What Buhari and Trump have in common

Azuka Onwuka

In some ways, President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria and
President Donald Trump of the United States of America have some
things in common. The first thing is that they are leaders that
people find difficult to be neutral about. Their supporters support
them passionately, while their opponents oppose them passionately.
Therefore, whenever people with opposing views on any of them
discuss them, tempers rise. To their supporters, everything Buhari
or Trump does must be justified and defended. This leads to people
known for their high sense of justice and rationality — including
professors and senior lawyers — making shocking comments on issues
just to defend them.

Therefore, both of them are divisive leaders. They do not see
all citizens of their respective countries as having the same
national status. To them, those who support them are the true
patriots, while those who oppose them are enemies of the state.
This manifests in their words and actions. Once elections are over,
other presidents drop the parochial partisan toga and don the
federalist toga. But in the cases of Buhari and Trump, that toga is
never dropped. There is no difference between their words and
actions during the campaign era and during the governance era.
Consequently, Nigeria and the USA have never been as divided as
they are under Buhari and Trump except during the civil war period
in the two countries.

In addition, both of them are supremacists. While Buhari
believes in the supremacy of his Fulani ethnic group over others,
as well as the North and Muslims over others, Trump believes in the
supremacy of the Whites over other races, as well as hardcore
Republicans and evangelical Christians over others. In dealing with
the outside world, Trump also believes in American supremacy. For
him, the only thing that matters is the interests of the United
States. He does not even bother to moderate his views when speaking
at the United Nations or about other nations. He differs with
Buhari in that regard. Buhari does not project the interest of
Nigerians when dealing with the outside world. Not only does he not
show anger when Nigeria is ridiculed by outsiders, he even joins in
ridiculing Nigeria and Nigerians when talking with leaders of other
leaders.

Another area of similarity is the fallout from their extempore
speeches. Any time both of them read from a prepared speech, they
say the right things meant to unify the nation and make life better
for the people. But whenever they speak extempore, they usually
kick-start one controversy or the other. The reason is that when
they read from a prepared speech, their aides would have moderated
the speech to make it sound presidential. But whenever they speak
without a script, they express their real thoughts, which never
come out well.

Furthermore, both of them hate the media. This is because they
hate to be opposed or criticised. The media points out the
inconsistencies between their past promises or views and their
current views on issues. The media X-rays their policies and words
and criticise those that deserve criticism. Because the two
presidents assume that they are the most patriotic leaders with the
best intentions, they resent anyone that criticises them. So they
see the media as enemies of the state. When Buhari ruled as a
military dictator between 1984 and 1985, he gagged the media with
the infamous Decree 4 and jailed those who criticised him. But
because this is democratic rule, he merely tolerates the media
today. However, his government has found another excuse to clamp
down on the media using the nebulous term “hate speech” to describe
media reports that are not favourable to his administration. It is
not surprising that he refrains from speaking to the media in
Nigeria. In the three and half years of his administration, Buhari
has only had one media chat which used to be a monthly thing from
the era of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who started it as a
means of explaining national issues to the public. Similarly,
because Trump cannot gag the media, he ridicules and blackmails
media houses that criticise his administration, describing them as
“fake news” capable of destroying the nation.

However, there are marked differences between Buhari and Trump.
First is that Trump is a shrewd businessman who has run successful
businesses, while Buhari is not known to have run any successful
business enterprise since he was prematurely retired at the age of
43 years. Buhari does not seem to have a good understanding of how
businesses run. Consequently, while Trump has impacted positively
on the American economy, Buhari has impacted negatively on the
Nigerian economy. Even though there have been claims and
counter-claims on the American economy under Trump, there are
evidence that the American economy has received a boost.
Conversely, the Nigerian economy has received a heavy beating: 11
million jobs lost under Buhari; Nigeria became the country with the
highest number of people living in “extreme poverty” in the world
(87 million people); Nigeria’s debt rose from 11 trillion naira in
2014 to 22 trillion naira in 2018.

In addition, Trump is a hardcore capitalist who thinks of how to
make the United States have an advantage in its trade relations
with other economies like China which he laments have been having
the better of the US in trade. Buhari has the worldview of a
pseudo-Marxist who sees all rich people as thieves who have stolen
from the ordinary people and need to be punished, with their wealth
confiscated as proceeds of crime and shared to the ordinary
people.

Therefore, Trump is sometimes seen as a necessary evil: even
though he creates divisions among Americans and causes
embarrassment to the people because of his comments, the American
economy seems to have received a boost under his watch.
Interestingly, unlike other fellow Republican presidents who seemed
to perform better on international relations than the Democrats,
Trump has done better on the economy than on the international
front. On the other hand, Buhari does not have a strong side where
he has performed better. The fight against corruption and also the
security issue that were thought to be his forte have not
experienced any known improvement. On the contrary, corruption has
worsened as reported by the Transparency International; security
has moved from the single key issue of Boko Haram to include the
killer herdsmen issue.

Finally, Trump and Buhari are similar in being both
septuagenarians. However, Trump is livelier and more alert
mentally. Even though Buhari has faced health challenges, which
have affected his strength, his health and age are not his major
drawbacks but the age and strength of his ideas. Buhari uses
analogue thinking to attend to digital problems, thereby getting
results which affect the health of Nigeria.

—Twitter @BrandAzuka