59 in a few days. For more than five decades, the industrialised West had called her names, some of them unprintable, and denounced her leaders — whether military or civilian, elected or imposed — as incompetent, sociopathic and megalomaniacal.
For a long time, Nigerians and the rest of the world saw the insults as justified and even fitting. Starting out approximately from the same economic and social pedestals with many Asian countries like China, Malaysia, Singapore and the two Koreas, Nigeria had held out hope that, like its competitors, she would amount to something spectacular in the world, not only because of her inestimable human resource endowment but also for her abundant, almost incomparable economic resource base. Nearly six decades down the line, that potential has remained almost completely unrealised. Worse, it had seemed as if Nigeria was nearly alone in propping up and projecting bad leaders.
It has, however, taken less than a decade — indeed, well within five years — of the emergence of many right-wing leaders in the so-called First World countries of Europe and America to put the lie to the isolation and incomparability of Nigeria’s laggardness. It turns out that bad leaders are not the exclusive preserve of Nigeria and countries like her in Africa and Central America. In Donald Trump, who was freely elected some three years ago by a supposedly educated and highly enlightened electorate, the United States has produced, tolerated and projected a match to Nigeria’s very worst, someone who appears to combine all the elements of the most disgraceful kind of leadership without the redeeming grace of good, humane and sensible leadership attribute. He was a rank outsider in the US Republican Party and a repudiator of the moderate conservatism of the party, but he bluffed, blustered and jousted his way into winning the party’s candidacy and national diadem, preying on the fears and apprehensions of Americans over immigration and dilution of white control and supremacy.
Europe has always portrayed itself as multicultural, liberal and ethical. But with the rise of right-wing governments in Austria, Italy and Hungary, and the relentless march of populist parties in Germany, Estonia, Denmark, Bulgaria and Finland, among many others, the condition in which the mind of Europe has long been ensconced is festering and mutating radically. Indeed, everywhere there is a major cultural or economic challenge in Europe, politicians and parties have veered very badly to the right, exploiting populism to fetch easy votes, erect huge ramparts against outsiders, and demonise their perspectives.
Indeed, there was a brief moment during the last elections in France when the right-wing seemed poised to cause a huge upset. Establishment parties had frayed and the electorate seemed bullishly and instantly regicidal. How France escaped the populist onslaught has not been fully explained. If France was lucky, Britain has not been quite as lucky. There is of course no stretch by which the Conservative Party in Britain could be described as right-wing, but the politics of Prime Minister Boris Johnson is definitely populist, if not next door to right-wing, and Brexit a frightening ogre whose ultimate implications still defy punditry.
Merely describing a government as right-wing does not, however, justify the policies and politics of Messrs Trump and Johnson, both of whom are appalling, incompetent, vituperative, unconscionable and megalomaniacal. Nor do they excuse the damning trajectory of Hungary’s Mr Viktor Orban and the insufferable and sanguinary excesses of Philippines’ Mr Rodrigo Duterte. Mr Trump runs a divisive and chaotic administration, one which is unashamedly racist, loud, and unfeeling. With countless senior officials of government throwing in the towel not too many months after assuming office, the Trump White House has come to symbolise and embody everything contrary to the most respected of American ideals, ideals tested by years of political and ideological refinement, and the leadership and guidance of the most studious, nationalistic and far-sighted founding fathers any country could have.
Mr Trump’s most recent blunder in which he instigates a foreign government against a highly placed American political rival, former vice president Joe Biden, is not only a case in point, it is also an indication of how sadly American politics has accommodated and indulged the president’s reckless and provocative brand of politics. Having yielded remorselessly to his unethical governance style, winked at his lack of private scruples, and indulged his braggadocio, it is no surprise that Mr Trump has stretched the frontiers of bad governance to its elasticity limit.
If care is not taken, he could once again very well get away with murder, an indulgence he has become accustomed to and, given the solidity of his base and their unquestioning loyalty to him, even feels has become either indispensable to his presidency or integral to American politics. The US is great today more because it had for centuries identified great and noble ideals, embraced them, and made their promotion a lifelong assignment. America is not great because of sheer military muscle, for if that were so, surely they know it is a question of time before the Barbarians march on this hypothetical Rome.
Whether it is mischievous mimicry or not, Britain’s Mr Johnson has postured inelegantly like Mr Trump, talked carelessly and recklessly like him, undermined the rule of law flagrantly, attempted to strangulate the parliament by proroguing it, and has ridden roughshod over both his inferiors and betters, with equal passion, indiscreet statements and matchless ferocity. He has not been able to deliver Brexit on terms that either align with his self-induced scepticism or not mock his inflexibility and disdain for parliament. There is in fact nothing to indicate that he will be able to deliver it, despite a law forbidden him to exit the European Union without a deal, let alone empathise with and placate the fears of Europhiles. Self-willed, slightly arrogant and impatient, Mr Johnson has not given any indication that he recognises and therefore needs to protect centuries of British democracy and parliamentarianism.
Few ever thought the US and Britain could ever sink so low as to enthrone leaders whose fundamental outlook and logic war so violently against the ideals that have stood Europe and America well for centuries. But for their indomitable institutions that continue, with perfect equanimity, to bear the excesses of right-wing European countries and the US, both Mr Trump and Mr Johnson would have unreflectively engineered the destruction of their countries which are still entranced by their sorceries and talismanic zealotry.
In contrast, and this is where Nigeria has fared very badly, there are no strong institutions to serve as a bulwark for Nigeria. With a succession of bad leaders, most of them so incompetent that they should be completely banned from ever participating in public affairs, Nigeria has groaned under the weight of incompetent leadership and undisciplined governance. The country, it is now known, is not alone in this classic display of underachievement. It may have produced a slew of incompetent rulers and despoiled its land, it must, however, take consolation in the fact that it is definitely not alone. This is a horrifying consolation to take, but better clutch at straw than drown in a shallow pool of its own disgraceful fouling and making.
Mr Trump has no clue whatsoever about the ennobling and ethical role the United States plays in mediating conflicts in unstable countries and regions, and in policing and projecting liberal values all over the world. Since the US has now seemed to abjure such noble virtues, and there is no other country strong enough or sufficiently gingered to protect human rights and all other rights, countries like Nigeria have been encouraged to clamp down on their peoples regardless of the provisions of their constitutions. Nigeria was for decades eternally poised on the edge of political and economic disaster, without US prodding, it now has free rein to commit excesses that are certain, on a hypothetical tomorrow, to entrap its promoters.