Donald Trump and wingnuts in his Republican Party are lobbing racist and misogynistic attacks at the Democratic Party’s new presumptive nominee, Kamala Harris. Will it prove a winning tactic for them?

By Chudi Okoye

With recent events in the country, especially the frightening assassination attempt on one leading party’s candidate and the scrambling of the other major party’s ticket, the uncertainty surrounding the November 2024 US presidential election is greatly heightened. Even so, by enlightened and rational rules of politics, this shouldn’t, in any real sense, be a competitive race. One of the presidential contenders is a relatively young, joyful and delectable woman of color with both Black and Indian heritage who has significant incumbency advantages, being part of an arguably successful administration. She was also a trial attorney who, in her long and lauded legal career, had prosecuted the likes of her opponent: a grumpy old White man with a lengthy rap sheet, a walking crime wave all by himself who has been convicted of multiple felonies, fraud and sexual assault. This felon still faces further criminal charges including his incitement of an insurrection, done to illegally retain power after he’d lost his re-election bid nearly four years ago with a governing record field experts consider the very worst in US presidential history.

If all things were equal, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, Vice-President Kamala Harris, who emerged after President Joe Biden decided to abandon his re-election bid, shouldn’t be in what seems a tight race with the Republican Party’s candidate, Donald Trump. But, alas, such are the idiosyncrasies of US politics that the outcome of the November 2024 presidential election remains wholly unpredictable, despite the current buzz around Harris.

I wrote in a recent essay that “in America ideology intersects in intricate ways with deep social currents pertaining to race and ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, disability and class,” and that this intersection of “ideology with overlapping social identities tends to render American politics particularly toxic and volatile…” The intersection of ideology and identity in large part explains why a presidential race which, in my opinion shouldn’t be a close-fought match, at present appears to be.

I chuckle today as I remember a time some years ago, as I got ready to relocate from the UK to the US and a friend, thrilling about the opportunity, told me that I was moving to a country with a vibrant democracy and the “most enlightened citizens in the world.” I was skeptical of this assessment even then, but I know for sure now that my friend had been only half right. America certainly has a vibrant democracy. But I would say that on average, its citizens are a long shot from being the “most enlightened” in the world. I’ll explain.

Scholars have consistently highlighted the incidence of ‘low-information voters’ and ‘low-information signaling’ in America, terms coined in 1991 by Samuel Popkin of the University of California, San Diego. These notions build on the concept of ‘cognitive miser’, developed in 1984 by American psychologists Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor who argue that the human mind typically avoids making huge cognitive efforts, preferring simpler explanations for social phenomena and less tasking ways to solve problems.

In a 2017 paper which might be said to reflect this concept, Aaron Dusso of Indiana University talked about “the woefully low levels of political knowledge possessed by the average American,” arguing as follows:

“…democracy is supposed to rest on a foundation of enlightened citizens who not only have the ability to understand the important political issues of the day, but can vote for the candidate(s) that best represent their personal political views. Unfortunately, 80 years of public opinion research has, without exception, demonstrated that the vast majority of Americans do not have this ability.”

I invoke this point in part to explain the cloud of uncertainty that surrounds the 2024 presidential race in America, despite what might look to a rational observer as unambiguous fundamentals favoring the Democratic Party and its presumptive nominee.

How does one explain the competitiveness and even, at this point the polling edge, of Donald Trump: a thrice-married man of deep moral failings and no known religious affinity; an obstreperous and vindictive character with a calcified public image as a megalomaniac, narcissist, racist, misogynist, business and political cheat, and above all, a scofflaw who now has a string of felony convictions in his trail, with several pending criminal cases? Answer: dog-whistle and identity politics.

Dog-whistle Rhetoric
American history is dotted with the cynical use of dog-whistles – coded messaging intended for a specific audience, usually White – which are often deeply parochial. It was at play in the Republican Party’s use of racist tropes as part of its ‘Southern strategy’ in the 1950s, deployed to displace the Democratic Party and deepen its own support in the South, as racial tensions built up over the odious ‘Jim Crow laws’ that enforced racial segregation (“Jim Crow” is pejorative, a caricature of African Americans). It was there in the laden phrase ‘states’ rights’, used, again in the 1950s, as code for institutionalized segregation and racism. There was unmistakable dog-whistling and pejoritizing of Blacks as well when, during his presidential campaign in 1980, Ronald Reagan referred to “Cadillac-driving ‘welfare queens’ and ‘strapping young bucks’ buying T-bone steaks with food stamps.”

