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.
CREDITS: MAGNUS ONYIBE
*Mr. Onyibe, a development strategist and futurologist, is a former Commissioner in Delta State.