I do
acknowledge a yawning gap between the America and Nigeria that cannot be
ignored or swept under the carpet. I do see, however, some striking
similarities
between a former President of Nigeria and the current President of
the United States. Their attitude to power and how they have both managed to
destroy the reputation and credibility of their two countries have become a serious
cause for alarm around the world.
Donald Trump
calls himself a change agent who could turn America into an Eldorado nobody has
ever seen before. Ibrahim Babangida on the other hand came to office thru
military coup with a promise to fundamentally make Nigeria a better country but
he ended up crippling and screwing up the country beyond redemption.
Three world
events inform my decision to write this article. The current investigation of
the Russian hacking of American elections and the role of Donald Trump who knew
he could never have been President without some covert help from the KGB and
Vladimir Putin. The second event is the
recent confession by an 80 year old British Intelligence Officer Mr. Hopkins
who on his death bed in Britain has just confessed much to the embarrassment of
the British Monarchy that he killed Princess Diana on the orders of the Royal
Family. The last and not the least is the recent confession of Ibrahim
Babangida about why he annulled the June 12, 1993 election of M.K.O Abiola as
President of Nigeria despite all the lies he has told before.
Donald Trump
is doing everything in his power to obstruct the Russian Investigation, and to
stop the investigation panels from having any access to his tax returns and
business and financial transactions all over the world that could very easily
link him to the Russians and the Kremlin and the KGB with effortless ease.
Trump is behaving like a 4th grader with no coherent strategy to get himself
out of the hole he has dug himself into He has kept on digging and putting
himself into more serious legal jeopardy every day.
Trump, like
Babangida, passionately believes he is smarter than all of his predecessors.
Trump was a product of the Watson School of Business believes he is smarter
than the Harvard trained Constitutional lawyer Obama. Babangida, the last time
I checked, felt the same way about Buhari the less corrupt leader he ousted in
1985.
Trump and
Babangida are two birds of the same feather whose names will go down in infamy
for some of the crimes they have both committed against their two countries.
Donald Trump actually used Disinformation Espionage and fake News manufactured
by the KGB to mislead the Obama Administration to lie low on stopping the
Russian hacking of American elections before it became an inferno as confirmed
by Secretary Johnson of Homeland Security. Obama did not want to be accused of
being too overtly partisan in going after the Russians or openly rocking the
boat at a time all the pundits and opinion polls were pointing to a Hillary
land slide. That stance could be a mistake on hindsight, but it was arguably
the right position to take at the time.
Babangida
had pretty much used a similar strategy to mislead and deceive M.K.O Abiola and
to ensure Alhaji Tofa victory in 1993 but the unexpected happened when Abiola
won the election in a land slide instead. Babangida annulled the election right
away by saying he was advised so to do by Obasanjo and some prominent southern
politicians.
IBB has
waited for nearly 25 years to tell the truth only a few days ago when he
finally admitted that he annulled the election to satisfy Sani Abacha and David
Mark who had their eyes on taking their turns to succeed IBB as President of
Nigeria in a sequential order.
Donald Trump
and Ibrahim Babangida are like Siamese twins. Their persona and modus operandi
are so strikingly similar. They are both very ambitious, paranoid individuals
who are prepared and willing to dine with the Devil to achieve their goal.
Donald Trump
had done his homework before entering the race for President of the United
States and he realized all he needed to win was to demonize his opponent and to
damage her beyond redemption in few of the swing states she is supposed to win to
have any chance of winning the Electoral College tally. He saw the need to
collaborate with a foreign adversary but do it in such a way that even if he
lost in the end, he would have made it impossible for his opponent to govern.
That was why
he served notice long before the election that he would not concede defeat if
he lost because it would simply mean that the election had been rigged. He flew
that kite or made that bluff to micro-manage Obama from going all out to call
out the Russians. He repeated the same strategy when he bluffed and lied that
that a tape of the James Comey’s conversation with him in the White House would
be produced at some point. It was a bogus lie told to threaten or intimidate
Comey from talking too much.
Trump also
made a statement that should have given everybody a pause that win or lose,
that he would be the first candidate ever in the History of American Politics
to make a profit out of running for President pretty much like IBB did when he
became richer than the whole country and wasn’t going to voluntarily quit the
presidency until he was forced out. The way Trump is going there is a slim
possibility he might never leave office when his time is up. He is clearly learning the rope from Vladimir
Putin who has remained in power for more than 17 years and counting.
Trump broke
all the rules in the book to defeat 16 Republican candidates who were better
qualified and more experienced than him by using Russian Espionage to blackmail
them one by one after signing an iron-clad “quid pro quo” agreement with
Vladimir Putin that would put a provision in the Republican Platform he planned
to run on at the Convention in Denver. The Republican platform was to be
watered down to relax or remove all the
sanctions put in place by the Obama Administration against Russia for her
incursions and adventures into Ukraine and the Crimea and the other Russian
Republics which have since joined NATO or were on their way to doing so.