Who can forget the fusillade of racist dog-whistles, innuendos and double-entendres fired at Barack Obama in 2008 when he dared to launch a presidential run? The Republicans and far-right types in the media accused him of being “anti-White” because he and his wife attended a church (of which I’m currently a member) that preached Black liberation theology. At various times they claimed that Obama was not a patriotic American; that he was a drug addict and even a drug seller – a stereotype of Black Americans; and that he was married to an “angry” Black woman who was “ungrateful” for all that America had done for her. One commentator, attempting an even weirder otherization of Obama whom he considered slimmer than average Americans, wondered if he wasn’t “too thin” to be elected president. There was the suggestion that Obama, who was a law professor, was elitist, and that he could never understand average Americans – even though they also derided him as a “community organizer.”

These broadsides against Barack Obama culminated in the frenzied ‘birther’ movement which questioned his birthplace, citizenship status and eligibility to run for president. Claims that he was not eligible to run for president reached fever-pitch, and persisted even though at some point before the 2008 election Obama was forced to release his official Hawaiian birth certificate, duly confirmed by the Hawaii Department of Health. This did not quell the debate over Obama’s citizenship status, which continued even after he’d been elected. This forced the release, finally in April 2011, of a certified copy of his original Certificate of Live Birth, along with contemporaneous birth announcements published in Hawaii newspapers.

I don’t know if Obama ever lived down the humiliation.

It is worth noting that Donald Trump, even though he was not running for president at that particular time, was deeply involved in the birther movement and the assailment of Obama. When Trump did eventually run in 2016, he simply dusted off the dog-whistle playbook, seen most vividly in his repackaging of an old Reaganite shibboleth, “Make America Great Again,” which he deployed as coded nostalgia for an Anglo-Saxon past of White privileging. A key element of that was his xenophobic targeting of immigrants, especially yet-to-be regularized stayers and new border arrivals, at whom he hurled vile and racial slurs, claiming they were “criminals” and “terrorists” flocking to America “with very contagious diseases” and “poisoning the blood of our country.” At different times in 2018 and 2019, in meetings with aides, Trump reportedly asked why border patrols couldn’t simply shoot migrant families seeking asylum below the waist as deterrence! New York Times journalists, Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear, also report in their 2019 book, Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration, that Trump discussed with aides the idea of building an electrified border wall; and that he even considered digging a water-filled trench at the border, possibly stocked with snakes or alligators! The Times’ reporters write that Trump’s “overarching goal was to make the experience of crossing the border into the United States as terrifying and perilous as possible.”

Trump’s anti-immigrant fulminations, likely borne of resentment at demographic changes in the United States which could further erode White privileging, is a constant of his political rhetoric. He spouted much the same during his failed 2020 bid for re-election, playing the racist and xenophobic card; and he is doing it all over again this year, in his third presidential bid. It is all of a piece with his abetting of Neo-Nazi and White nationalist tendencies, well documented by the media, which nonetheless he does so dexterously as to leave room for plausible deniability.

Kamalaphobia
With the exit of President Joe Biden from the November 2024 election and the emergence of Vice-President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, Trump has wasted no time, as is his wont, slurring his new opponent. He has also created a permission structure for members of his Republican Party and far-right wingnuts to throw mud at the vice-president. They have been making racist and extremely reprehensible sexist remarks about her, in traditional but especially on social media. They have claimed, for instance, that this accomplished woman of color – who comes from a family of academics and was district attorney in San Francisco, Attorney general of California and United States senator, before becoming VP – is dumb as a rock and only attained the positions she did as “DEI hire” (i.e. through affirmative action) and by dispensing sexual favors!

They have targeted Ms. Harris through her Jewish-American husband who is also a lawyer and visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center, claiming that the couple connived with the powerful Jewish lobby in the US to force Biden to step down, and that Biden’s exit was a “Jewish coup.” They call the vice-president “AIPAC slut Kamala,” and her husband a “cuck” (i.e., a weak or servile man whose wife is sexually promiscuous).

They have mocked Ms. Harris for not having a biological child, even though she has stepdaughters through her husband’s first marriage.

They have even started mocking her usually joyful laughter, calling here “cackling Kamala,” a subtle clowning caricature of the type often deployed by mirthless White folks.

The campaign of calumny has commenced, as with Obama, and it may get worse. The goal is to discredit and disqualify Kamala Harris in the minds of voters, not on policy issues but on her identity. This is why the 2024 race is unpredictable, despite favorable fundamentals for Kamala Harris. It is unclear if an uninformed majority in America, lured by racist and sexist signaling, will return to power a despicable White man who was a failed president; or if a majority will summon their better nature, soaring to higher heights to hire an eminently qualified woman of color as president.

Britain, an older nation but younger democracy than America, has had three female prime ministers and even a prime minister of Indian ancestry. America has a chance, if she can but take it, to make history this November.

At 81, President Joe Biden, who is just over 2x the median age of Americans, was forced to abandon his re-election bid on account of dotage. At over 72 years of official age, Bola Tinubu is 4x the median age of Nigerians, and seems no healthier than Biden. Shouldn’t he be stopped if he seeks re-election in 2027?

