Trump on Buhari

ASSUMING  without necessarily conceding that US President Donald J. Trump’s alleged characterisation of President Muhammadu Buhari as ‘lifeless’ were true, it would still be highly preposterous for the US President to have made such an incendiary comment on his Nigerian counterpart. This is not because Trump does not have a history of hauling insults at other leaders across the world much more distinguished than himself. It is well known how often he does that. This gets really bad each time he lapses into his legendary tweeter fits, a pattern that partly informs the title of Omarosa’s best selling book. Rather, it is because it is so undiplomatic a comment to make by one supposedly friendly country against another.

After all, much as he has shown little or no respect for Africans and their leaders, DJT did not squirm at receiving some close to $500 million, which the Nigerian president had to hurriedly pay on the eve of his US trip in April 2018, for some nondescript military helicopters, which won’t even be delivered until 2020. Recall that there were concerns, loudly expressed in Nigeria, that the country’s laws seemed to have been bypassed in the hurry to effect the payment. Yet, President Trump did not consider it appropriate to discuss the possibility of turning down the payment, if only temporarily, for the Nigerian government to do the needful in terms of compliance with relevant laws of the country.

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If indeed Trump made the remarks attributed to him, the Nigerian government must act swiftly and commensurately. It must invite the US ambassador and hand him a protest letter to his president. This must be accompanied by a statement carefully crafted to highlight some of the more contemptible traits that form the Trump persona, and how much Nigeria, like several countries around the world, try to live with such only out of courtesy. This type of response is not for a Buhari campaign organisation to make, for this is far from being a local partisan spat. Indeed, it does not matter how Nigerians feel about President Buhari, and some of us feel strongly that he has not acquainted himself creditably enough in the office he holds. The truth is that the president currently personifies Nigeria. Any insult to him, therefore, is unquestionably an insult to all Nigerians, nay all Africans, at whom Mr. Trump has hauled multiple snide remarks since he got catapulted into an office that is obviously too large for him. For the US President, African countries are nothing but ‘shitholes.’ At that April 2018 meeting, he pointed disrespectfully at, and said sarcastically of Buhari, ‘he likes copters!’ His former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, he fired in a disgraceful manner while the gentleman was on tour of Africa. Not even that most distinguished global diplomatic icon and former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, was good enough to attract an eulogy from the American president when the former passed on. What is more, just a few days ago, Trump tweeted falsely about the delicate efforts being made by the South African government to negotiate the complex land ownership question in the country, one of the more iniquitous legacies of apartheid.

Everywhere you turn, Trump enjoys dragging Africans, their countries, and leaders in the mud.  In spite of its current challenges, Nigeria remains one of the few countries on the continent that can at least call Trump to order. Abuja should not for any reason lose this opportunity to do exactly that. Trump’s country is rich, no doubt. Africa is not. Even so, lack itself can sometimes be borne with equanimity. Trump must be brought to the realization that he cannot continue to take his country’s expansive capability at doling out support to poorer countries as licence for insulting our being. For, truly, Africa has options, and would not for the love of the greenback endure all manners of indignities from the Trump White House. Small wonder, it is said in my Yoruba cultural space, that any human being worthy of being so called wouldn’t for the love of beef condescend so low to make obeisance to cows!

• Mimiko, a professor political science, is a former Vice Chancellor of the Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State