Trump was
also to discredit the European Union and NATO to give Russia a fighting chance
to correct some of the mistakes that heralded the dismemberment and the fall of
the old Soviet Union in the name of “Perestroika.” What was mind-boggling in
the whole development was the Republican inclination to go along with Donald
Trump to appease or accommodate the Russians.
Governance
in Nigeria and in America can be poles apart if you see what I see. What we
have in Nigeria is Animal Farm compared to America where the Rule of Law is far
more sacrosanct and more rigidly observed by the landlords in the White House
until Donald Trump and his KGB collaborators came on board as many of the
ongoing investigations would show if they are not compromised or discredited
along the line by the Republicans hell-bent on saving Donald Trump.
America used
to be totally different from where it is headed today under a Trump presidency.
It was a country where all of the Presidents minus George Washington, the first
President became President by formally running for office as a nominee of any
particular Party. George Washington became President from 1789 to 1797 by
acclamation and consensus rather than by formal elections like we have today
when two nominees from the two dominant Parties have to lock horns or compete
for the peoples’ votes.
That is why
you never hear any American refer to their Party as Party of George Washington
like you hear the Republican Party describe their Party as the Party of Abe
Lincoln while the Democrats occasionally describe their Party as the Party of
FDR.
The position
of President in America carries so much prestige and dignity that most
Americans expect their President to be totally above board like Caesar’s wife.
It is inconceivable in times gone by to have Americans openly call their
President a pathological liar like they all do now to Donald Trump with
impunity.
Donald Trump
was a filthy-rich Real Estate Business mogul and a cerebral public figure
before he ran for the highest political office in the country. Ibrahim
Babangida on the other hand had enlisted in the Military and had risen thru the
ranks while actively participating in all of the Nigerian coups before the one
in 1985 that saw him taking over the reins of power from General Muhammadu
Buhari for more than 8 years till 1993 when he was forced by circumstances
beyond his control to "voluntarily” “step aside”.
IBB
inaugurated Ernest Shonekan as interim President for a few months before Sani
Abacha staged his own bloodless coup to remain in power for another 5 years.
Ibrahim Babangida was the first military Head of State to assume the title of
executive President of Nigeria even though he was never elected. He chose to
make his fellow northerner and Muslim Sani Abacha his number 2 without anyone
raising a finger.
All
subsequent military Presidents after him took the same title but they all tried
to balance their ticket by picking their number 2 from the South if the
President was from the North. General
Abdulsalam Abubakar had picked Rear Admiral Okhai Mike Akhigbe, a southerner as
his number 2 for one year during which they had the 1999 Nigerian Constitution
put together and forced down the throat of the country without any discussion
or formal ratification by the people before it was used to elect Olusegun
Obasanjo from 1999 to 2007.
It is unprecedented
to have any Nigerian President and any American President that behave the way
that Ibrahim Babangida and Donald Trump have behaved as President. You could
actually make the case from this analogy that that Donald Trump is General
Babangida on steroids.
Ibrahim
Babangida remains the “Fon et origo” of most the maladies and malfeasance that
have held Nigeria hostage and has gotten worse ever since he left office in
1993 and never again to return. He institutionalized Corruption in Nigeria and
he made sure he advanced the northern agenda far more aggressively and
proactively than any other Hausa/Fulani leader in the history of Nigeria.
I.B.B defied
the conventional wisdom we have grown accustomed to in Nigeria by picking the
number two man in his Administration from the same zone with him. Sani Abacha
from Kano was his Chief of Staff of the Supreme Military Council and his number
2. You could draw some similarity with what Trump has done by militarizing the
US Government even more than Dwight Ike Eisenhower who was allied Commander in
Europe before becoming President. Trump has surrounded himself with an array of
Generals and he has more less turned American Government into a Monarchy while
ejecting his family members into Government and doing so with impunity like no
other President before him.
Ibrahim
Babangida went all out to impose a northern ticket on Nigeria with the stroke
of his pen. He moved very quickly to move the nation’s capital from Lagos to
Abuja and he made sure that the job of Federal Territory Minister remains the
exclusive preserve of the northerners. He clandestinely changed the status of
Nigeria not as an observer nation in IOC but as a full-fledged member and he
made sure that the oil sector of Nigeria remained firmly in the hands of northerners
who became multi- millionaires at the expense of South where the oil came
from.
Babangida
conducted the fairest and the freest election in Nigeria by creating two
Government funded political parties but he annulled the result of that election
when the result did not go the way he had wanted. He introduced assassination
of political enemies and suppression of freedom of the Press and Expression in
Nigeria when he got Dele Giwa killed with a letter bomb to stop him from
exposing his complicity in the release of Gloria Okonkwo who was publicized as
having died in prison for drug pushing, but was actually released and was
living comfortably in London under a false identity. Babangida incriminated his
friend and classmate, General Mamman Vatsa in a phantom coup and he took him
out because he saw him as a threat. Donald Trump would do the same thing in a
heartbeat to anybody that got in his way.
