Trump and Buhari are divisive leaders. They do not see all citizens of
their respective countries as having the same national status.
In some ways, President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria and President
Donald Trump of the United States of America have some things in common.
The first thing is that they are leaders that people find difficult
to be neutral about. Their supporters support them passionately, while
their opponents oppose them passionately. Therefore, whenever people
with opposing views on any of them discuss them, tempers rise. To their
supporters, everything Buhari or Trump does must be justified and
defended. This leads to people known for their high sense of justice and
rationality — including professors and senior lawyers — making shocking
comments on issues just to defend them.
Therefore, both of them are divisive leaders. They do not see all
citizens of their respective countries as having the same national
status. To them, those who support them are the true patriots, while
those who oppose them are enemies of the state. This manifests in their
words and actions. Once elections are over, other presidents drop the
parochial partisan toga and don the federalist toga. But in the cases of
Buhari and Trump, that toga is never dropped. There is no difference
between their words and actions during the campaign era and during the
governance era. Consequently, Nigeria and the USA have never been as
divided as they are under Buhari and Trump except during the civil war
period in the two countries.
In addition, both of them are supremacists. While Buhari believes
in the supremacy of his Fulani ethnic group over others, as well as the
North and Muslims over others, Trump believes in the supremacy of the
Whites over other races, as well as hardcore Republicans and evangelical
Christians over others. In dealing with the outside world, Trump also
believes in American supremacy. For him, the only thing that matters is
the interests of the United States. He does not even bother to moderate
his views when speaking at the United Nations or about other nations. He
differs with Buhari in that regard. Buhari does not project the
interest of Nigerians when dealing with the outside world. Not only does
he not show anger when Nigeria is ridiculed by outsiders, he even joins
in ridiculing Nigeria and Nigerians when talking with leaders of other
leaders.
Another area of similarity is the fallout from their extempore
speeches. Any time both of them read from a prepared speech, they say
the right things meant to unify the nation and make life better for the
people. But whenever they speak extempore, they usually kick-start one
controversy or the other. The reason is that when they read from a
prepared speech, their aides would have moderated the speech to make it
sound presidential. But whenever they speak without a script, they
express their real thoughts, which never come out well.
Furthermore, both of them hate the media. This is because they hate
to be opposed or criticised. The media points out the inconsistencies
between their past promises or views and their current views on issues.
The media X-rays their policies and words and criticise those that
deserve criticism. Because the two presidents assume that they are the
most patriotic leaders with the best intentions, they resent anyone that
criticises them. So they see the media as enemies of the state. When
Buhari ruled as a military dictator between 1984 and 1985, he gagged the
media with the infamous Decree 4 and jailed those who criticised him.
But because this is democratic rule, he merely tolerates the media
today. However, his government has found another excuse to clamp down on
the media using the nebulous term “hate speech” to describe media
reports that are not favourable to his administration. It is not
surprising that he refrains from speaking to the media in Nigeria. In
the three and half years of his administration, Buhari has only had one
media chat which used to be a monthly thing from the era of former
President Olusegun Obasanjo, who started it as a means of explaining
national issues to the public. Similarly, because Trump cannot gag the
media, he ridicules and blackmails media houses that criticise his
administration, describing them as “fake news” capable of destroying the
nation.
However, there are marked differences between Buhari and Trump.
First is that Trump is a shrewd businessman who has run successful
businesses, while Buhari is not known to have run any successful
business enterprise since he was prematurely retired at the age of 43
years. Buhari does not seem to have a good understanding of how
businesses run. Consequently, while Trump has impacted positively on the
American economy, Buhari has impacted negatively on the Nigerian
economy. Even though there have been claims and counter-claims on the
American economy under Trump, there are evidence that the American
economy has received a boost. Conversely, the Nigerian economy has
received a heavy beating: 11 million jobs lost under Buhari; Nigeria
became the country with the highest number of people living in “extreme
poverty” in the world (87 million people); Nigeria’s debt rose from 11
trillion naira in 2014 to 22 trillion naira in 2018.
In addition, Trump is a hardcore capitalist who thinks of how to
make the United States have an advantage in its trade relations with
other economies like China which he laments have been having the better
of the US in trade. Buhari has the worldview of a pseudo-Marxist who
sees all rich people as thieves who have stolen from the ordinary people
and need to be punished, with their wealth confiscated as proceeds of
crime and shared to the ordinary people.
Therefore, Trump is sometimes seen as a necessary evil: even though
he creates divisions among Americans and causes embarrassment to the
people because of his comments, the American economy seems to have
received a boost under his watch.
Interestingly, unlike other fellow
Republican presidents who seemed to perform better on international
relations than the Democrats, Trump has done better on the economy than
on the international front. On the other hand, Buhari does not have a
strong side where he has performed better. The fight against corruption
and also the security issue that were thought to be his forte have not
experienced any known improvement.
On the contrary, corruption has
worsened as reported by the Transparency International; security has
moved from the single key issue of Boko Haram to include the killer
herdsmen issue.
Finally, Trump and Buhari are similar in being both
septuagenarians. However, Trump is livelier and more alert mentally.
Even though Buhari has faced health challenges, which have affected his
strength, his health and age are not his major drawbacks but the age and
strength of his ideas. Buhari uses analogue thinking to attend to
digital problems, thereby getting results which affect the health of
Nigeria.
Written for the Punch by Azuka Onwuka
0 Response to "What Buhari And Trump Have In Common"
Post a Comment