The American Democracy Truly a Disaster – Opinion

The title of this piece conveys a strident mood. But the angst is no longer because a bozo of catholic proportion emerged as the US president-Elect. It is not because of the reality that a labile character is set to become the leader of the free world. It has nothing to do with the fact that a worldwide outrage greeted Donald Trump’s triumph. And this is absolutely far from the whistling implication of the thought that the best-qualified person ever to seek US presidency was trounced by a definite nothingburger.

The seemingly venom is by no means induced by the nature of the rude awakening my 13-year-old had to endure that long night. The stolid school girl, who I had though cared less about politics, usually goes to bed at 9 PM. But not on November 8! As soon as I turned off the TV after major stations broke the sad news, I heard some strange footsteps in my media room. Lo and behold, it was the little girl wandering around perplexed and murmuring on her phone. Instead of running to her bedroom after sighting me that late, as expected, she stood and looked my way, unloading nonstop questions I still find difficult to answer: “Dad, what happened? President Trump? But Hillary won when we voted in school last week, and they said she was gonna win? What went wrong? What are the minorities gonna do now after all he said about them? Are we gonna move to some better place? How about Nigeria? Has it gotten better over there since the new leader?”

Any sense of animus here against Trump is not about any sympathy for the frustrations of women like a Nigerian-American lady who called me the wee hour of the same fateful morning, 3.30 AM, to be exact, openly crying, praying, and truly wishing the unthinkable that Ibrahim Babangida, a former Nigerian military head of state, is suddenly President Barrack Obama so he could annual the US election of November 8^th—for God’s sake.

Frankly speaking, the mood has nothing to do with any of the above. For hysteria has no place in my DNA. The core problem, instead, is rooted in something else with the portent for another wave of perpetual crisis.

The US “electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.” But that is not SKC Ogbonnia fomenting such notion from the start. The original quote was precisely the reaction of no other person than Donald Trump himself following Obama’s victory over Mitt Romney in 2012. If the quote is remotely vague, “what Trump means to say”, as his surrogates would always spin, is that the system that produces the leader of the free world is a disaster. There is hardly a thing an objective person can wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Trump, because the celebrity cretin does not espouse any core values or beliefs. But one cannot agree with the man any more that whatever system that made it possible for him to emerge as US president-elect is truly a disaster.

The U.S. presidential elections of the last five decades (1966-2016) sufficiently highlight the challenges of the American democracy. Even though both Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton received less than 50% of votes cast in the 1968 and 1992 general elections, respectively; they still assumed power on the basis of the Electoral College system. Clinton would also be re-elected in 1996 with only a minority of the votes cast for the same reason. But none is more perplexing than the 2000 presidential election where George W. Bush emerged victorious despite garnering fewer popular votes than Al Gore. Even worse, not only is Donald J. Trump widely seen as unqualified to be president of the United States, he was declared the winner in the 2016 elections despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

What is more, it is not entirely a coincidence that each of the former presidents mentioned above could not prove the electorate wrong. Nixon had to resign from office in shame. Bill Clinton became the second US president in history to be impeached. And George W. Bush left office forlorn. Mr. Trump? The guess is open-ended. In fact, since the morning after November 8, the whole world has been on its knees hoping that the 70-year-old enfant terrible could ever grow to comport himself as a leader of the free world. But mere hope can only take us so far. The past remains a relevant predictor of the future. Expecting a pig to fly as high as the bird is no different than leading a merry chase. Even if Donald Trump can show any remorse and do some good moving forward, the havoc this man has already unleashed on human civilization can never be undone.

Yet we can not entirely discount hope, because “there is God.” The living God has not abandoned the United States, as Donald Trump wildly claimed. The image of the pathological liar alone is enough to finally provoke the Americans to demand a more deserving change. The change calls for the country to discard the archaic Electoral College system that produced an unrepentant heathen as US president—by default. This change requires an amendment to the outdated US Constitution in line with an ever-changing society towards the greater good.