By Chudi Okoye

Only a quarter of an inch saved America from the eruption of a major political crisis, after a sniper’s gun crackled on July 13, targeting former president Donald Trump at a campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania. The attempted assassination had failed, only just; but it set off political reverberations which, barely a week later, upended the November 2024 US presidential election. The gunman’s bullet only grazed Trump’s ear, leaving a slight wound, but it went straight through the heart of President Joe Biden’s political career, forcing him on 21 July, after much reluctance and understandable resistance, to announce the end of his re-election bid.

Trump’s quick-thinking reaction in the frightful moments following the assassination attempt, springing up with the aid of his Secret Service agents, pumping his clenched fist in the air and urging his supporters to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” before leaving the stage, presented a cinematic image of defiance. It was not quite at the same level of brave defiance as former president Teddy Roosevelt who was shot 112 years earlier on 14 October 1912 whilst out campaigning to regain the White House. After being shot at point blank range by a mentally deranged fellow who had been stalking him for weeks, with the bullet lodged in his rib, Roosevelt still went on to deliver his address at a planned campaign rally, speaking for 90 minutes as blood soaked his shirt, before finally agreeing to be taken to a hospital. He told the crowd he’d been shot, but that “it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose” (referring to a nickname for the political outfit he’d formed for his presidential run).

Whilst perhaps not at the level of Roosevelt’s remarkable resilience, Trump’s reaction was in its own way the stuff of political legend. It has for sure been made into one by Trump’s supporters and the dude himself. The packaging contrasted very sharply with the image of an aged and debilitated Joe Biden who bungled a presidential debate, constantly dropped lapsus linguae including embarrassing malapropisms and solecisms even at carefully staged events, had been seen shambling on and off stage or delicately clambering on to Air Force One, and was reported to have succumbed to a Covid-19 infection that grounded him even as Trump sprang back up on the political stage just days after he was nearly killed by a sniper’s bullet.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump are separated in age merely by three years and seven months, but personal issues and the burdens of office make Biden appear much older. In poll after poll, prospective voters had expressed concern about Biden’s age, his physical condition and mental acuity, and therefore his ability to perform the onerous duties of the office. It was alarm about the political consequences of this public sentiment, in relation not just to the presidential election but also its likely drag on down-ballot races, that led the Democratic Party stakeholders – lawmakers, party leaders and donors, even the liberal media – to demand (in increasingly strident tone) that Joe Biden stand down. After initial resistance, he finally gave in to the pressure on 21 July; thus, yet again, upending the November election.

We don’t know how this might impact the election. But Biden’s exit, by most expert accounts, has given his party – and the country – a fighting chance against the looming danger of Donald Trump’s return to power.

Lessons for Nigeria
In the well-known pastoral comedy, As You Like It, the melancholy character, Jaques, utters one of William Shakespeare’s most famous speeches in which he describes what he considers the seven stages of life:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

Jaques’ description of the final stages of life, the 6th and 7th, is particularly striking:

The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

There have been not a few blighted cases in world history when men sought to defy gravity and this very simple Shakespearean portrait of ageing, clinging on to power and refusing to gracefully exit the stage even when well-advanced in age. Supported by celebrated thinkers such as Plato (who favored rule by wise, old philosopher kings and wrote in his famous work, The Republic, that “it is for the elder man to rule and for the younger to submit”) and Plutarch (who claimed in his Moralia [Book X, 54] that “States, when they are in difficulties or in fear, yearn for the rule of the elder men”), rule by oldies, a.k.a. gerontocracy, has manifested historically in many cultures, from the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta to China and the Soviet Union in the 20th century, as well as theocratic states such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Vatican, among others.

Today, although the global trend is towards a younger generation of political leadership, there are still several countries ruled by extremely old men, as heads of state or even heads of government. They range from Mahmoud Abbas, who is nearly 89 and has been serving as President of the Palestinian National Authority since 2005, to the almost 88-year old Pope Francis, Sovereign of the Vatican City State and 85-year old Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran. Not to be forgotten are Salman bin Abduaziz al Saud, King of Saudi Arabia, who is pushing 89; Harald V, King of Norway, getting on 88; Mishal I, who became Emir of Kuwait last year, aged 83; as well as the presidents of Ireland and Italy, respectively Michael D. Higgins and Sergio Mattarella, who are both 83.

There are others too, advanced in age though slightly younger, who wield significant power as heads of government in their countries. These include Alexander Van der Bellen, the president of Austria who is now 80 and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who is approaching 75.

