By SKC Ogbonnia
January 20, 2021
President Joseph Biden’s inaugural speech says it all. The United
States of America has overcome the attempted coup of January 6, 2021
incited by President Donald Trump. The country is set to re-assert
itself as the citadel of democracy. “Democracy has prevailed.”
Democracy has truly prevailed!
The coming of Biden, therefore, is not a welcome breeze to the temple
of the world’s dictators, where President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria
now has a permanent chair.
Buhari, remember, defeated President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 with the
support of the United States under President Barrack Obama, whose
second-in-command happened to be Biden. It was believed that the change
mantra of Buhari’s campaign could manifest positive change not only in
Nigeria but Africa at large.
But the world quickly found out the hard way. Upon assuming office,
Buhari wasted no time before brandishing signs of brazen dictatorship,
stocking abject political vendetta, gross human rights abuses, glaring
inequity, as well as dizzying dimensions of malfeasance, as well as
nonfeasance, especially in the areas of corruption, terrorism, and
electoral malpractice.
The Obama-Biden administration countered by initiating measurable
sanctions against Nigeria commensurate with Buhari’s excesses at the
time. There was also the hope that the succeeding regime in the United
States would keep Buhari accountable.
Unfortunately for Nigeria, but fortunately for Muhammadu Buhari,
Obama’s successor turned out to be Donald Trump, whose foreign policy
was diametrically opposite to those of his predecessors. Not only did
Trump spearhead an ‘America First’ doctrine that generally viewed
the outside world as a miasmic burden, he also equated the entire
African continent as a “shithole.”
Though the U.S. issued occasional rebukes of the Buhari regime, it was
easy to read that Trump’s shitty notion of Africa was no joke. Any
serious attention on Nigeria was appraised as a plain waste.
Given that America—the only country he is said to fear—did not seem
to care, Buhari quickly capitalized. He would carry on with gross abuse
of office without fear of serious consequences for his behavior.
But change has become inevitable with Biden as U.S. President. His
people and policy thus far bear a striking resemblance with those of
Obama. In short, pundits have already labeled the new American
government as the Obama’s third term. Of no less importance is that
Biden’s vice-president, Kamala Harris, is an African American with
interesting family ties to Nigeria.
As the world’s 7th most populous nation, Nigeria matters, and more so
to the United States. Unlike the Trump regime, the Biden-Harris
administration is keenly aware. The new team has a good grasp of the
situation in the African country. They do not need to be told that
Nigeria has taken a turn for the worse since the last time Mr. Biden was
in government. Africa’s most resourceful nation becoming the home of
the world’s poorest people is world news.
Biden knows Buhari is the problem. As a leader whose inaugural address
focused on uniting America regardless of political persuasions, Joseph
Robinette Biden knows the problem began with Buhari’s divisive,
vindictive, authoritarian, and unapologetic approach. Obama’s
Vice-President vividly remembers Buhari’s state visit to Washington,
DC late July 2015 where the Nigerian leader had the temerity to use the
august occasion to declare that he would perpetrate political vendetta
on the constituents who opposed him.
Biden has seen a similar movie before. Donald Trump!
Though Buhari is a goldbrick, slowpoke, and neither charismatic nor
loquacious, the Nigerian president actually has more in common with
Trump. For example, both assumed power; preaching integrity, only to
gain the power to emerge as stone-cold bigots and, by far, the most
authoritarian, vengeful, tribalistic, and toxic leaders their respective
countries have ever known.
Like Trump, Buhari not only enables election rigging, he has already
left democracy worse than he met it. Needless to mention that the two
men condone police brutality against certain tribes and creeds in their
native countries. It was not a coincidence that the two deadliest
protests of this century, Black Lives Matter and #EndSARS, were
witnessed under Trump and Buhari, respectively.
Biden has a sense of history. He remembers Buhari’s broken promises.
He remembers the Chibok schoolgirls. The issues of kidnapping,
terrorism, poverty, and corruption, which Buhari heightened to gain
power, have only worsened. Fulani herdsmen menace, which was designated
as a terrorist group under Obama-Biden administration in 2014, continues
to kill and maim the Nigerian people with impunity.
Significantly, unlike Trump and Buhari, Biden listens and has the
appetite for in-depth analysis of issues. Instead of being teleguided by
the daily doses of lies from the fascistic officials of the Nigerian
government, Joseph Biden is broadly versed to consider the innocent
opinions of Nigerian-Americans. I mean the very Nigerian ‘Josephs’,
many of whom are captains of industries in the various strata of the
American society, and some of whom are serving in the Biden-Harris
government.
The true degree of the Nigerian problem will unravel. Biden will learn
that the widely publicized popularity of Trump in Nigeria is merely an
opposition to Buhari’s bad governance. It is grounded in the reality
that the former military dictator, who was greenlighted to democratic
power by the Obama-Biden administration, turned out to be a huge
disappointment. Take away many Nigerian Christians who thought the
disgraced American leader was truly a man of faith, and others who
bought his other daily lies, more gullible citizens had strongly
believed that only a brutal dictator like Donald J. Trump could tame
Buhari and restore Nigeria to a hopeful trajectory.
Biden’s style is profoundly different. He understands diplomacy
trumps dictatorship. Yet he knows true democracy goes with consequences
for bad behavior. And while Buhari may appear balmy, the Nigerian
president can still tell the difference between night and day. True
change is inevitable. Gbam!
SKC Ogbonnia writes from Houston, Texas, USA
Twitter #SKCOgbonnia