The ultra conservatives will ultimately liken this proposal to the naked slaying of the utmost totem, but the main idea is far from novel. In the book, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?, Robert Dahl, fondly remembered as the Dean of American Political Scientists, had ridiculed the US Constitution immediately after the 2000 election that saw George W. Bush prevail with minority votes. Dahl called for change, charging that the ideal Constitution is one “that, after careful and prolonged deliberations, we and fellow citizens conclude is the best designed to serve our fundamental political ends, goals, and values.” Make no mistake about it, the existing Constitution has served America reasonably well and is deserving of a sacred place in history. But it is far from perfect.

The problem here is that a defining imperfect area of the US Constitution, the Electoral College, is profoundly polar opposite to democratic principles. America needs a system that can guarantee that the majority truly carries the votes. Moreover, it defies logic that the US citizens will continue to glue their thinking faculty to a document adopted over two centuries ago by ancient dwellers—to cope with the complexities of the Post-Modern era. The blind following of ideology rather than prudence is a recipe for disaster. That is how America gave us the Iraq war and the perpetual crisis that has followed. That is how and why the world is now grappling with the reality that a gambling goofus is soon to become the sole custodian of America’s nuclear code. It’s gloomy, square.

♦ SKC Ogbonnia, Ph.D. is the Executive Chairman of First Texas Energy Corporation. He writes from Houston, Texas. Contact >>

Buhari’s New Change Ought to Begin with His Igbo Problem

For full disclosure, I am an Igbo man. I am also one of the pundits currently being lampooned for cheering President Muhammadu Buhari to democratic power. Yet, knowing what I know now, I will lend that support all over again—and even more. Unless we have begun to view the history from a tainted lens, the thought of the very alternative, which was to bring back Goodluck Jonathan, remains a portent of much bigger crisis. More relatively, I strongly endorse Buhari’s latest mantra: “Change begins with me.” And that is exactly what this piece is set to accomplish.

Let me quickly wet the ground by first defining effective leadership as the ability of the leader to maximize the available resources within the internal and external environment and be recognized by the followers as meeting the expectations. Please notice that this definition has two components. One is for the leader to do a good job. The other, and probably more instructive, is for the leader to be seen by the follower as doing a good job.

Like every Nigerian leader, Buhari assumed the presidency with good intentions. The president is also working hard. Despite the economic mess left behind by the previous government, he is soldiering on with measurable progress on many areas. Regrettably, most Nigerians see the efforts as busy doing nothing. Accordingly, Buhari is making changes beginning from his very self. But there is one critical problem the General has continued to ignore that is firmly woven into the fabric of our current quest for economic revival: His Igbo problem.

For obvious reasons, the problem was initially waved off as a typical Igbo palaver. Sadly, it has now widened with untold social, political, and economic consequences. Before getting to the main gist, here is a cursory glance at the Igbo—just in case.

As one of the major Nigerian ethnic groups, the Igbo are the natural inhabitants of the Southeast and some areas of South-South and North-Central zones of Nigeria. The people are predominantly Christians and uniquely boast of being the first or second largest population in most parts of the country. Known for their unique resilience, resourcefulness, can-do spirit and, of course, unbounded technological and scientific acumen; the Igbo represent the hybrid engine of Nigeria’s commerce. These diverse traits help in no small measure as they forge social, political, and economic influence around Nigeria.

But the influence is even beyond. The Igbo have embraced the reigning economic gospel that we no longer merely live in a country but in a world. Thus, with a heavy presence around the globe, they gleefully play a commanding role in nation’s foreign exchange, foreign trade, foreign investment as well as relationships. Not surprisingly, the Igbo in the Diaspora are a leading block contributor to the yearly amount of foreign money remitted to Nigeria, which is ironically more than the national budget. Very significantly, the people are one of the key drivers of Nigeria’s media home and abroad and thus have the potential to influence how the country is perceived anywhere.

The foregoing attributes are more than enough to discern that the Igbo is as important as any other ethnic group and ought to be carried along in the current change agenda of the government. Chinua Achebe was more eloquent in the book, There Was a Country: The perennial tendency to undermine the unique role of the Igbo in Nigeria “is one of the fundamental reasons the country has not developed as it should and has emerged as a laughingstock.” But events thus far suggest that Buhari might have been ill-advised to challenge the theory from the onset.

