Dr. Chidi Amuta, Executive Editor of USAfricaonline.com and USAfrica magazine (Houston), since 1993, is based in Lagos, Nigeria
The “Jaguda” is a sort of rough -hewn familiar type in Nigerian urban street parlance. He is a general communal presence in such urban neighbourhoods, an outlaw that is often tolerated for his use value in times of trouble. He is a thug owned by the community in case rascality is needed. But the ‘Jaguda’ is publicly disowned when civility is back in demand. As a type, he lives dangerously, wages senseless fights and deploys vile methods and rough language to fend off dangerous adversaries. The ‘Jaguda’ is therefore a communal necessity in times of unplanned trouble requiring insane courage and deliberate rule-breaking for communal good. Communal crisis management has no code for the methods of the Jaguda. A necessary outlaw, the fellow is his own law and makes his own rules. The jaguda’s methods are unpredictable, unscripted and unregulated by the rules of normality. He is capable of multiple risky escapades, . He is a familiar rule breaker who however gets bad necessary things done. The Jaguda’s methods are usually unorthodox and even lawless but his results justify his unusual methods. Only communities in dire desperate scarcity of sensible leadership cede the throne to a jaguda as king. The result is always a whirlwind of unimaginable consequences.
The recent triumph of Donald Trump in the US presidential elections looks like a vindication of the Jaguda as a leadership type in America’s political culture. He has been in Washington before. The first time he defeated Hilary Clinton, he shocked the mainstream international liberal media. In all our reading of the polls and projections, we were dead sure that Trump would be defeated. But we were dead wrong. Reflecting then on Trump’s initial victory, I felt in good company: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Financial Times, The Cable News Network (CNN) and indeed the entire gamut of influential global media and world leaders. We all gave the Manhattan real estate merchant with a discoloured hair patch skimpy chance. It has happened again. The media and the elite gave Trump skimpy chance against Kamala Harris this time around. But we were wrong again. Trump is now a reality that America and indeed the world has to live with and deal with.
Trump’s trail was untidy enough to deny him the presidency this time around. We concluded that a man with such a rough first term and a pile of criminal indictments and civil infractions could not possibly win a re-entry into the White House. In mistaking politics for Sunday School morality, we were wrong again. Trump won an even more robust victory over the Democrats’ Kamala Harris, a nice, ever smiling aunty next door -type candidate of the Democrats. But see what we have? Donald Trump is US president imminent. As Garrison Keillor wrote in The Washington Post of 9th November when Trump first won, : “Raw ego and proud illiteracy have won out, and a severely learning-disabled man with a real character problem will be president.” In the contest against Hilary Clinton back then, easily one of his signature verbal indiscretions was at the final debate when he interrupted Hillary Clinton on the debate podium: “Nasty Woman!” Now, perhaps we can all greet Trump in this euphoric moment by shouting: “Nasty man!”
Yet, whether we like it or not, both Trump I and Trump Ii are products and outcomes of democracy. As it turns out, every now and again in history, democracy delivers an illegitimate child. Adolf Hitler was one. Closer to this copy is Silvio Berlusconi, another licentious and noisy moneybag who straddled over Italy for decades. Here comes another, Trump, a loud, foul -mouthed and unstable Manhattan real estate vendor with a scant knowledge of government.
One term in the White House and four years out in the cold rough and tumble of ordinary life have reinforced Mr. Trump’s credentials as a icensesd thug and unashamed rascal, a quitessentail jaguda as king. He is as comfortable in the humiliation of the courtroom docks as he is in corporate boardrooms. He has now won both the Electoral College and Popular Votes by a wide margin for a return to the White House with a familiar drunken swagger. A publicly licensed thug and convicted felon is perhaps the most dangerous burden that a democracy can inflict on itself. But as they say, it is what it is. The people have spoken. We can only speculate on the prospects of a second Trump Presidency both for the US and the rest of the world.
Yet the Agbero or Jaguda as a type of political hero has in recent times emerged as a democratic outcome. It is not only in America. It has happened elsewhere. Trump has expressed an appetite to use the military to fight the “enemies within” the US, meaning his political opponents. The Pillipines” Duterte used summary executions to combats drug lords and sundry criminals and open repression to fight press freedom. Hungsry’s Viktor Orban fights his opponents as viciously as external aggressors. Vladimir Putin has virtually exterminated his political opponents, adversarial journalists and dissidents using assassinations, targeted poisoning, gangster style street executions and targeted bombings etc to ensure he remains the last man standing on the Russian power podium.
