What Nigeria must learn from the US midterms

At some point in the story, the narrator would get to the name, Donald J. Trump, the 47th President of the United States, perhaps adding, “Saviour of democracy.”

No, it did not begin that way.  But when you look back, every inch of the way, Mr Trump posed as a different prophet.  As a MAGA (Make America Great Again) leader.  He pursued that with so much conviction I thought MAGA meant, “Make America Go Away.”

Until last week.  To watch the results of the US midterm elections on Tuesday night was at once a reminder and a lesson of the byways and pathways of republican democracy.

A central administration gone rogue, driven by a grudge-loaded man unwilling to accept the Constitution, the norms and the institutions that make the system work. A nation driven to the brink by excess, corruption, and arrogance.

And a people retreating to their final and most potent barricade: one man, one vote. At the ballot box and in one remarkable night, the electorate routed Trump into submission.

And so, just two years after he inexplicably sojourned back to the White House, the battered and beleaguered electorate showed him, the Republican Party he had remade in his MAGA image and the entire nation what Americans call the middle finger, the polite equivalent of a soccer red card.

But rather than the work of one night or one group of people, the American triumph of last week was owed to an idea: resistance.  For most of two years, resistance had steadily coursed through institutions and American consciousness like highways through the heartland.

It emerged in one word — NO! —spelt in a million ways, languages and epithets: the courts; courageous protests (sometimes of millions, but often of a single citizen in a street corner with an angry placard), combative academia; lawyers, journalists, and even citizens too upset to be afraid.

Trump set up a Department of Governmental Efficiency under the supervision of Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on earth, allegedly to hunt down Waste, Fraud and Abuse.  It turned in a dubious report.

He dismantled USAID and other international programmes through which the US sought to foster democracy internationally. He remade critical departments in his own image or randomly shrank them.

He insulted and assaulted the country’s cultural pillars of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: the idea that the US is elevated rather than diminished by racist barriers and glass ceilings.

He wanted MAGA to be in power for all time, so he initiated gerrymandering that would ensure more Congressional seats for his party, forgetting that he controlled neither elections nor voters.

Trump does not know what tariffs really are, believing that they are a Swiss Army knife that rips away the hearts of others.  Instead, they destroyed American communities and businesses.

He had sold Americans the fiction that there would be no more wars.  But that was just another lie.

Instead of the cost-of-living war he had promised the American people, he launched a real war, claiming he wanted to make sure Iran would never have a nuclear weapon.  But Iran had signed precisely such a deal with the Barack Obama government.

The cost of staying alive soared.  Suffering multiplied.  ‘American’ became an ugly word.  Being American became a question or even an offence.

Meanwhile, Trump and his family made a lot of money.  He was so rich, so MAGA, so Trump, he became blind to pain and rejection.  He built monuments to himself.

He revelled in rejection.  He insulted people.  Inflicted nicknames like a child.  Thanks to his love of childish nicknames, “Talafreako” vaulted James Talarico to the Senate.

And then on Tuesday, impatient American voters officially attacked the ballot box and scythed the world’s most powerful man down to the level of his shoelaces.

In hindsight, Trump was re-engineering American democracy, not destroying it.  In deep-Republican Texas, for example, he helped democracy improbably snatch a Senatorial seat and the governorship from his party.  He helped Democrats acquire control of the Texas House for the first time in more than two decades.

In Georgia, for another, Democrats obtained a majority in the Georgia House of Representatives for the first time in over two decades.  Women won at least seven of the key state government positions.  Black women.

Trump’s refusal to admit the fundamental principles that hold America together saw America welcome not only the first Black woman to be elected governor of any state but also the first Black governor of Florida.

Because of Trump, America is now awash with many firsts, including the first Muslim senator, the first openly gay male senator, and the first elected Hispanic governors in Texas and in California.

The firsts everywhere last week are attributable to Trump’s determination to stand by democracy by attacking its foundations.  In the end, he brought down the very barriers he had sought to erect or fortify.

Trump returned to power reinstating false and discredited claims of widespread fraud in his 2020 defeat, a ruse by which he sought illegal control over the 2026 midterms.

His spectacular voter rebuke – which is continuing as votes are still being counted, and his party is still losing—is largely owed to American courts repeatedly resisting him.

So resounding is his rejection that he has not once uttered the word “fraud” about the experience.  It is the rule of law which provided the foundation for his implosion at the polls.

For Nigerians who are wondering what the principal lesson is for Nigeria, it is that democracy is simply the rule of law, which we lack.  We modelled our constitution on the US and arrogantly profess the same principles, but our politicians, officials, and institutions have yet to commit to it.

We prepare for the 2027 elections, for instance, not just in the middle of the deep and widespread insecurity that the ruling APC has failed to combat in 12 years, but with the campaigns of other parties routinely attacked.  That is not the spirit of the law.  It is not democracy.

Nor is it democracy that the federal legislature has practically merged into the executive, ignoring its constitutional oversight responsibilities.

What about the continuing chaos in Nigeria’s electoral commission?  A few days ago, Lawrence Bayode, the commission’s ICT director, confirmed on television that some of their officials used their access to compromise Nigeria’s voter records, including profiles with fake photographs and biometric details.

“It’s bad,” he said of the scale of the problem, “I’ve seen what they did, and it’s horrible.”  He described public trust in INEC as “On ground zero.”

This confession ought to have been made by commission chairman Joash Amupitan, under whom the credibility of INEC has continued to sink.  If Amupitan loves Nigeria more than he loves power, now is the time to resign.

Most of all, and as I have advocated for many years, if Nigeria truly desires credible elections, we must implement the Justice Uwais Report.

In 2010, former Governor Bola Tinubu insisted on the implementation of the report.  In 2009, he again advocated its implementation.

Is President Bola Tinubu man enough?