The Man of Blood

There are key parallels between the American President Donald Trump and the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. Both are septuagenarians - while Trump was born in 1946, Buhari was born in 1942. Both are polarizing figures with core fanatical bases for whom they can do no wrong, no matter the public outrage against their actions or inactions. While the Trump base is centered around his white race, the Buhari base is built around his Fulani ethnicity.

Both men have strong personal selling-points on which basis they bulldozed their way to power. While Trump regards himself as the ‘ultimate deal-maker’, Buhari projects himself as ‘the man of integrity’. Both men believe in the ‘elasticity of the truth’, the ‘political value of propaganda’, and the ‘management of illusion’. That is where their similarities end. For although both men have rigid ideas, they could not be more dissimilar in their ideologies.

Trump believes in reactionary conservativism better described as trickle-down ‘racial capitalism’ which agitates for wealth creation according to varied individual and racial capabilities, without the encumbrance of State intervention trying to create a level playing field for the protection of racial and sexual minorities, the less-privileged, and the environment.

Buhari believes in feudalist populism better described as ‘ethnic socialism’ for which State intervention in the re-distribution of the national wealth and other natural resources according to hierarchies of consanguinity and bloodline is an absolute necessity. Buhari’s ethnic socialism creates an un-level playing field perpetually tilted to the advantage of his own ethnicity,

President Buhari assumed office as Nigerian President on May 29, 2015 and has less than a year left of his four-year tenure to serve as Nigerian President. President Trump assumed office on January 20, 2018 and is yet to hit the two-year mark of his four-year tenure as American President.

Many question marks remain about Trump’s stewardship on the political and moral front. Yet all indicators suggest that apart from a few blips regarding trade tariffs for which the jury is still out, President Trump’s stewardship on the economic front has been a resounding and spectacular success.

During the presidential campaigns, Trump promised a 4 percent growth rate in annual GDP for the US economy. This promise was laughed away by many economists as being overly optimistic and unachievable. Yet the US economy grew impressively last quarter by 4.2% surpassing the rate of unemployment which was 3.9% for the first time in many years. Even unemployment among blacks is down.

Many Trump bashers contend that Trump’s predecessor President Barack Obama, should take part of the glory for having bequeathed a strong economy to him. That may well be true, but few can dispute the fact that President Trump’s racial capitalism seems to be working and has added tremendous value and muscle to the United States economy.

Like him or loathe him, Trump’s economic agenda over which he made so much fuss must be adjudged by even his most vociferous critics as ‘propaganda with substance’. The truth may be bitter, but the truth is that racial capitalism which worships competition, does seem to work for everybody – at least in the short term.

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, self-touted as the ‘man of integrity’ came into office on a high pedestal, vowing to crush Boko Haram terrorism, kill corruption, create permanent peace in the Niger-Delta and other conflict prone areas, ban all government officials from seeking medical care abroad, generate at least 20,000 MW of electricity within 4 years, create three million jobs per year among many other promises in his Change Agenda.

Under his watch, Nigeria has been officially recognized as the ‘poverty capital of the world.’ The Boko Haram terrorists which the government declared to have technically defeated at one time and completely crushed at another time, only recently sacked the Nigerian Army from a couple of towns in the North East and over-ran their barracks. While electricity supply may have improved in some localities, power generation which was celebrated recently as having hit the 7,000 MW is nowhere near the 20,000 MW mark.

There is a dearth of reliable information about unemployment rate in Nigeria, but some sources put the youth unemployment rate at an all-time high of 33.10% in the third quarter of 2017. President Buhari’s personal annual or biannual health tourism abroad is routinely financed from public coffers at undisclosed cost.

His fight against corruption is targeted primarily against the opposition and is regarded by many as a selfish, desperate tool of intimidation deployed to coerce political support for his re-election. Politically exposed people fearful of being forced to render account for their stewardship now transfer allegiance to the President’s political party to avoid media persecution and criminal prosecution.

Thousands of innocent Nigerian citizens have been slaughtered by Fulani herdsmen terrorists in an expansionist agenda openly facilitated by the Buhari Administration. He is hell-bent on seizing tribal lands and transferring same to these self-confessed terrorists for perpetual occupation under the guise of cattle grazing.

Hundreds of demonstrating Shiite religious minorities and hundreds of peaceful Independent Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) separatists were allegedly slaughtered by the Nigerian Army and secretly buried in unmarked graves. In open defiance to justice, the Buhari Administration has refused to release several people granted bail by the law courts, claiming that they pose nebulous threats to national security. However, these threats have not been confidentially articulated or divulged to the competent courts of law.

It is easy to see why Buhari’s ideology of ethnic socialism was bound to fail so spectacularly. State intervention has never been known to be an efficient way of creating wealth. That is a job that is best left to market forces and competition.

The compassionate capitalist State, grants all its citizens equitable opportunity of success regardless of ethnicity, gender, religious or social backgrounds. The ethnic socialist State on the other hand, intervenes to pick winners and losers among its own citizenry based on ethnicity. By simultaneously robbing the unfairly rewarded of the impetus to compete and the unjustly denied of the platform to succeed, it ends up perpetuating poverty among all.

The richest Black person on earth today, Sani Dangote is a Nigerian Fulani. He is a multi-billionaire in US dollars. He could not have attained his current global status without diligent effort, and uncommon industry. Nor could he have been compelled to apply himself so assiduously if he had been a beneficiary of Buhari-style ethnic socialism. His success proves that the Fulani can excel if given a fair chance to compete with others and that Buhari is perpetuating Fulani incapacity to realize their true potential by robbing them of the very essential motivation for self-application.

What Trump’s racial capitalism appears to have proven in the short term at least, is that when you unencumber the capable, they create wealth and opportunities for everybody. What Buhari’s ethnic socialism has proven is that when you empower the incapable at the expense of the capable, you create poverty for everyone.

Faced with administrative failure on all fronts, there is virtually no legitimate way for President Buhari to win re-election. The intense propaganda which preceded and heralded his assumption of office has been pitifully exposed as ‘propaganda without substance’. His signal achievement appears to be the copious amount of innocent blood spilled under his watch. It is said that by their fruits you shall know them. Judging by the violent fruits of his maladministration, our man in Abuja is the ‘man of blood’.

Anthony Chuka Konwea, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, MNSE, FNIStructE, MNICE.