Trump’s Assault On US Democracy: Lessons For Nigeria

By Tony Eluemunor

As the TV showed a mob storming the United States of America’s national legislature Wednesday night, I bemoaned Africa’s weak democratic institutions. Had such a thing happened in any African country, something akin to a civil war would have ensued. There was President Donald Trump testing all the powers at his disposal except one, but the democratic institutions that have evolved over 200 hundred solid years in the US withstood all his attempt to overthrow American democracy. 

In case you call this an exaggeration please consider this: Trump blamed Vice President Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff, Marc Short, for advising Mr Pence to obey the US Constitution and disobey Trump. 

So, Trump had expected his deputy, tasked with overseeing a joint session of Congress on Wednesday in which the Electoral College votes, already certified by all 50 states, would be counted in a process that was supposed to be mere procedural. Trump had urged Pence to challenge the results during the session, even though poor Mr. Pence did not have the authority to do so and had vowed before the sitting: “It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not”. 

For that, the President criticised Pence in a tweet: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” Something akin to a coup was on, but it was foiled. But could such a coup attempt have failed in an African country, when that country’s big man instigated that coup attempt? 

Now and then, my “Big Sister”, Professor Tess Onwueme, she who has been nominated for the Literature Nobel Prize, that giant of African and world poetics, one of the purest diamonds that God decorated Nigerian intellectual firmament with, came across on the phone to ohhhhh and ahhhhh at the sorry sight and to point out the implications. 

Yet, though Obasanjo won that re-election bid, many of his so-called opponents were driven away from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), thereby weakening the party’s internal democracy and the PDP itself. Politicians were de-registered, the Adamawa PDP was hijacked by a certain Senator and the sitting Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, was de-registered. 

I think that what stopped Trump was this chief clause of the Insurrection Act: “An Act authorizing the employment of the land and naval forces of the United States, in cases of insurrections Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That in all cases of insurrection… it shall be lawful for him to employ, for the same purposes, such part of the land or naval force of the United States, as shall be judged necessary, having first observed all the prerequisites of the law in that respect”. Unfortunately for Trump, his supporters, a mob really, were not able to sack the Senate and the House of Representatives, who were in a joint session. As they were holed within the Congress Hall, other Police formations began to trickle to help the Capitol Hill Police. Put differently, Trump could not impose the order and then later call on the Congress to ratify it; the Congress was actually not only in place but its members were already denouncing him on live TV. 

Ambassador George Obiozor (ah, another Prof), once told me at the Abuja Sheraton Hotel in 1999 that Dr Stanley Macebuh was Nigeria’s Immanuel Kant. At times like this, Nigeria misses Dr. Macebuh. Were he still alive, he would have given a stimulating insight into the insurrection and how it would later affect the US, and he would have spelled out the inherent lessons for Nigeria. Stanley was a philosopher; hey, he was already an Associate Professor at the City College of New York and Columbia University and was preparing to go and occupy a Professorial seat at Harvard (and retire as Harvard Prof Emeritus) when his dear friend, Dr Patrick Dele Cole, convinced him in 1977 to return to Nigeria. 

Kant, (1724–1804) still remains undisputedly the central figure in modern philosophy, despite the passage of the centuries. He once enthused: “Our age is the age of criticism, to which everything must submit” and that “Enlightenment is about thinking for oneself rather than letting others think for you, according to the essay, What is Enlightenment? There, Kant expresses the Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of progress; A few independent thinkers will gradually inspire a broader cultural movement, which ultimately will lead to greater freedom of action and governmental reform. A culture of enlightenment is “almost inevitable” if only there is “freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters”. 

So, how much reason goes into governance? Or put succinctly, why did reason not tell US President Donald Trump that his opponent in last year’s election, Joe Biden, had won the election clean and square? 

What lessons lie for Nigerians in the sacking of the US Congress? What if President Olusegun Obasanjo had lost the 2003 presidential elections to Buhari? What if Obasanjo’s Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar had won the 2007 election, would Obasanjo have allowed that result to stand? What if the incumbent President, Muhammadu Buhari had lost the 2019 election? What would have happened? 