IBB only had
to worry about silencing the Newswatch and his fearless Chief Editor in Nigeria
because he already had the main Media in his pocket by silencing them with
bribery and corruption. Right now in Nigeria it is only Sahara Reporters News
Media based outside Nigeria that is able to criticize or expose the Nigerian
Government without being closed down or totally silenced by Government. The
situation was worse under IBB because Sahara was not around at the time.
In America,
Donald Trump had to worry not just about the Print Media like powerful New York
Times and Washington Post who do their own independent investigation of any
President or Government without any fear or favor. Trump has to worry about
hundreds of fearless reporters across the country like many from the CNN, many
from MSNBC and other powerful channels across the country which could not be silenced
or muzzled by Government.
How for
goodness sake can Donald Trump muzzle individuals like Rachel Maddow, Lawrence
O’Donnell, Chris Matthews of MSNBC talk
less of Jake Tapper, Chris Cuomo, Fareed Zakaria , Poppy Hallow to mention a few at CNN who could not be
micromanaged or silence by Donald Trump?
What of
honest individuals in Government like James Comey, Ms. Yates, Robert Mueller
and independent-minded legislators like Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Adam
Schipps, Chuck Schumer, Elijah Cummings and Dianne Feinstein to mention a few
top guns on both sides of the isle who cannot be silenced or muzzled. That was
why and how IBB was able to do a lot more damage to the corporate interest of
Nigeria than Donald Trump could possibly do to America. Whistle blowers in
America are just too many and too powerful for comfort for any dictator.
IBB got
Julius Berger to build him a proto-type of the Presidential Villa at his
Mountain top Estate in Minna in his preparation for his retirement. He made
sure he put all his handpicked Lieutenants like Abacha, David Mark in position
of power where he could continue to call the shots long after he has
relinquished power. He remains a narcissist and pathological liar just like
Donald Trump who would say one thing and do the exact opposite as long as the
lie advances his personal agenda. Thank
God for freedom of expression which is not a mere slogan in America like it is
in Nigeria.
When you
talk of two American Presidents who can be described as being clever by half,
the two names that readily come to mind are Richard Nixon and Donald Trump and
arguably Bill Clinton who technically argue he did not have sexual relations
with Monika Lewinski but later had to admit on oath that he actually did with
his back against the wall. He made the confession to avoid being charged for
Perjury and that was how he escaped impeachment by a whisker.
Donald Trump
is not going to be that lucky as the noose tightens around his neck for
Obstruction of Justice and few other ethical or criminal violations in his Tax
returns and other financial transactions around the world. Babangida could
easily have been impeached and found guilty of obstruction of Justice because
he too was being clever by half when he denied he did not kill Dele Giwa. He escaped because he was a military
dictator.
Donald Trump
on the other hand is now being clever by half and would surely be found guilty
of Obstruction of Justice at the minimum and of perjury for lying under oath if
he maintains his stand that he did not collude with Vladimir Putin to hack
American elections as many proofs of that become manifest when Robert Mueller
and the Congressional Committees complete their on-going investigations.
Republicans would dodge and weave as they try to cover up for him but their
duplicity would not work as more facts come out to nail Donald Trump.
Republicans would all have to abandon his sinking boat at the last minute if
the Nixon saga is anything to go by.
That Donald
Trump took a decision to fire James Comey to relieve any pressure on him on the
Russian investigation which he admitted on Television and to a delegation of
Russians during their visit to him at the Oval Office are definite proofs of
Obstruction of Justice that cannot be wished away.
That Donald
is now on record to have threatened James Comey that there were tapes that
could invalidate his evidence before the Congressional committees is another
proof of Obstruction of Justice and intent. That he now wants to blackmail
Robert Mueller preparatory to firing him if necessary is another obstruction of
Justice. Trump is desperately trying to tarnish or rubbish his Robert Mueller
and to discredit his report ahead of time.
That Donald Trump now wants to shift the blame to Obama by asking why
Obama did not do something to stop the Russians is not only a diversionary
tactic, but another proof of Obstruction of justice to derail the ongoing
investigation of him and his campaign team.
The truth is
that Obama did a lot to register his disapproval of what the Russians did and
to prevent a reoccurrence. It is Donald
Trump who has done nothing to follow up on what Obama has in fact started in
the last few weeks of his presidency. It is nobody but Donald Trump who has
been bending over backwards to defend and protect the Russians and to stop the
investigation of Russia from going forward.
A “prima
facie” case of Obstruction of Justice and Perjury have long been made against
Trump, if you see what I see. There is no way Donald Trump can dodge the bullet
or escape the long hands of the Law in a country governed by the rule of Law.
I rest my
case.
Saharareporters
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