Opinion: A new dawn in America
By Dakuku Peterside
Joe Biden is officially the Presidentelect of the United States of America. Several world leaders have congratulated him including our own former President Olusegun Obasanjo and current President Muhammadu Buhari.
In an election that divided the country into two opposing camps, with accusations and counter-accusations and the highest number of voting in US history, Americans have unequivocally voted for change from the status quo.
The outgoing president of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, will go down in history as one of the most consequential world leaders in modern history.
The presumed ‘Leader of the Free World’ is loved and hated almost in equal measure.
Those that loathe him are in awe of how a sane and decent person can be attracted to an alleged serial philanderer, a racist, a megalomaniac, a narcissist and a conman.
They wonder how Evangelical Christians can swear by a man who allegedly hardly goes to church, cannot quote a verse of the bible, boasted that he has never asked God for forgiveness.
How can any honest person admire a president who allegedly admitted to paying off a prostitute, cheated on his three wives, gamed the government by declaring bankruptcies and avoiding taxes?
The Donald Trump presidency defied odds. No one took him seriously when he declared his intention to run for president.
Few people believed that an outsider like him could defeat the well-entrenched Hilary Clinton.
He is thought by many to be racist, but he expanded his African American vote.
He accused Mexicans of sending rapists and murderers to the US, and his central campaign mantra was building a wall at the US Southern border with Mexico to be paid for by Mexico, but he increased his Latino support base throughout his presidency. Many know him for his anti-Islamic stance and rhetoric.
Still, exit polls from the last election showed that he got an astounding 35% of the Muslim vote.
In the US where there is a consensus that President Trump mishandled the Covid-19 Pandemic, counties with worst virus surges overwhelmingly voted for him.
An Associated Press analysis reveals that in 376 counties with the highest number of new cases per capita, the overwhelming majority 93 per cent of those counties went for Trump, a rate above other less severely hit areas.
Donald Trump is simply a phenomenon. Long before he launched his bid for the US presidency, he was a vocal proponent of the “birther” myth, claiming that Barack Obama, the first-ever African-American president who was born of a Kenyan father, was not born in the US and therefore ineligible to be president.
His derogatory comments in January 2018, where he described African states as ‘shitholes’ showed that he had scant regard for the continent.
The continent of Africa did not benefit much on the economic front. He did not have an African policy and never set his foot on African soil.
He imposed tariffs on African countries like South Africa, Egypt and Rwanda. They have little power to retaliate, unlike the EU or China.
His administration took extreme steps against Rwanda for taxing second-hand American clothes to protect its infant textile industry.
He suspended the country from duty-free access to US markets. President Donald Trump has met with just two African presidents at the White House in almost four years, fewer than any of his predecessors.
He has repeatedly proposed deep cuts to foreign aid programs, which are critical to the continent. For Nigeria, specifically, it has been a challenging ride with Trump.
Since US President Donald Trump took office in 2016, Nigeria has been one of the targets of several of his administration’s anti-immigration policies.
There is the proposed change to student visa rules by the US Department of Homeland Security which will mean Nigerian students (alongside 35 other African countries) will only be issued with initial two-year visas even if their degree programs will take longer.
While extending these visas at extra costs, there is no guarantee they will be granted. Besides, there is the indefinite suspension of the visa interview waiver for Nigerian applicants and a ban on issuing immigrant visa to Nigerians.
Nigeria recorded the most massive global drop-off in visitors to the US in 2019.
Despite these, Trump is seemingly loved in Africa, especially among Nigerian Pentecostals. On the day of the US elections last Tuesday, Trump tweeted to his 88 million followers a video of hundreds of people in Onitsha, Anambra State holding a rally and carrying banners in prayer and support for his re-election.
Nigerians are among the top five countries that follow Trump on Twitter.
The widespread assumption is that the main reason for Nigerians’ support for Trump is rooted in his well-cultivated political image of someone who represents conservative and family values.
His policy stances in the areas of abortion and homosexuality pull among swathes of Nigerians where the population is mostly conservative.
In Nigeria, most people grew up in religious homes, meaning that Nigerians are likely to be more conservative than liberal. Most Nigerian Christians, like the evangelicals in the United States, are staunch supporters of the US President. Despite his racist’s tendencies and bad character, they see him as a ‘messiah’ who has come to ‘restore God to America’ after Barack Obama’s days of promoting the ‘evil of homosexuality.’
As Trump exits the stage, the impact of his four-year drama-like presidency will reverberate in Africa for years to come.
For one, after the way President Trump has so demeaned American’s once-revered institutions, the United States may have lost the moral authority to dictate to any African leader how to conduct him or herself in office.
This president, both when he first ran in 2016 and later during his re-election campaign in 2020, refused blatantly to commit himself to the orderly transfer of power in the event of a loss.
He had alleged that the American electoral system is rigged, claimed victory in an election when the votes were still being counted, alleged massive voter fraud in the US electioneering process and called the counting process a “major fraud,” and then announced that he would call on the Supreme Court to give him victory.
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He has asked that his political opponents be sent to prison and allegedly has personally profited illegally while in power.
He unilaterally pulled the United States out of international accords like the Paris Climate Agreement, started acrimonious trade wars with friends and foes of America and threatened to withdraw from NATO.
