By Sanya Onayoade
The American democracy has always been the model for the Nigerian media, and by extension the country Nigeria. The US is too important to be ignored. It’s the only empire straddling the globe with power and might, with all the appurtenances of super privileges. They can’t be wrong dispensing democracy, an acclaimed representative governance system; foisting it on some weak countries and enforcing it on some ragtag leaders. It beggars logic that Nigeria was colonised by a parliamentary United Kingdom, but fused into the American presidentialism. It’s no brainer that an American president is the most powerful man in the world, and also deemed to be a bearer of freedom and diplomacy.
Since time immemorial, the Nigerian media had always glued to the international news media and worked the phones for expert opinions on each American election circle, drawing parallels with Nigerian systems and spewing analyses on how those crooked systems could straighten up to the adorable advanced democracy.
By the time Donald Trump settles in the White House, the United States would be grappling with democracy ideals and freedom of the press. Now is the time for the media and the political class in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa to change the narrative.
Fela’s music is in sync with today’s reality. Teacher don’t teach me nonsense speaks to the impending fall of the global hegemony from the Olympian Heights, and we need not look in that direction for democratic patronage or reverence any longer.
Donald J Trump represents all that is undemocratic and apostate.
In his book, The Age of Unreason, former British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, dwelt on the crisis in democracy and capitalism. The book examined the rise of “populist nationalism” embodied by Donald Trump’s US presidential bid.
“Capitalism and democracy is in crisis. The West is in retreat. The forces of populist nationalism and prejudice are on the rise, amplified by new technology. The likes of Donald Trump say to people, what the hell have you got to lose. The answer is, a lot. Peace, prosperity and security.”
We have been severally warned by people of good conscience and leaders with foresight that Trump is not fit to be president; that he is fascist, vengeful and divisive. He is the first convicted felon to be elected as US president. He is unabashedly nepotistic, a misogynist, and the only president in history condescending to ableism (making fun of people with disabilities or nursing prejudice against them).
Americans and the world might have been saved the ugly theatrics of a Trump losing the election, because he had built up an empire of ‘fake elections’ and ‘fake results’ prior to the election and refused to accept any outcome that did not favour him. The joke was on the US electoral system, however robust it was in the past. From time immemorial, US election monitors and sitting presidents had always admonished African countries, and other Third World to obey people’s wishes and refrain from electoral malpractices or violence; following up with threat not accept results fraught with rigging in those countries or denying reapers of such electoral exercise access to the US. Imagine civil societies in those countries admonishing US to obey people’s wishes and refrain from rigging; and taunting that any US citizen involved in rigging would be denied access to their countries? Ridiculous, you may think, but the US 44th President Barack Obama may now redirect his admonition of African leaders: that Africa does not need strong men, but strong institutions. The truth is, Trump is a strong man attempting to weaken the country’s strong institutions.
He has severally called many heritage media outlets ‘fake news,’ calling for the licences of some media like NBC and ABC to be revoked. He has threatened CNN and Washington Post countless times. Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog, claimed in its research findings that Trump verbally attacked media more than 100 times in the two months run-up to the election. He coaxed ABC for a $15 million defamation settlement and threatened to go after Jeff Bezos’ businesses if he didn’t rein in Washington Post’s criticisms. Bezos, the recent publisher, caved in, annulling the newspaper’s decades-long endorsement of a presidential candidate, which in the last campaign favoured the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. The Post, which I visited as part of my fellowship in 2003, and which I hallowed for its heritage and journalistic excellence is now in reputational tatters; currently bearing the weight of a slew of retaliatory resignations including a recent one by a prodigious cartoonist whose illustration was dropped for depicting Bezos and some other tech giants cringing before the all-mighty Trump. The Pulitzer award winner, Ann Telnaes, who had been at The Washington Post since 2008, said: “In all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at, until now. The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump.” Besides the resignations, The Post lost an estimated 250,000 subscribers.
Trump had threatened to jail the no-holds-barred TV host Jimmy Kimmel and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook which yanked him off the platform for spreading insurrection during the invasion of the Capitol. His first time in the White House was a rough ride for the media, it’s going to be barbaric from January 20.
Kimmel said Americans had a choice between a prosecutor and a criminal, “they chose a criminal”. He said of the election day: “Terrible day for women, journalists, the physically challenged, for healthcare, poor people, also terrible time for those who voted blindly without knowing him.”
He is historically black-hating, thumping up his familiar refrain during the last presidential debate that Black Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating cats and dogs. He was sued in 1973 for refusing to rent apartments to black families. Several Black participants in The Apprentice, a reality TV floated by him expressed gross racial biases. His shithole reference to African countries and stereotyping Blacks as lazy are well documented. It’s no brainer that his Africa foreign policy would be hugely negative.
A leader should inspire hope and trust. But Trump’s second coming is sending waves of anxiety and fears in a world already stressed with wars, hunger, deaths and disasters. World leaders are in unanimous panic attack right now because of the election of one man. Leaders in EU, North America, NATO, Africa and the Middle East are bracing up for a war-mongering and self-serving, impulsive and ill-mannered president. You are yet to take the levers of power, and you are already touting annexing Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark; Panama Canal owned by the sovereign country of Panama. You serially ridiculed a more respected prime minister of Canada, calling him Governor Trudeau and mouthing a self-serving rhetoric of making Canada the 51st state of US. He has been on a threat binge against numerous countries including Iran, Mexico.
The privilege of the US as a superpower cannot be underrated. But countries of the world need to be unanimous and make concerted efforts in confronting the Trump threat lest their inaction or passivity breed another Hitler, and another World War.
Africa needs not look unto today’s US as a repository of democratic conduct or judicial impartiality. The Western World have always sermonised against the vote-buying prevalent in Nigeria and other parts of Africa. But how do you explain the pro-Trump pre-election deals by the tech giants led by Elon Musk in anticipation of government contract patronage? African countries need to grow their own systems in consonance with local demands. In Trump’s America, Africa won’t be on the table.
•Onayoade, journalist and brand consultant, is a Freedom House Fellow.