I ask these questions because if any supporters of any Nigerian President had stormed the National Assembly as we saw on TV on Wednesday night, blood would have flowed across Nigeria as it would have assumed ethnic and religious colourations. 

Nigeria stood at the brink of the precipice when Obasanjo lost the Third Term bid. But I will forever thank Obasanjo for knowing where to stop once the Senate voted down the scheme. What if he had dared everybody? What if some tough official in his administration had employed real strong arm tactics against say, the National Assembly? 

What if former President Goodluck Jonathan did not concede defeat to Buhari but had attempted to stop or reverse the release of the results which did not favour him? Nigeria would have gone up in flames. 

Please consider this: At 3:33 a.m., Thursday morning, Mr. Joe Biden received 270 Electoral College votes. At 3:39, the count was finished. Sen. Amy Klobuchar read the results – Mr. Biden’s victory – to a standing ovation from both sides of the aisle. The final results are 306- 232 for Biden. Vice President Mike Pence completed his duties and announced Mr. Biden as the winner just after 3:40 a.m. And Pence is VP to Trump. Get the meaning? Mr. Pence had said he would obey the US Constitution … and he did. The US Congress had sat from 1pm on Tuesday till 3; 40 am. Trump was President but he could not send the FBI, the Police or the Army to sack the Congress. 

Trump did not know where to stop. He tried to uproot the foundations of American democracy but failed. Now he is reaping a foul reward; he is being excoriated all over the world. Would the members of the Buhari administration know when to stop if things went against them? Of course, I remember how a sitting Chief Justice was treated and a security agency invaded the National Assembly, but who has checked the effect of such on Nigerian democracy? An aide to Obasanjo, when it looked like Dr Alex Ekwueme would win People’s Democratic Party nomination to contest the 2003 presidential election, asked me pointedly: “what if Obasanjo would invite the military to take over power? Who will stop him”? That aide, from Delta state, is in Britain now. What I have just written is a fact of life. 

Yet, even though Obasanjo won that re-election bid of his, he still went after his so-called opponents, drove many away from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and in that bid, destroyed the PDP. Politicians were de-registered, the Adamawa PDP was hijacked by a certain Senator and the sitting Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, was de-registered. 

The constitution was spat upon when Obasanjo declared a state of emergency on Plateau State, when there was no reason for it, and went, as the Ben Nwabueze’s of this word held, beyond the constitutional provisions by suspending even the state Governor. But was the matter challenged in court? Bah, it was handled the Nigerian way. 

I shudder at such scenarios. Democracy is fragile; Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida annulled a free and fair election and that still haunts Nigeria. One American lady, Dr. Patricia Chaudhuri, on a visit to Chinua Achebe at Annandale on Hudson, Upstate New York, USA, kept peppering me with questions on that annulment: “How could one man, just one man, annul an election”? “Didn’t people vote”? Did the annulment stand”? “How”? “Are there no men in that country?” I wonder where she would be now…if I knew I would have sent my own questions about Trump: “How”, Dr Chaudhuri? 

To Nigeria’s fault lines add Buhari’s suspected one-sidedness, killer herdsmen issue, disappearing Naira value. The issues will fester. Leaders’ shortsightedness bear disastrous results. But don’t ask how Americans elected Trump; ask the same question of yourselves and your country. 

America is already addressing its Trump problem. The man seen on TV carrying Pelosi’s lectern during Capitol riots has already been arrested in Florida, thousands of kilometres from Washington DC. A book publisher has cancelled a planned book by Senator Josh Hawley, who objected to Joe Biden’s presidential election win and backed baseless claims that the vote was stolen. A widely seen photo, taken before the occupation, shows Hawley raising a fist in solidarity to the crowd. Compare this to the treatment those soldiers who supported IBB in annulling the 1993 election received. They became Senators. 

What if a Nigerian Trump were to ask the courts or our National Assembly today to reverse an election result? I shudder; our democratic institutions are really fragile and when we humour dictators we enable them and enfeeble democratic institutions. National legislators and state Governors were more democratic and independent under Obasanjo than today. What about the judiciary? What about the concept of Federalism? And is that not retrogression? Ah, history will terribly condemn some leaders for debilitating, instead of strengthening, our democratic sinews. 

(independent)