This apparent dissent is rooted in the 2015 presidential elections where a vast majority of the Igbo joined the South-South to vote en masse against Buhari’s winning candidacy. However, rather than use the historic mandate to rally the different political divisions towards common purpose, the president would shock the democratic world by revealing his plan to marginalize the zones that voted against him. Many pundits thought his statement was a mere gaffe. But the records afterwards seem to suggest that Muhammadu “Okechukwu” Buhari actually meant the threat of vendetta against the Igbo, particularly those from the Southeast.

Critics are free to join here. But there is no gainsaying that the Igbo people are truly marginalized in the current scheme of things. As I had penned in October 2015, the upper echelon of Buhari’s government is a preview. “The underlying rationale in this case is that the positions of the President, Vice-President, Senate President, Speaker, Chairman of the ruling party, and the Secretary to Federal Government have been staked in the past 16 years as the main thrust of the party in power and thence rotated among the six political zones of the country.” Yet, the Southeast was conspicuously denied its share. Moreover, it is no coincidence that the same Southeast Nigeria, the mainstay of the Igbo nation, is the only zone without a personnel presence in the nation’s security leadership apparatus.

This outlook coupled with a stoic indifference by the president triggered outrage in the land. It straightaway provoked the Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), then a sedate outfit, to declare “that Buhari is not seeing Ndigbo as part of Nigeria.” The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) was not to be left behind, as it heightened its call for secession from the country. Their activities, however, were met with brute force, including the detention without bail of its leader, Nnamdi Kalu. This plight is today commonly linked to the birth of a new militant group under the auspices of Niger Delta Avengers. We are all living witnesses to the economic repercussions of the Biafran movement and their Avengers ever since.

The title of this piece will not be apt if the empathy for the current wave of Igbo marginalization did not flow past east of River Niger. Recognizing that the ruling party treated it as business as usual, the opposition from the highly influential Southwest Nigeria led by the trio of Ayo Fayose, Femi Fani-Kayode, and Femi Aribisala capitalized on the saga to strike back. What just took place here, and painfully so, is that Muhammadu Buhari had inadvertently provided a lifeline for the corrupt brigade of the immediate past regime—from the east, north, and west—to resurface and now grandstand as latter-day fighters of what is widely believed as naked injustice to the people of the Southeast. And what followed, thereafter, was a montage of propaganda that successfully painted the president as an unapologetic bigot determined to punish not only the Igbo but also the entire Christian-dominated South.

The development caught the attention of the Northern zone of the Christian Association of Nigeria, which lamented as follows: “while there were volumes of allegations from the South that the appointments made so far were in favour of the north, facts on the ground revealed that those appointments were lopsided in favour of Muslim north to the detriment of Northern Christian community.” More dauntingly, many blame part of the current crisis on Buhari’s economic policy, particularly foreign exchange, which is believed to be tribally skewed to specially benefit his Fulani kinsmen who control bureau de change across the country.

Today, not only is the national economy in recession, the negative opinion of Buhari is growing beyond our shores. Although a number of world leaders showered praises on him during the recent UN session in New York for giant strides against corruption and terrorism, which is very gratifying, a creeping concern within the international community remains that Nigeria’s president is a dictator, tribalist, sectionalist, misogynist, and religious bigot—all in one person. This emerging view—whether real or not—explains why US Congressman Tom Marino, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, on a September 1, 2016 letter, would warn the United States to withhold selling arms to Nigeria until Buhari demonstrates true “commitment to inclusive government and the most basic tenets of democracy: freedom to assemble and freedom of speech.”

This spectre is gloomy, square. It does not bode well for an economy in recession. In short, it scares away investment whether local or foreign, especially in this era of economic globalization where millions of Nigerians in the Diaspora, the Igbo well included, represent the convex lens through which the world sees Nigeria. This also goes to say that even as President Buhari might have done a good job on the area of corruption, the fact that he is generally perceived as condoning gross injustice at another area renders his entire effort pyrrhic.

The central problem is complex and thus difficult to capture at once. But the solution is quite simple. For every question raised in this essay sufficiently answers itself. Buhari has to simply trek back to where the rain started beating him and make amends. Allowing the problem to linger not only threatens the chances of economic revival but also the hard-earned change. Even if he is not thinking of 2019, which he should, Mr. President cannot feign ignorance of the fact that his queasy quandary with the Legislature has his Igbo problem written all over it. Very true!

