Two Hashtags – #EndSars. #EndTrump

The blood on the streets will never dry. These young Nigerians would not be cowed. So, they howled SoroSoke! Still, the rest of the world barely moved… The names of those martyrs of the June 12 protests that washed these politicians to power may have long been forgotten but their blood is not dry and their children, mothers, wives, husbands and friends are now back on the streets.

#EndSARS. I have always thought that if INDIFFERENCE were human, he would be a Nigerian, a deep black skinned man of about six feet tall, born of an Ibo mother, fathered from the loins of a Hausa/Fulani emir, and, by the same lineage of happenstance; raised by his godfather from Orisunmibare in the suburbs of Ile Ife and Ondo. Along the way I had concluded that this Nigerian character would have caught a scar across his face – a permanent index of the civil war, deepened by the pains of the shredded threads of a collective wasted dream for nationhood.

In the midst of this chaos that trailed his birth and growth into adulthood, he would have witnessed many nights of pogrom, one of which inevitably led to his father’s brutal decapitation at the hands of men who with hands still warm in his father’s blood, hastily got out of their khaki camouflage to rape his mother.  His daily experiences living in the Nigerian space would have grown into a consciousness of acute despondence, then, Indifference and finally death. But the month of October 2020, has changed all that for me and I am not easily persuaded.

This October in Nigeria, our desperate youthful humanity finally unleashed its angst against the long years of profoundly immoral and malevolent leadership in the country. Nigerians, again were led by the youth as it has been in our recent history — for those who remember the June 12 protests, the Ali-Must-Go protests and the police killing of Kunle Adepeju at the University of Ibadan. But #EndSARS is different, seems to have more stamina and has become the most violent so far. It was not meant to be violent, for the protesters were peaceful, even turning the protests into carnivals. It was our government of tyranny that brought the violence and bloodshed. First, we were all faked with a rebirth of SWAT. Then came a line of presidential ineptitude and lies, further fouled with the open-mouthed murder of young men and women by the Nigerian military.

The blood on the streets will never dry. These young Nigerians would not be cowed. So, they howled SoroSoke! Still, the rest of the world barely moved. Could it be that they remember the June 12 protests on the streets of Nigeria and how it gave birth to NADECO which they enthusiastically embraced but was hijacked and leveraged into political opportunism by the same group that now rules Nigeria – a parade of brazen thieves and immoral opportunists? The names of those martyrs of the June 12 protests that washed these politicians to power may have long been forgotten but their blood is not dry and their children, mothers, wives, husbands and friends are now back on the streets.

Yes, the #EndSARS protesters are the children of the martyrs, living out their own destinies. Nigeria’s band of ruling idiots should know that the bell is now tolling and the new protesters are weaponized by the hunger, unemployment, brutality and loss they have been taught to covet. They will, and must be, ceaseless in their pursuit until Nigeria is just and equitable.

We in the Naijarican diaspora of all ages, tribes and temperament are united by our collective appreciation of the guts and tenacity displayed. We are poised, again, to stake our resources to #EndSARS, #EndPoliceBrutality, #EndCorruptGovernance, #EndWaste in Nigeria.  For now, while there is a restive lull, our attention is directed at the most pressing Hashtag in our own yard and voting centers as we vote to EndTrump and #ElectBidenHarris. 

#EndTrump. In America, this is the season of that ever-nagging ‘Hamletian’ equivocation in an active democracy -– to be or not to be.  This time, the contrasts are as sharp as they can be. You have a Joe Biden who was Vice President to the first Black Man to ever serve as President of the United States. Biden has now chosen as his running mate; Senator Kamala Harris a first-generation daughter of immigrant Black and Indian parents. If, nay, when Biden and Harris win, she would have crossed the hurdle and become the first ever female Vice President of the USA. This feat that puts her in the history books and on the path for a chance at the Presidency. The team of Biden-Harris came out of a crowded Democratic primary. Their opposition from the Republican Party, is the incumbent President Donald Trump.

DONALD Trump is a MORON, an enigma of fecund stupidity and violence. For it is an ample endowment of stupidity that breeds the dangerous combination of inflated ego, deep paranoia and cold humanity which the Greeks first identified as the characteristics of the IDIOT. Those ancient founders of western democracy, the philosophers of Greece identified three groups of people in every society. The first is known as the IDIOT, also coded by psychologists as a NARCISSIST. An ‘Idiot’/Narcissist is a self-centered, self-serving, vain individual who is always out for personal gain. He responds only to his own personal pleasures, and is a slight upgrade of the Barbarian.

A cold-hearted blustering bag of gaffes and lies, Trump is an idiot/narcissist who spends valuable hours in front of the mirror painting himself orange to cover his natural wrinkles, and wigs himself fake-blonde.  And we make the great error of judgement when in our own conceit, we ignore a moron with power. A wise and knowledgeable mind is tempered, especially when invested with power. He comes with compassion and high ethics. Such was the image, presence and meaning of America for the rest of the world before Trump; a country wise enough to hide its ego and violent inclinations, courageous enough to wage war with itself in periodic confrontations against the inherent contradictions of its history and wealth. But Morons know no shame, no decorum.