Africa too has its share of presidential graybeards. There’s for instance Paul Biya, now nudging 92, who has been president of Cameroon since 1982 (before that prime minister from 1975) and is currently the oldest serving leader of a state. There’s Nangolo Mbumba, who this year became President of Namibia at almost 83, having held office as vice-president for the previous six years. Alassane Ouattara, now in his 14th year as President of Ivory Coast, clocked 82 in January this year. Nana Akufo-Addo, the Ghanaian president, is 80. He is only a few months older than Yoweri Museveni, current president of Uganda who helped to topple Idi Amin (1971–79) and later Milton Obote (1980–85) but has remained president for over 38 years – since January 1986!

In Nigeria, the ages of successive heads of state, whether under military rule or democratic setting, have hardly nudged these outliers. In the 2nd Republic, of course, some of the country’s political grandees did come out of retirement to contest presidential elections. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo were aged 75 and 70 respectively when they contested the 1979 presidential election; and they’d turned 79 and 74 when they returned for the 1983 contest. But of course, neither of them won, both losing in 1979 to a then 54-year old Shehu Shagari. Until the emergence of Muhammadu Buhari as civilian president in 2015, the average age of Nigeria’s civilian heads of state from Tafawa Balewa had been 59, compared to the average of 43 years for the country’s military heads of state. But with Buhari’s return, the age trend spiked. Buhari was pushing 73 when he emerged as democratic president in May 2015, a clear 25 years older than the average inceptual age of all previous incumbents. And he finished his second term nearly 81. As president, Buhari had persistent health issues, traveling abroad on medical trip (on Nigeria’s tab) for a record 200 days.

The age trend has remained higher than the historic average under the current president, Bola Tinubu, who is officially 72 – leading to what I described in a previous writing on this issue as “creeping caducity” in the country’s leadership. And, to make matters worse, Tinubu appears to be in no better shape health-wise.

In the face of US president, Joe Biden’s decision to terminate his re-election bid, there is a serious question hanging over Tinubu, should he – as seems likely – seek re-election in 2027. Biden was seeking re-election on what he and his supporters consider a solid governing record in his first term. Compared to Biden, Bola Tinubu has so far run a listless administration, with no meaningful achievement more than one year in, and Nigerians suffering unimaginable distress under his rule. Yet, his poor record, which shows no sign of improvement in the rest of his current tenure, will likely not deter Tinubu from seeking re-election.

This leads to an interesting juxtaposition and a serious question for Nigerians. President Joe Biden, at 81, is a little over twice as old as the average American; yet, despite his arguably impressive governing record, he was forced to abandon his re-election bid on account of dotage. At his official age of 72, Bola Tinubu is four times as old as the average Nigerian, and he seems no healthier than Biden. If he continues to underperform, again as seems likely, what would be the justification for his re-election, or even the basis for his seeking it?

Joe Biden did not end his re-election bid without a fight. He had won a commanding share of pledged Democratic Party delegates and was coasting to official nomination at the party’s convention this August. He had the record with which he believed he could present a winning case to the electorate. Yet, a string of factors – his poor performance at the presidential debate, intimations of persistent health issues, poor polling results, intense pressure from the media and party stakeholders – compelled Biden eventually to hang up his gloves.

Biden salvaged his reputation and legacy by following the Shakespearean rule about exiting the stage at the appropriate time. In doing so, he brought a fitting fortissimo coda to his long career in public service. If Tinubu rears up for re-election in 2027, refusing to exit the stage, will Nigerian stakeholders be able to tell him where to stick his ambition?

The blight of political violence, seen again in the alleged attempt on former president Donald Trump’s life, is a peculiar stain on America, which is arguably the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.

By Chudi Okoye

The crowd was screaming “USA! USA! USA!,” with Donald Trump pumping his clenched fist in the air, his face contorted and what looked like blood trickling down from his right ear, as he was hustled off stage by Secret Service agents. Moments earlier, the former US president and presumptive Republican Party nominee for the Nov. 2024 presidential election had been crouched on the podium, protected, after a shooting incident at his campaign pass in Pennsylvania which appeared to have been an attempt on his life. The sniper, said to be one Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year old registered Republican (thus a member of Trump’s party), had fired from a rooftop about 426ft (130 m) from Trump’s podium, in clear sight of the assembled crowd, and had apparently winged the top of the ex-president’s ear. Ouch!

It was remarkable how the gunman could have gotten so close to the venue without detection. An obvious security failure, now supposedly being investigated. Nevertheless, the shooter was reportedly killed by Secret Service in crossfire, though unfortunately there was another fatality and some folks in the crowd were also injured.

A picture of this scene framed by Donald Trump as he departed, complete with a US flag fluttering in the background, was priceless tableau vivant for the upcoming election.

Bloodied but unbowed!

Shaken, but not stirred!

Trump wanted to project an image of defiance (kudos to the eternal showman for quick thinking), and he worked his crowd to do the same before being bundled off the podium. Instinctive or affected, that imagery and the incident from which it sprang are a stain on American democracy.