♦ SKC Ogbonnia, Ph.D. writes from Houston, Texas. Contact >>>

Opinion – Hillary Should Hire Chris Rock as a Spokesman

The 2016 Republican and Democratic conventions now belong to the history books. The two major party nominees, Donald Trump and Hillary

Clinton have made their respective cases to the American people. Overall, it can be easy to dismiss Trump’s candidacy as a quixotic adventure. But it is equally impolitic to predict the eventual outcome in a bizarre electoral season like this. By contrast, Clinton is generally a good presidential material. She is knowledgeable, experienced, measured, serious, and comports herself like someone aspiring to lead the free world.

But Mrs. Clinton may lose the election after all. This predicament is not because of her gender or lack of efforts. It is not because of the common rap of untrustworthiness or lack of vision. The problem is that the history has placed Madam Secretary in a paradoxical profile whereby her greatest attributes have turned out to be her worst undoing. The point is that the former First Lady has become too presidential to resonate with the ordinary people, particularly the millennials and white men without college education.

In tireless efforts to provide a detailed solution to America’s myriad of problems, Clinton’s core message is often lost among voters because of two fundamental dilemmas:

First, unlike Trump, Clinton’s communication style, though traditional, portrays her as someone who has lost touch with the times. She has failed to adjust to the reality that these millennials and very noncollege-educated white men resent in-depth analysis of issues. Their typical attention span is warped to grasp thoughts in plain talk or messages written in 140 characters or less. Thus, even as Clinton’s campaign website is loaded with good ideas, any hope that these two key voting groups will dedicate time to download the message into their cell phones is akin to forcing a horse to drink water.

Yet, while his oratory skills can never be equated to that of President Barack Obama, Trump is definitely an effective communicator. The real estate mogul has been able to influence voters by carving simple and short speeches that tap into the visceral anger of the last decade occasioned by job flights, terrorism, and various post-9/11 exigencies.

Right or wrong, Trump has masterly stoked a view of America as a nation not only in decline but also in crisis. Today, his slogan of “Make America Great Again” is as captivating as presenting himself as the “Law and Order Candidate.” Like or hate him, unlike Mrs. Clinton, even without any specifics, Trump has been plainspoken on what he says his campaign is about.

Perhaps, we get Hillary’s theme of “Stronger Together”; the implication is enduring. But don’t expect the millennials to also get it. They prefer clear and simple slogans that seem to address their immediate concerns. Besides, togetherness or mere unity has never been a sole panacea to effective leadership, particularly in the American democracy highly esteemed for its competitive party politics.

The second dilemma is that Hillary Clinton lacks in charisma but facing an engrossing showman. Even non voters are glued into the Trump mania—not for any vision for America but for the entertainment value. The nature of his next eccentric gesture is a huge draw. This explains why the Republican nominee, a candidate who wears bêtise like a badge of honor, could draw 4 million more viewers than Clinton during their acceptance speeches. Yet, he continues to trail the democratic opponent in most post-convention polls.

But this apparent failure to elicit enthusiasm does not bode well for the Clinton’s candidacy moving forward. With about three months to go before the election, she can no longer afford the habit of assembling pockets of folks in antique parlors while Trump fills the arenas. The first major party woman nominee direly needs to start attracting larger audiences to deepen her message. While the Republican flag bearer is definitely not electable in his present condition, it is a huge gamble to write him off entirely. The American electorate is very forgiving. Any therapeutic mix of apology from Mr. Trump for his long history of incendiary rhetoric and a sensible pivot to the issues can become a game-changer in an electoral cycle where a vast majority of voters craves change. Moreover, boring campaigns hardly win the White House.

The Democratic nominee can inject the desired gusto by embracing the pop culture to the fullest. But one can still tame the pig without getting into a brawl. A ready game plan, therefore, is to hire a stand-up spokesperson who can match Donald Trump not only in rock-star status but also in simplicity as well as wackiness. A perfect fit is Chris Rock, a trash-talking comedian and actor, who is famous for crafting exciting one-liners. His main assignment is to join every campaign event to translate Mrs. Clinton’s wonky presidential tenors into plain tunes. This cue sure sounds somehow, but that is how low the American politics has fallen.

♦ Dr. SKC Ogbonnia writes from Houston, TX. Contact: SKCOgbonnia@firsttexasenergy.com

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