Donald Trump’s MAGA and Bola Tinubu’s Èmi l’ókàn are poignant political slogans. They are also clever political technologies that parlay elite ideology and class interest into populist myths that manufacture mass appeal and the willing consent of the dispossessed.
By Chudi Okoye
Economists often speak of ‘wage rigidity,’ by which they refer to the resistance of wage rates to changing market conditions. It is a term that calls to mind another kind of ‘wage’ inflexibility: the one found in Romans 6:23 where the Bible declares with finality that “the wages of sin is death,” and again in Revelation 21:8 where the Good Book says sinners will suffer that death in “the lake of fire and brimstone.” Both suggest a kind of unyielding, almost fateful, resistance to change or new reality.
It is all rather redolent of the rigidity of political behavior in both Western and non-Western societies: one ideological and increasingly nativist; the other ethnocentric – or ‘primordial’, as Western ethnographers are fond of saying, implying a backward fixation on bloodlines. But is there, in sooth (to use a semi-biblical term) much difference between the ideological tribalism and nativism that now animate Western politics, and the tribalist ideology that persists in African politics?
If there’s a distinction between ideological tribalism and tribal ideology, it is ordinal rather than categorical – a difference of degree, not of kind.
To demonstrate, let us compare the political proclivities of President Bola Tinubu in Nigeria and President Donald Trump’s dispositions in the United States. Before anyone dismisses African politics as ‘tribal’ and posits contemporary U.S. politics as somehow more evolved, they might pause to ask: Is Trump’s rallying campaign cry and now governing ideology, Make America Great Again, really so different from Tinubu’s howl on the hustings, Èmi l’ókàn (meaning “It is my [our] turn”)? Is there truly a gulf between Trump’s nostalgic nativism, evoking notions of “real Americans” and “traditional values”’ and Tinubu’s idea of ethno-regional entitlement?
In my view, there isn’t a great distance between Trump’s White House and Tinubu’s Aso Rock Villa, despite the 9,200km remove. Both MAGA and Èmi l’ókàn evince atavistic impulses: the first cloaked in the veneer of ideology; the second, a veneer for ideology and class dominance. MAGA and Èmi l’ókàn are more than campaign slogans; they are codes, signaling to their respective bases a revanchist promise of racial restoration or ethnic ascendance. Beneath their outward differences lies a shared logic: the mobilization of particularistic identities, whether nativist or ethnocentric, to consolidate and legitimize elite power.
Some sticklers may be startled or even scandalized by the audacity of juxtaposing MAGA and Èmi l’ókàn, or more broadly, parallelizing the tribalisms of ideology and ethnicity. But come along, let’s “compare and contrast” – as they say in popular parlance – to see if there’s all that much difference.
MAGA vs. Èmi l’ókàn
Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again and Bola Tinubu’s Èmi l’ókàn are masterclasses in political branding – succinct phrases that weaponize nostalgia and entitlement to forge unshakable loyalties. At first glance, they appear worlds apart: one a nativist call to restore a mythic past, the other an ethno-regional demand for power-sharing. Yet both slogans reveal how political elites manipulate identity to consolidate power, even as they obscure the economic and ideological realities beneath.
Trump’s MAGA mantra presents itself as an ideological project – a revolt against globalization, “elites,” “wokeness,” and progressive cultural shifts. Its rhetoric is steeped in policy jargon: “America First” trade deals, “draining the swamp” or “deconstruction of the administrative state,” and “securing the border.” These phrases function not only as policy signals but also as cultural dog whistles. MAGA’s true potency lies in its invocation of a lost racial and cultural order – a time when America was “great” because it was whiter, more Christian, and less contested.
Thus, the ideological veneer of MAGA masks a deeply atavistic agenda. Trump’s electoral coalition united free-market libertarians, evangelical conservatives, and White supremacists, not through shared economic principles but through shared grievance. MAGA’s real genius lies not in ideological coherence, but in its fierce emotional appeal. It fuses policy, grievance, and identity into a kind of political totem – a rallying cry for restoration rather than transformation. For many of its followers, it is not merely a policy platform; it is a spiritual return to an imagined America: hierarchical, homogenous, and unambiguous.
Yet, while longing for an unambiguous America, MAGA thrives on its own rhetorical ambiguity. Its genius, in fact, lies in this ambiguity. This is its unique strength: it is at once an ideology (libertarian, anti-establishment populism) and an identity (White Christian nationalism). This duality allows MAGA supporters to frame their allegiance as a matter of rational principle, even as the movement devolves into a cult of personality seeking atavistic regression.
In Nigeria, Tinubu’s Èmi l’ókàn operates differently but to similar ends. The phrase, rooted in Yoruba idiom, explicitly invokes ethnic and regional entitlement – a demand that power rotate to the South West after eight years of northern Muslim leadership under Muhammadu Buhari. I’m not sure if Tinubu is aware of this, but his slogan, trotted out in 2022, echoes the logic captured in It’s Our Turn to Eat, a 2009 book by British journalist Michela Wrong. That book explores the unspoken creed of Kenyan politics, grounded in ethnic patronage and power rotation among Kikuyu and Kalenjin kingpins. Wrong was right in her depiction of Kenya’s political coalitions, and her thesis may just as well apply to Tinubu’s agenda. Yet his ethno-centric rallying cry obscures a deeper reality: Nigeria’s political elites, regardless of ethnicity, share an abiding commitment to neoliberal economics and patronage politics.