Why is it that America, after more than two centuries of democratic practice, remains a noisy, chaotic and violent political culture – much unlike Europe, and increasingly like Africa and other places where Western-style democracy is only a relatively recent implant? Both France and the United Kingdom just called and concluded, in a matter of weeks, national elections that saw major changes in government: a weakened ruling party in France and expected exit of the current prime minister, due to a changed legislative pecking order resulting from the election; a complete change of governing party in the UK, after its own election. Consequential outcomes; yet, there was no report of political violence in either country.

But in America, the pageant of democracy is rarely without a violent tangent. From raucous campaigns to disputed results and electoral litigations to violent insurrection to assassination attempts: it is all there in the democratic action movie that is America.

Scholars trace rising political violence in America to varied factors such as a mental health crisis overrunning the country, as well as unfettered access to, and resultant ubiquity of, firearms – due to 2nd Amendment fetishism and the powerful gun lobby. Debate rages on the weight of these factors. But there’s consensus that a leading cause is incendiary rhetoric reflecting deep ideological and political polarization in the country.

Deep Polarization
When Comte de Tracy, the Enlightenment philosopher and French aristocrat, coined the term ‘ideology’ in 1796, in the era of revolutionary France, he could not have known what would become of his baby barely two centuries later. What he’d conceived of as a ‘science of ideas’, the abstract preoccupation of ideologists, evolved over the years to encompass a set of beliefs, values and principles that guides an individual’s or a group’s understanding of the world. This was supposed to be differentiated from the irrational impulses of the mob or the particularistic interests of partisans. However, far from such lofty notions, the concept has become, in our time, a cudgel in the palms of political partisans and ideologues. It has become a divisive factor no less pernicious than primitive ethnicisms in Africa and elsewhere often condescendingly theorized by smug Western ethnographers.

There’s no greater illustration of this than what obtains in America.

American politics is uniquely animated by ideological antagonism. This is not necessarily because mainstream tendencies in the major political parties, Republican and Democratic, are vastly differentiated. No. There is in fact something of a loose consensus at the centre of American politics. Rather, it is because the main parties are coalitions of differing tendencies, with centrist impulses pulled to the extremes of right and left on the ideological spectrum. The political space is bursting with energy, and political survival often requires catering to different ideological interests, including the radical extreme on either side.

The pulse of politics is all the more quickened because in America ideology intersects in intricate ways with deep social currents pertaining to race and ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, disability and class. That is, in America ideology is deeply intersected with identity. The intersectionality of ideology with overlapping social identities tends to render American politics particularly toxic and volatile, more so when ‘wedge issues’ (i.e., controversial and divisive issues) are involved.

Political praxis based on ideology is supposed to be rational, focusing on ideas and principles, universal values and goals; and it ought to dwell on issues and policies that have universal appeal. Its practitioners are also supposed to be flexible, willing to compromise on policy issues to make progress, especially in light of new information.

But this is hardly the case when ideology intersects with identity. In that case, for the most part ideology becomes corrupted, conscripted in service of parochial interests. Ideological beliefs are shaped in this case not by universal principles but by group or personal experiences and identities such as race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Politics becomes mainly focused on maximizing parochial interests. Policy issues may be framed at a superficial level through an ideological lens, but at a deeper level they serve narrow interests. For this reason, ideology soon loses its universalizing effect and becomes a source of enduring political cleavages. Ideology imbues social identities with an intellectual justification, validating parochialism in a way which makes compromise difficult or even impossible. Ideology becomes theology, an immovable structure of belief serving specific rather than universal interests.

The result is extreme polarization, seen in the increasingly divisive language employed by politicians; in unbridled partisan rhetoric which fosters what theorists call ‘affective polarization’, referring to in-group positive feelings and sentiments as against intense out-group animosity. We see it too in political practice, in actual legislation and public policy – in the “allocation of values,” to leverage David Easton – which caters to particularistic interests, creating deep wells of discontent in the polity.

This, sadly, is the story of America, a supposedly enlightened democracy gradually succumbing to cultural degeneration. And Trump, a purveyor of divisive politics, has added greatly to this phenomenon.

Trump’s Political Persona
We should all be glad that Donald Trump survived the alleged attack on his life. But I hope it won’t sound too harsh in this febrile moment for me to say – invoking the metaphor of chickens coming home to roost – that the man had it coming. He has played a not insignificant part in the debasing and vulgarization of American politics. And what happened to him in the pastureland of Pennsylvania was a direct result of it.

His political persona, at once cartoonish and calculating, undermines America. His demagoguery and uncouth language infects and inflects the dynamics of politics. He makes vile and incendiary comments, targeting everybody high and low, from political opponents to ordinary citizens. Trump has to be among the world’s most foul-mouthed politicians, seemingly with no filter as he spews his stream of consciousness on social media or whilst out on the hustings. Most importantly, his policy pursuits, packaged for him by far-right ideologues using him to achieve their grand agenda of halting progressive change, bode ill for America.

