Buhari is the Donald Trump of Nigerian politics
At first sight, President Donald Trump and President Muhammadu Buhari couldn’t be more different in their wealth, lifestyle and taste. Yet the similarities between them are significant in terms of personality, politics and rhetoric. And it is these similarities that make them enigmatic; unpopular yet unperturbed and winning! Both leaders’ seeming originality and unconventional, norm-shattering personality have successfully, if deceptively, cast themselves in the minds of their core supporters as anti-politician, anti-establishment and, therefore, pro-people.
When you have populist and demagogic politicians like Buhari and Trump, you should not underestimate the strength of their appeal among those who are beguiled by their populism or demagoguery. Donald Trump once said that his base would still vote for him “even if I shot someone on 5th Avenue”. And, let’s face it, that is also the attitude of Buhari’s supporters. Both leaders are interested in appealing only to their support bases, whose loyalties are unwavering and immovable. Their behaviours defy conventions and norms, and are idiosyncratic, arrogant and unresponsive.
Which brings us to the similarities between them. Well, let’s start with their style of governance, shall we? One of the criticisms of President Trump is that he is not in charge of his government. In his damning book, Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff said that President Trump is only marginally involved in the business of governing the country. Omorosa Manigault Newman, the sacked senior Trump aide, said the same thing in her equally damning book, Unhinged: An Insider’s account of the Trump White House. In a recent interview with the London Times, she said “There are several people who are calling the shots in the White House. But not Donald Trump”.
That, of course, will resonate with observers of Buhari’s shambolic administration. I mean, here is a government whose security agencies are at daggers drawn and the president can’t rein them in, a government in which the Inspector General of Police defied the president’s order and remained in office. What about the Cabals that allegedly call the shots in Aso Rock? When a president has to say publicly that he is in charge, as Buhari once said – “Daura is not in charge, I am” – then you know he is not!
Another similarity is regarding the intellectual curiosity and depth of both leaders. In the Times interview, Omorosa said that Trump “is not someone who reads”, adding that “even if he tries to read, he is not the one who is able to comprehend complicated policy issues”. Haven’t you heard that said of President Buhari? A Buhari ally, Junaid Mohammed, once told Vanguard that “Buhari doesn’t read”. He said he gave him a book on economics and two years’ later Buhari hadn’t read two pages of it! Of course, a leader who doesn’t read can’t be an intelligent customer to experts, which’s why Buhari dislikes experts, once disdainfully referring to economists as “the so-called experts”. The president said recently that he hadn’t signed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement because “I am a very slow reader”. Whether he said this in jest or in earnest, he trivialises the art of governance with such display of lack of intellectual acuity.
Of course, the absence of intellectual depth also manifests in lack of articulacy and thoughtfulness. Like Trump, Buhari is unfiltered, he shoots straight from the hip. But well-informed leaders are circumspect; they carefully consider every statement, indeed every word, they utter. But not Buhari. His penchant for faux pas is legendary. For example, in an interview after he returned from his London trip recently, he said: “Most Nigerians expect me to jail more of the thieves that brought economic problems to this country, and I will do it”. Really? Is it the president that jails or the court? Was he talking as a military leader or a civilian president, subject to the dictates of the rule of law and due process? Does he tell judges who to jail? But Buhari was addressing his base, those who see him, as his social media aide, Lauretta Onochie, recently said in a tweet, as “the nightmare of the corrupt”.
Take another similarity between Trump and Buhari: their sensitivity to criticism. Trump describes any criticism, however factual, as “fake news”. Yet, the Washington Post reckons that President Trump has, as of 31 May, made 3,251 false or misleading statements, while the New York Times has started to detail “factual errors and exaggerations” uttered by Trump. The Buhari government views media critics as “wailers”, and indulges in exaggeration, dissembling, concealment, distortion, even outright lies. As BusinessDay recently catalogued in a brilliant editorial entitled “When a government adopts falsehood as policy”, the Buhari administration frequently attacks and discredits international organisations, such as Transparency International, the Brookings Institution and the United Nations, whose unfavourable, albeit evidence-based, reports it doesn’t like. This shows that Buhari, like Trump, is more interested in image laundering than in running a transparent and honest government.