Nigerian politics is an intricate blend of ideology and ethnocentrism. You might think, from the frequent cross-party defections of party stalwarts (Tinubu himself has belonged to five parties since 1999) that politics in the country is bereft of ideology. But that is not so. In Nigeria, ideology is a potent political force, made the more so by an elite ideological consensus that marginalizes radical political tendencies.
We saw such marginalization in the 1993 presidential election – Nigeria’s freest and fairest, later annulled by the military. Moshood Abiola, the Yoruba businessman who won that vote, ran under the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a platform billed as “a little to the left.” His coalition attracted labor unions, students, and radicals advocating wealth redistribution and other progressive ideas. His victory threatened not just the prevailing regional balance of power but potentially the entire architecture of elite consensus. The military’s annulment of the election, justified as preventing “chaos,” was in fact a defense of the status quo against ideological disruption – a correction to the center, so to say.
Ideology is indeed a motive force of Nigerian politics, though often obscured by ethnicity and other primordial differences exploited by ideologically converged elites, as they strive for supremacy in Nigeria’s politics of spoils.
Bola Tinubu’s Èmi l’ókàn continues this tradition. It reflects precisely that intersection of class, ideology, and ethnocentrism – not unlike MAGA. The slogan mobilizes Yoruba sentiment, reflected in Tinubu’s Yoruba-centric appointments, while his governing ideology echoes the same neoliberal policies favored by ascendant elites. Indeed, the re-centering of neoliberal orthodoxy was part of Tinubu’s immediate policy shifts when he took the reins from an exhausted and discombobulated Buhari in May 2023, seen in his instantaneous deregulation of the Naira and removal of fuel subsidies.
Èmi l’ókàn is a mirror image of MAGA. Both mobilize identity to deflect from policy: Trump’s nativist theatrics distract from his corporate tax cuts; Tinubu’s ethnic posturing sidesteps questions about the pernicious effects of his neoliberal policies.
Both also marginalize radical alternatives: “woke” progressives in America; radicals in Nigeria. For MAGA, “real Americans” must reclaim their country; for Èmi l’ókàn, power is a tribal trophy.
The difference lies in packaging. MAGA wraps atavism in ideological garb; Èmi l’ókàn drapes elite ideology in ethnic symbolism. Both, however, serve the same end: personal aggrandizement and elite consolidation of power. Though MAGA’s cult-like aura often casts Trump in a messianic light, different in this way from an Èmi l’ókàn anchored in transactional politics, both slogans ultimately function alike: they mobilize identity to legitimize power, deflect scrutiny, and entrench elite dominance. In the end, the slogans may differ in slant and semantics, but the ploys and purposes of power remain the same.
Identity and Ideology
At the heart of both MAGA and Èmi l’ókàn lodges a simple truth: in modern politics, identity often eclipses ideology. When power is pivotal and up for grabs, symbols matter more than substance, affect (what we call “body language” in Nigeria) trumps argument, and the politics of belonging outpaces the politics of belief.
But this is no accident. Political elites have long understood that identity can be just as pliable as ideology – if not more combustible. Whereas ideology requires articulation, coherence, and risk of contradiction, identity is visceral, unreflective, and deeply tribal. MAGA and Èmi l’ókàn both exploit this dynamic, offering their followers not a rational vision of the future, but a mythic meaning of self: a twinning of grief and belief, a promise that power is a birthright, that grievance is sacred, and that politics is a battlefield of “us” versus “them.”
And yet, even as these slogans stir deep consciousness of identity, they do so in service of ideology – just not the kind worn on banners or debated in sterile manifestos. The real ideology is hidden in plain sight: an elite consensus that codifies inequality, favoring capital over labor, deregulation over redistribution, and stability over social justice. The brilliance of slogans like MAGA and Èmi l’ókàn is that they allow elites to pursue their narrow class and ideological interests under the cover of a broader cultural warfare.
This is not to say that ideology is irrelevant. Far from it! In our populist age, ideology does not disappear; it simply dons the mask of identity. Economic orthodoxy is repackaged as cultural reclamation. Austerity is recast as sacrifice for the tribe – witness Trump and Tinubu’s call for mass endurance and sacrifice, while both and their families grubbily monetize their presidencies.
MAGA and Èmi l’ókàn are not just political slogans – they are political technologies. They fuse instinct and interest, tribe and class, myth and method. They “manufacture consent” (to borrow a term from Noam Chomsky, the doyen of my college days), not through persuasion, but through resonance. Their power lies not so much in their truth, but in their ability to feel true.
The interplay between ideology and identity is hardly unique to the United States or Nigeria. Across the world, political elites have mastered the art of fusing abstract principles with the visceral pull of belonging – sometimes wielding ideology to mask exclusionary impulses; other times deploying identity to obscure the true beneficiaries of power.
This dynamic can be seen in Viktor Orbán’s “Hungary for Hungarians,” which exploits nativist rhetoric, using the language of sovereignty to mask the consolidation of power and the enrichment of loyal elites. In India, Narendra Modi’s BJP blends Hindu nationalism with neoliberal economics, channeling identity politics to distract from widening inequality. I have already mentioned the case of Kenya.
Across these contexts, the interplay of ideology and identity is less about genuine belief than about the maintenance of elite power. Whether ideology masks identity, or the latter camouflages class interests, the effect is the same: the marginalization of progressive alternatives and the entrenchment of a narrow, self-serving consensus.
In the end, the distance between the White House and Aso Rock Villa – between MAGA and Èmi l’ókàn – is not measured in miles or constitutions, but in the sameness of their ambitions. The slogans may change, the cosmetic banners may differ, but the choreography and disguises of power remain remarkably the same.