Democratic populism, illiberal democracy. Neo nationalism and creeping authoritarianism are all political and ideological contexts in which this new type of leader – the jaguda- have sneaked back into our political reality. In previous eras, fascism and communist totalitarianism and military despotism allowed for the emergence of Hitler, Mussolini and their Latin American clones.
This latest electoral victory does not absolve Mr. Trump of the heinous negatives that have become the trademarks of his previous tenure and track record. The man remains a racist, bigot, misogynist, merchant of hate and unscrupulous businessman. His political message for America at home remains a divisive one. The best that can be expected from his presidency going forward would at best be a moderation or modulation of these tendencies forced by public opinion and stiff opposition.
While waiting for formal inauguration, Trump has been rehearsing new Jaguda antics, sowing the seeds of catastrophic upheaval. Right from the confirmation hearings on his appointments by the Senate. He has nominated a slew of controversial persons for positions for which they are either not qualified or have baggages of controversy that would make them difficult to confirm. For Health and Human Services, he has nominated Robert Kennedy Jr., a man whose controversial views on public heath issues with annoy drug and health majors. He initially nominated Mr. Matt Gaetz for Attorney General and stuck to the choice until a barrage of evidence surfaced that a Congressional committee report had indicted the man for serial misdeeds ranging from sexual harassment, sex with minors and sundry racketeering.
Similarly, he nominated Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence , a top National Security lob even though she is a known admirer and advocate of known US adversaries like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. His nominee for Secretary of Defense , Pete Hegseth, is a veteran of slim executive experience of defense and national security issues at the high level who happens to be a television anchor. Unlike in his first term when he deliberately went star hunting for people of gigantic stature, he has now opted for minimals, people who are loyal to him and would rely on his approval to get anything done. From the relative inexperience of some of his nominees to their questionable track records, there is evidence that Mr. Trump prefers to appoint mostly people whose competence and experience is thin but whose loyalty to him is unquestionable. Clearly, the confirmation hearings for most of these nominees will be turbulent on the floor of the Senate and only serve Trump to divide and rule the Senate.
In the area of foreign relations, he has been tossing potentially incendiary foreign policy propositions. He would rather make Canada an additional US state after imposing a 25% tariff on all imports from Canada. He advances the naïve notion that the United States can use economic blackmail to turn Canada into America’s 52nd state. He would pursue his border war agaist Mexico and hurriedly ship home illegal Mexican immigrants living in the US He would like to rename the Gulf of Mexico into the “Gulf of America”. More bizarrely, he would revoke the Panama Canal Treaty and retake control of the Canal. On Gaza, he has warned Hamas to hurry uo on the release of hostages in return for an Israeli seize fire or “all hell will be let loose” in the region. He has expressed interest in annexing Greenland as a US territory. Barely a fortnight to is second inauguration, his son, Donald Jr. ,has jetted off to Greenland on a tourism or exploratory trip. He has reiterated his first term threat to reduce US financing and support of NATO and leave the Europeans to pay most of their defense and security bills.
Taken together, the totality of Trump’s pre-inauguration foreign policy bluater has the potential of turning the world as we have known it upside down. Any attempt to forcefully take over Greenland will upset relations with Denmark, the sovereign authority over Greenland. Animosity over Greenland with Denmark would be a head-on collision with the European Union and NATO. Notjust that. The Russian share a border with Greenland and have an obviously strategic interest in the status of Greenland as a free territory for scientific and military exploits. Canada can hold out on its own and align with Mexico to mobilize the rest of the Organization of American States against US hegemony. A confrontation with Panama over the Canal will antagonize most of Latin America and earn Panama the financial support of China which is already a beneficiary of the present status of the Panama Canal.
Mr. Trump may not understand that the world as we know it is sustained on long standing alliances and alignments. The global stability on which America’s hegemony depends is built on the sustainability of these global alliances. To pursue a foreign policy that upsets many of these alliances is toturn the world upside down and keep America busy fighting fires that it may have lit by the actions of its rascally political leadership.