Okay, enough of the rhetoric and style of government, what about the substance? What do Buhari and Trump have in common? Well, for a start, we know that both are illiberal, anti-free trade populists, who shun international trade agreements. Buhari refuses to sign AfCFTA; Trump is tearing up NAFTA! Both are protectionist; for them export is good, but import is bad. Trump blasted politicians who pursued globalisation; Buhari described those importing goods that compete with domestic ones as unpatriotic.
What about their approach to fighting corruption. Trump campaigned on a promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington, but, as The Economist put it recently, Trump “presides over a staggeringly fetid administration”. His former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort,was recently convicted of corruption charges and his one-time personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, indicted the president in a plea bargain. Allegations of unethical behaviour have been made against some members of his cabinet. Yet President Trump, who prioritises loyalty over anything else, often defends law-flouting but loyal aides, as he did Manafort.
Similarly, despite Buhari’s anti-graft rhetoric, corruption allegations have swirled around his government. Yet when the president talks about jailing thieves, it is thieves in the opposition, not those in his party, that he has in mind. In a recent article in the Financial Times, a former President of Brazil, Fernando Cardoso, defending the imprisonment of former President Lula da Silva on corruption charges, said: “In Brazil there are politicians from every party in prison”. Is that the case in Nigeria? The Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFFC)said in May that there had been 603 corruption convictions since Buhari came to power in 2015. Fine, but how many of them are from, or associated with, the president’s party, All Progressives Congress (APC)? Why is it that opposition politicians, such as Godswill Akpabio and Orji Kalu, accused and harassed by EFCC, and ridiculed by APC, for allegedly being corrupt, suddenly become the president’s allies once they joined the APC? It’s morally nauseating.
Recently, Professor Itse Sagay, President Buhari’s anti-graft adviser, said that the Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun, who allegedly forged a certificate to cover up her avoidance of the mandatory national youth service, could not be sacked because “she’s doing a brilliant job” adding: “We can’t afford to lose Adeosun”. Really? So, if you are “brilliant” you can forge certificates and still serve in government. The professor has an elastic view of corruption; he is an apostle of moral relativism, adjusting principles and values to suit his party’s and government’s interests!
But, despite all the above, Trump and Buhari can win re-election because they are extremely popular among their support bases. For Trump, these are the white working-class men, who hate globalisation, immigration and diversity, as well as the evangelicals, who like Trump’s pro-Israel and anti-abortion stances. For Buhari, they are the Fulani and those who believe he is fighting corruption. Trump is pandering to his core base, just as Buhari is pandering to his. For instance, the reason President Buhari has never publicly condemned the atrocities of the Fulani herdsmen, who kill farmers with impunity, is because he doesn’t want to alienate his Fulani base. And to appeal to the sentiments of those who believe he is the scourge of the corrupt political elite, he is increasing the decibels of his anti-corruption rhetoric, with words like “I will jail more thieves”!
Yet, in truth, those who are disenchanted with Trump and Buhari are more than their core bases. The disenchanted are mostly the middle classes, the educated elites and mainstream and social media commentators. The trouble, though, is that the disenchanted hardly vote. Secondly, although they are disenchanted with Trump and Buhari, they are not enthused by their opponents, and so they lack any zeal to vote for the opposition. That’s what happened in 2016 when those who hated Trump didn’t like Hillary Clinton either and, therefore,simply didn’t vote. Even many supporters of the Democratic party lacked enthusiasm for Clinton and didn’t vote for her. In Nigeria, in 2015, most supporters of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the South East couldn’t stand Buhari, but lacked enthusiasm for Jonathan, and thus didn’t vote. The turnout in the South East was abysmally low.
The challenge for Trump’s and Buhari’s opponents is to enthuse their own supporters and also fire up those disenchanted with both leaders to channel their anger into votes for the opposition. But this won’t happen if they simply want to capitalise on the weaknesses of Trump and Buhari without making themselves credible alternatives and thus electable. Americans deserve better than Trump. Nigerians deserve better than Buhari. But where are the credible alternatives?!
Olu Fasan