I know this might sound jarring, especially with pundits and politicos at this moment crouching under the numbing weight of political correctness. I have read some of the bland editorials in mainstream newspapers. What I say here might sound somewhat impolitic, and maybe even brazen coming from a mere naturalized citizen translocated from previous nestlings in Europe and Africa. But, being here, I have a stake in what America makes of itself.

We should not allow this moment to turn into a political martyrization of Donald Trump. The man, being a ceaseless self-promoter, will want to make that happen. And it’s not just him. Trump boosterism syndrome, rabid in his circle before now, will hence likely swell way beyond his base. We should not let that happen. Pennsylvania was not Trump’s Damascus. Trump will be Trump, and he’ll maximize to the hilt any boost he secures from this incident, without in the slightest changing his political stripes.

Trump’s political opponents should allow space for a traumatized nation to recover. But they should not tarry too long in taking on the spectacular menace to American democracy that is Donald J. Trump.

Mainstream partisan maneuvers that saved France from far-right insurgence, and persistent interrogation of President Joe Biden’s age in America, offer plenty of lessons for Nigeria’s opposition parties and the electorate at large.

By Chudi Okoye

If Nigeria’s opposition parties were to prove they are not adrift but politically adroit, they’d be taking a lesson from what just unfolded in France; they’d also be calibrating what’s currently manifesting in America. In France, sheer pragmatism halted, for now at least, the electoral advance of far-right extremism; and in America, increasing anxiety about political dotage may yet unscramble the upcoming presidential election. There are lessons in both for Nigeria, if the country is willing to learn.

Let’s start with France. As we know, that country (along with others in Europe and elsewhere) has seen a steady pitch of its politics towards what some generously describe as far-right ‘populism’ and ‘nationalism’, but which in reality is simply politics of xenophobia. This trend is typified, if anything does, by the unrelenting political surge of the far-right populist and nationalist party, National Rally (Rassemblement National in French).

You might wonder what’s wrong with a ‘populist’ or ‘nationalist’ ideology, especially since we have had no trouble ascribing those epithets to political parties in Nigerian history. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s National Convention of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) was lauded as a nationalist party. Rabiu Kwankwaso’s New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) is often described as populist, as was his late mentor Mallam Aminu Kano’s Peoples Redemption Party (PRP). Some other Nigerian parties have also attracted such tags.

Populism, as an ideational construct, seeks to elevate ‘the people’ as a moral force, often contrasted with corrupt and self-seeking ‘elites’. Nationalism, especially in its ‘political’ and ‘civic’ manifestation, espouses the ideology of freedom, rights and national self-determination. So, in principle, there’s nothing wrong with either populism or nationalism. Except when they become too narrowly constructed. The ‘people’ in populism becomes racially or ethnically delineated, for instance; and nationalism becomes, say, nativist, appropriating the national identity for an exclusive population subset.

And that brings us to France’s National Rally. The party was founded as the National Front in 1972 by two politically controversial figures: Jean-Marie Le Pen, a far-right politician at various times convicted of racism, racial incitement, and specifically Holocaust denialism; and Pierre Bousquet, also a far-right politician who was in the Waffen-SS, a Nazi combat force. National Rally, as the party is now called (as part of an attempt at mainstream makeover) stridently opposes immigration, and has been accused of xenophobia, Islamophobia and anti-semitism. It also promotes economic protectionism and zero tolerance for breaches of law and order.

For much of its history, the party, rather noisy and notorious, nestled in the fringes of French politics. It had very few seats in the French national assembly until 2017, often none at all or just one or two – except for a fluke in 1986 when it picked up 35 of the assembly’s then 573 seats, all but one of which it promptly lost in the legislative election held two years later. It did slightly better in the French regional councils, but not by much; was unimpressive in France’s European Parliament elections; and has lost in every French presidential election it contested.

The National Rally’s problem had been its close identification with the extremist politics of its founder, Le Pen. However, after his daughter, Marine, took over leadership of the party in 2011 and started to reposition and rebrand it (including the change of name), the party began to see some improvements in its fortunes. Following another leadership change in 2022 (to a then 27 year old Jordan Bardella), the party’s fortune has changed dramatically, even though its core populist and nationalist platform remains. It picked up 89 of 577 national assembly seats in the 2022 election, up from just eight. It secured 41.4% of votes in the 2022 presidential election, up from 33.9% in 2017, 17.7% in 2002, and negligible results at other times. It even began to register more noticeably on the Richter scale of European Parliament elections.

