US Election And the Rest of us.

In 1991, former Japanese  Diet member and a leading figure in Japan’s LDP party,  Shintaro Ishihara in his controversial book, “The Japan That Can Say No” argued that racial prejudice was the biggest source of friction between the US and Japan and that it was racial prejudice that made America drop the atomic bombs on Japan and not on Germany. Shintaro believes that White is White,  Black is Black, mixed race is mixed race and Caucasian is Caucasian

My delving into Shintaro’s book is to highlight what is playing out in the US presidential election. As a Nigerian, I shouldn’t be enthusiastic about the American election because the effects of America’s obnoxious economic manipulations are what Nigeria and Nigerians are suffering today. The victory of either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will not impact positively on our struggling economy.
We copied our presidential system of government from America but it is not working for us. I believe that what Nigeria, as a third-world country besieged by ethno-religious, political and economic upheavals, needs is a homegrown democracy and a system of government that suits its peculiarity and diversity and not a borrowed, expensive, complex and corruption-prone foreign system.

A former US Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell had predicted that Nigeria would not exist beyond 2015 but here we are today still as a country.
Note that all the Asian Tigers Like Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia did not emerge into the economic power that they are today through the help of the IMF and World Bank- all domiciled in the US- so, why do our leaders think that these foreign financial institutions will help us grow our economy or improve our economic situation?

Again, note that the IMF and World Bank loans come with harsh conditions:

1. Devalue your national currency
2. Remove all subsidies in your country that their citizens still enjoy in their countries
3. Raise taxes
   Any keen watcher of our economy will notice that the above three trinities of the poisoned chalice are what has exacerbated Nigeria’s economic woes and also fueled the Japa syndrome.
   Today, a car owner who lives in the Lagos mainland but works in the Lagos Island can no longer survive on a N500,000 salary.
   In the past few years, the World Bank and the IMF have been championing the implementation of the earlier stated policies to advance their economic interests and further pauperise Nigeria. Western imperialism is indeed still alive and kicking!
   I believe that most Nigerians owe former President Olusegun  Obasanjo a big apology for aborting his third-term bird. Now, let’s face it: The third term, fourth term or fifth term of Obasanjo would have stabilised this country economically and politically and stopped this waste we engaged in every four years in the name of periodic presidential elections.
   It may interest you to know that Lee Kuan Yew who built Singapore was a Prime Minister for 31 years, 1950-1990. A medical doctor-turned-politician, Mahathir Muhamad served as Malaysia’s Prime Minister cumulatively for 24 years, from 1981 to 2003 and again from 2018 to 2020. Were there unnecessary election interruptions every four years in those countries, the Asian Tigers wouldn’t have grown economically to become the economic powers they are today.
   We as Africans, as Nigerians must learn to prioritize our economic and political interests because Africa does not matter to the West, all that the West is interested in is how to feather its nest. Now, look at this: President Biden called President Tinubu and had a telephone conversation with him principally over the Binance guys woes in Nigeria but nothing was said about the Airpeace ordeal! You can now see what I mean.
   The war in Sudan which began on April 15th 2023 has killed over 62,000 of Sudanese and displaced over 8 million people; what is the West doing about it? Nothing! Is Ukraine more important than Sudan?
   Since the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the former Prime Minister of the Congo, that country which is the richest and the most endowed African country has never known peace. Rwanda is not a diamond-rich country but the Congolese M-23 rebels being sponsored by President Paul Kagame have been stealing and shipping 1 billion dollars worth of Diamonds and Coltan from Congo every year. The West is silent about this because it is complicit in, and is a beneficiary of the rape of the Congo!
   What are we learning from the American election? NOTHING! Their votes will count but do our votes count here? They don’t! The emergence of Kamala Harris as the presidential candidate of the Democrats was a result of a robust debate that exposed the senility of President Biden. In Nigeria, if a robust governorship/ political debate was a yardstick for election victories, the current Governor-elect of Edo state wouldn’t have been elected, though several civil society organisations have already tendered credible evidence to show that his emergence was a product of brazen electoral heist.
   Today, we are all celebrating the emergence of the Nigerian-born Kemi Badenoch as the new leader of Britain’s conservative party, Britain, a multi-racial country that has a Muslim Mayor in its capital, London, a supposed Christian country which recently had an Indian Hindu as Prime Minister, but here in our country, in Lagos in particular, non-Yoruba voters were harassed, intimidated and suppressed in the last election. However, in the UK a Yoruba Nigerian is today a potential Prime Minister! 
   Equally, a lot of Nigerians, irrespective of tribe and religion, have been elected into various political offices in Canada, the UK and the US but in Nigeria, a certain governorship candidate of a certain party in Lagos state in the last election suffered untold hate, bigotry and ethnic profiling simply because he has a Yoruba father and a non- Yoruba mother! Nigeria is sick!
   I’m sure that if Kamala Harris were a white man, the US election wouldn’t have been as divisive and acrimonious as it has so far witnessed. The same racial prejudice espoused by Shintaro in his book is still present in the US! From all ramifications, Trump is a hydra-headed, ultra-racist, a white supremacist yet his grandfather was German and his mother Scottish, so what makes him more American than others?
   I’m sure that if Trump had taken out time to read these two books by an American Economist and Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz, “Globalization And Its Discontents and “The Price of Inequality”, he would have realised that no amount of financial intervention from Elom Musk will stop the Americans from get cheaper Electronic Vehicles from Mexico.
   In my opinion, if, notwithstanding her Indian ancestry, Kamala goes ahead to win the US election 16 years after Obama, a black Kenyan was elected President, it would have shown that America has finally pulled down the racial barriers.
   However, I’m bemused as to what Americans have against electing a female President. Britain which was America’s parent country or if you like, its colonial master, has had female Prime Ministers, One of the most successful Chancellors Germany has produced, Angel Merkel,  is a woman. Under her Chancellorship, the German economy grew progressively. And the world’s biggest democracy , India, was once ruled by a woman, the irrepressible Indira Gandhi. Similarly, the most populous Muslim countries in the world- Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh- were once all ruled by female Prime Ministers, so why the disquiet over Kamala?
   In the final analysis, it is my considered opinion that Trump’s victory would mean that a political misfit and a neophyte, one blinded by ethnic and racial supremacism and prejudices would have taken hold of America, his victory would take America back to the unsettling racial world where white is white, black is black,Caucasian is Caucasian and mixed race is mixed race!
   God forbid!

Osigwe, an advertising Executive and a social affairs commentator, resides in Lagos.

By Ingram Osigwe

http://www.oblongmedia.net