It is easy to dismiss these threats to our world order as part of Trump’s familiar bluster aimed at advancing his transactional style of presidency. It is a known feature of Mr. Trump’s method to increase the dramatic intensity of his reign by throwing up such hair- brained propositions. It earns him global media attention. It sends the leaders of the target countries into a panic mode. At bottom isd the inevitable question: what concession does Trump want to extract?
Meanwhile, Trump’s overloaded moral baggage remains alive in the form of his numerous court cases and legal proceedings. A New York judge has slammed an conviction on Trump in his hush money case, insisting that he remains guilty but will not serve a jail term on account of his presidential immunity. Trump’s request for a Supreme Court intervention to prevent the sentencing has fallen flat. He has hurled invectives at the judge and threatened fire and brimstone. The judge remains determined to sentence him, making him the first convicted person to be sworn in as President.
Mr. Trump is not just a casual Lone Wolf political rascal. He is a lead participant in a growing worldwide political trend. He just happens to have sprouted in a most unlikely political environment- the United States. He is pushing the extreme limits of a far right conservative tendency with the assistance of people like Elon Musk. His disruptive politics has a context. He is a disciple in a tradition where people like Nigel Farage of the United Kingdom and a bit of Marie Le Pin in France are timid advocates. Trump is a harbinger of a new version of conservative populism which is targeting liberal democracy. He is coming at his political agenda and ideological onslaught with familiar instruments- economic nationalism, trade isolationism, tariff barriers, strict immigration controls and the reawakening of ethnic and racial myths. Above all else, the economic nationalism of this new conservatism is likely to further enrich the super rich and keep the poor content with inflation reduction gimmicks. Trump is made more dangerous by his American location.
Yet, Trump’s single most prized leadership trait is his admiration of ‘strong’ leadership defined in terms of the ability of leaders to bend the popular will to do their personal biddings, all in the name of their nations. Trump has repeatedly brandished such counter democratic or outright authoritarian figures as Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Kim Jung Un as his preferred leadership models.
This strange leadership preference is perhaps part of the interest in the dramatic essence of the Trump phenomenon. As an outcome of a democratic election, the emergence and re-emergence of Donald Trump as US President is an interesting proposition in the evolution of global democratic culture. Democracy in its glory place has given birth to an authoritarian ruler, its direct opposite aim. In other words, can a democracy in its maturation give birth to an outcome that is capable of enthroning an autocracy? Is there a possibility that authoritarianism and liberal democracy can be born by the same mother from the same womb? Political scientists may indeed encounter in Donald Trump an interesting subject matter.
Trump’s familiar assault on conventional media fits into the character of this new disruptive neo-conservative tendency. During his chaotic first tenure, he challenged the concept of the truth and fact as bedrocks of journalism we have come to know it. A man who used the power of the media to burst into political limelight has been intent on undermining the foundation of the media!
That earlier time, it took the unexpected eruption of the Corona pandemic to stop Trump from upturning the world order and upending the very foundations of America’s order. Now the Jaguda President is back with a far more convincing electoral mandate.
Trump is largely a bit of suspense theatre, an exciting departure from the humdrum drabness of politics in Washington. The man is a decisive departure from the language and mannerisms of the crass theatre of every parliament in every national seat of power. Anticipating Trump’s impending landfall is sufficiently suspenseful theatre full of questions and uncertainties and open questions
Will he send the military after his political opponents? Will he send the US military to annex Greenland? Will he forcefully retake the Panama Canal? Will he engage China in a trade war over tariffs? Will hje impose tariff on all imports from Canada and therefore blackmail Canada into becoming the 51st state of the US? Is he likely to arm Israel to wipe out the Palestinians of Gaza if Hamas fails to reach a seize fire agreement with Israel by the time he is inaugurated?
There is an impending historic explosion in the event that Trump 2 proceeds with some of his previewed foreign policy gambits. In a world that is faced with a clear and present confrontation between freedom and democracy on one hand and growing authoritarianism on the other, Trump is somewhat anachronistic. Here is the leader of the so-called ‘free world’ rehearsing openly to lead his nation in the fashion of the worst authoritarians.