This year, in the June 9th French European Parliament election, National Rally won by a landslide, picking up 30 of 81 seats, against just 13 by its nearest competitor. Rattled by the party’s surge, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, whose coalition had lost 10 of its 23 European Parliament seats, called a snap national election for June 30th. In the first round of balloting, National Rally outperformed all the other parties. With the result, it appeared that the party was on a path finally to the centre of French government, set to burst through the so-called cordon sanitaire, the strategic firewall that France’s centrist and leftist parties had maintained for decades to prevent far-right political ascendance. With a plurality of seats in the national assembly, the party’s leader could have become prime minister (second only to the president), who heads the government – overseeing senior and junior ministers – and has at his disposal the armed forces, the civil service and government agencies.

It was, for the mainstream parties and the French establishment, a scary prospect. And this was where pragmatism and political gamesmanship kicked in – the reason I’m recounting this history.

Petrified by the prospect of a far-right takeover, centrist and left-wing parties closed ranks, in an elaborate, though not entirely fireproof, political concert, determined to change outcomes in the second round of balloting. They conspired to endorse each other’s candidates or persuade less promising candidates in their ranks to stand down in the broader interest of the nation, thus consolidating votes to defeat far-right contenders in various constituencies.

It worked. As the final votes were tallied up, it emerged that the National Rally had suffered a setback. It secured, in combination with its far-right alliance partner, a total of 142 seats across the two rounds of voting. This placed it 3rd after the overall winner, the left-wing party, New Popular Front, which garnered 180 seats and was followed by Macron’s coalition, Ensemble, with 159 seats.

It was a triumph of political collaboration, though it’s unclear if the concert will hold. The underlying anxieties in French politics remain which had made the far-right’s extremist rhetoric and policy agenda alluring. But for now, there is some relief that the ‘blue scare’ had been beaten back a bit.

Plenty of lesson for Nigeria’s opposition parties which, as I have argued many times before, lost the 2023 presidential election in large part because they splintered their votes, with the exit of Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso from the main opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Because of their ill-advised defections, whatever engendered such, Nigeria is today ruled by a corrupt, clueless and fiscally incontinent dotard running a minority government of total misfits. How different it might have been had the leading opposition candidates thought to subordinate the ambitions to the national interest, as the French have just done.

It’s even more depressing because, well over a year now since the election, there’s no sign the opposition has been chastened. In 2013, after losing in several election cycles to the then ruling party, PDP, a number of the main opposition parties joined together to form the All Progressives Congress (APC) which was then able to wrest power from the PDP by the very next election, in 2015. A little over two years to the next presidential election, there’s no sign – in public anyway – of political gravitation among the opposition parties. With the opposition seemingly continuing to flail and to fumble, there’s a chance that the dotard in Aso Rock will be re-elected in 2027, even if he becomes vegetative like his predecessor. After all, Aso Rock is now effectively a retirement home for our presidents.

Speaking of dotage, consider the continuing commotion in the US Democratic Party over its presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden’s disenchanting debate performance two weeks ago. That worrisome outing has put the octogenarian’s age and mental state front and center in American politics. Despite the president’s protestations about his fitness and insistence on his presumptive mandate, he has received full-throated support from a dwindling number in his party, with some publicly and reportedly many in private asking him to step aside and yield to a younger alternative.

Consider how this matter continues to roil America, despite the fact that Biden is carrying out his presidential role with – his close associates say – vouchable vigor.

Contrast this with Nigeria’s eight years of presidential debility under Buhari, with the country picking up a huge tab for his medical care, including his frequent medical trips abroad. Yet, despite that harrowing experience, we have now another presidential dotard and hypochondriac who may well inflict himself on the country for a second term, after a listless first tenure, because the nation isn’t sufficiently outraged, and the opposition isn’t strategically mobilized.

Nigeria is a young country – historically and demographically speaking. But it is a country whose edifice is creaking like the rickety bones of those it has been cursed to have lately as leaders.

Britain does it again, delivering a fast, efficient and consequential election, without any controversy.

By Chudi Okoye

Surprising most everyone including vast members of his own party, even its inner cast, on May 22, 2024 – several months before he absolutely had to – he called a snap general election. To kick off the electioneering process, about a week later on May 30th, he dissolved parliament. With this, the country was thrown into an election mode, though in every hood the mood was sombre and slightly tentative, for his seemingly hasty – though some say gutsy – move.

The election was held five weeks later on July 4th, exactly as scheduled. Polling opened promptly at 7am that day and closed at 10pm. It was followed instantly by the exit poll, announced by the media. Not long after, actual results began to come in from the constituencies, with the first seat declared at 11:15pm, an hour and fifteen minutes after polling had closed. It wasn’t long before the rest of the results began rolling in, so rapidly in fact that by 5am the next morning, barely 24 hours after polling had opened and seven after it closed, it was known which political party had won the majority of votes, which thus would form the next government, and who therefore would be the next British prime minister.