A moron with a ‘bigly’ mouth, we now know Trump as a wannabe fascist, a racist and the most unrelenting harbinger of unimaginable wickedness and brutality on his society and other humans. He lies without dropping a spittle, cheats without moving a muscle and is an abusive husband, father, serial womanizer totally bereft of moral or ethics. Donald Trump is an idiot, a relentless narcissist of pure Americana with an “excessive need for admiration, disregard for others’ feelings, an inability to handle any criticism, & a sense of rabid entitlement.” Donald Trump has been a vacuous, bumbling capsule of foulness.

THE Second group of people identified by the Greeks are those classified as the ‘Tribes’ – individuals with deep tribal and tribalistic sentiments. They are incapable of thinking beyond their own tribe as tribe is their God and tribalism is their religion. Sounds familiar?  Sounds Nigerian? In America, they are the self-hating bigots whose fascist propensities have been given new currency by the idiot Trump. His blood sizzling with bigotry, it caught fire with the “tribes”.

A belligerent personality, Trump has ruled this democracy of diverse ethnicities and orientation, like a tribalist, a wannabe fascist, pitching one group against another, making enemies with America’s best allies across the world and befriending those similarly prone to the dark sides of governance like himself – Putin of Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil amongst others.

With a sneak electoral victory in 2016, riding on the false self-promoting narrative of being a successful businessman, an outsider non-politician with a great knack for making deals. 

As we now know, Trump is a dud, a failed conman “billionaire” It is known that his bid for President was a publicity move, designed to burnish his image and nothing else. His time in debates and rallies in 2016 and in this election period, was all spent abusing his opponents. In his ‘business man’ past, are three bankruptcies, losing $1 billion dollars in ten years. He announces himself a genius, but we now know that his sister wrote his entrance exams for him to make it to the University, where he continued cheating for his degrees. He makes such outlandishly “Olodo” imbecilic assertions that the human kidney is to be found in the heart.

As if we were not persuaded of his dunce status, he lately instructed the nation to drink bleach as cure for Covid-19! He has failed to work with the legislature, ruling by Executive Orders like the old decrees of Nigeria’s military dictators. He spent most of his time playing golf and writing tweets, sowing division and bigotry across the land. He stole about 500 children from their parents who had showed up at America’s border seeking refuge from the tyrants of South America. His friends in business and political associates are either in prison or on their way there. His cabinet became a revolving door whose hinges finally fell off. A racist of high hate grades, he has kept our mouths aghast with his stunning and prolific factory of lies, which he labels ‘Alternative Truths’.  In fact, he has been an unmitigated failure at everything good and success at everything untoward.

Donald Trump the ‘Idiot’ has basked in the adulation he received from the gullible and self-hating swabs of American Tribalists, predominating their minds with his authoritarian manifestos of evil, defying decency, avoiding truth in logic or science, trampling upon the margins of social ethics. Now he must be gone with his ‘basket of deplorables’, the ‘Tribes’ of racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islam-a-phobic Americans.

Along with our American compatriots, Naijaricans had raged on the streets again, and again, howling ‘Me Too’ ‘I Can’t Breathe’ and ‘Black Lives Matter! Yes, we are ‘Black’ here, where colour is an aggregate for hatred, privilege and bigotry. Just as in Nigeria, we too were faked with white supremacist militia, Presidential ineptitude and lies, cuddled with more fatal police brutalities.  It now feels as if our worlds have converged. And there was and is Covid-19, sending many into unemployment, even as the calls for financial help from home picked up a pace.

If you have observed, Trump is woven of the same cloth as his Nigerian political counterparts. For immediate comparison, look for Dino Melaye and Oh, Adams Oshiomhole, whose political thuggery and sheer ugliness – of body, mind and mission – make even an unbeliever look up in amazement at the creative genius and patience of God. In the annals of Nigeria’s political history, Oshiomole is to be found where shame competes with irrelevance.  This ‘Adamu’ who on his way to his own Damascus, became an Adams. From Labour agitator to Labour denigrator. When Nigerians actualise the revolution, I say please do not forget Adams. Please do not forget to sing “bye, bye to Rederede. Bye, bye to ‘Oshi’.

For us and Oshi’s American cousin Donald Trump, we will not stop at the polls alone. We are citizens who with our skills and knowledge must join others in cleaning house of Trump’s odious pollution of America’s democratic institutions. If America’s democracy truly works, there will be a change of government in January 2021. Former Vice President Joseph Biden ran the campaign leading in the polls at every turn. He projects and is readily embraced as a member of the third group classified to be found in a democratic society as the ‘CITIZEN’ – one who understands civility, is skillful and knowledgeable, seeks to work for others before himself. We now know that morons are everywhere, laughing when we cry, jeering as they sing their Halleluiah’s of meaningless canticles. But the clock now ticks. This Trump must be dumped. #EndTrump!

• Ojewuyi is Professor and Chairperson, Dept. of Theater, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Illinois, USA