Unsurprisingly, because the polls had previously predicted it, the election had not gone all that well for his Conservative Party. In fact, the party suffered a huge loss, a rout really, shedding 252 of its 373 parliamentary seats. No less than 12 cabinet-level ministers lost their seats. Even a former Conservative prime minister, Liz Truss, who’d held a safe seat in a Conservative bastion with a huge 24,180 majority, saw herself tossed out in the tsunami. It was a historic loss for the party, its worst result since becoming an organized political party in the early 19th century.

Nonetheless, though humiliated and heavy-laden, though wearied by the historic significance of the loss to which he had led his party, in a mere matter of hours Mr. Rishi Sunak – a sharp 44-year old who became the first ever British-Asian prime minister of the United Kingdom – had announced his resignation, after only 20 months on the job. By midday, just hours after it became clear that his party had been shellacked, he had made it over to Buckingham Palace, per tradition, to inform the British monarch that he was resigning as the First Minister of His Majesty’s Government. The meeting lasted mere minutes. And then, through the imaginary revolving door shortly after, came Keir Starmer (an alumnus of my old university at Leeds), who had just led his lorn party, Labour, to a landslide victory. He was there, again per tradition, to be formally asked by the monarch to form a new government.

Sir Keir and his party had pulled off a stunning victory: after 14 years in the wilderness, through a run of five Tory prime ministers, Labour was set to form a new government with a comfortable majority of 174 seats, the largest since the Blair revolution in 1997.

Long before the dizzying day came to a close, Sir Keir, the new prime minister, had appointed the full complement of his cabinet, with the world watching in real time as each of the new ministers came through the door of 10 Downing Street, the official residence and office of the British prime minister. By the next day, July 6th, being a Saturday – just two days after the election and a day after he assumed office, the new prime minister had convened his first cabinet meeting and had got down to the business of governing.

How’s that for British efficiency!

Oh, I’m sure you’ve heard about the ruthless, almost indecorous speed by which an outgoing British prime minister is ejected from 10 Downing Street. The BBC helpfully reports what transpired this time:

“Out with the old, in with the new. Nothing represents the rapid, ruthless business of politics like removal vans at Downing Street. Moving a new prime minister – staff, family, pets and paraphernalia – into 10 Downing Street is a complex feat. [This time} it happen[ed] in a day. Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vacated 10 Downing Street on Friday after Labour won a landslide victory in the general election. Shortly after, new PM Sir Keir Starmer and wife Victoria Starmer arrived at No 10.”

In the United States, presidential transition lasts well over two months, between election in early November and inauguration on January 20th. In Nigeria, it takes longer than that. As we saw in the last cycle, election was held on February 25, 2023, with the new president – amid a din of controversy – sworn in on May 29th. And it wasn’t until about the end of July before the new president submitted his ministerial list for Senate approval.

Back to the UK! Notice, if you will, that in all the ruthless efficiency of the process, though the election this year shattered or suspended the careers of many talented politicians and some so-called ‘big beasts’ of contemporary British politics, there were no evident recriminations. No controversies or disputes about the election results. No court cases that I am aware of. There was no reported violence. Nobody was molested or killed.

Yes, Britain has been doing this for a while now, and so it has muscle memory. But it’s by no means the world’s oldest democracy. The country just became quite good at election management. That’s partly why, though outperformed by the Nordics and some other countries, it is considered a ‘full democracy’ in The Economist’s 2023 Democracy Index (ranked 18th in the world), whereas an older democracy like the United States is estimated a ‘flawed democracy’ (ranked 29th). Don’t even get me started on Nigeria which – I think too generously – is considered a ‘hybrid regime’ (ranked 104th).

British elections are all the more impressive because they aren’t too heavily monetized. We will have to wait for reporting on the final cost, but if past election expenditures are anything to go by, the ballot that was just concluded in Britain, which involved the election of 650 members of parliament, would have cost the Treasury something in the neighborhood of £140 million.

Compare this to the ₦355 billion – or, going by the exchange rate at the time, $768.4 million (£664.6 million) – budgeted for Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to conduct the 2O23 general election, which involved electing the president and his vice, and a fraction of the 469 members of the National Assembly. It’s not even close.

The UK is ranked 6th in the world by GDP while Nigeria, which has only 7.2% the UK’s GDP and is ranked 53rd, spends nearly five times as much as Britain to elect its national leadership. It costs far more to elect our politicians than it does in the UK, and our lot are far better compensated, though they end up doing far less than their UK counterparts in terms of actual work. The economists’ efficiency wage theory totally collapses on contact with the Nigerian political system.

Yes, Britain’s historical atrocities – enslaving other peoples, plundering foreign lands, conniving to keep awful regimes in power, originally creating the conundrum in the Middle East and now supporting Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza – are inexcusable and unforgivable.

But when it comes to gearing up to deliver an election, few countries bring it like Britain!

We will now wait to see how well Labour will govern, knowing how brittle the British electorate can be.