IT  has been exactly 175 days since I made my previous contribution as a guest on this page. However, every Tuesday morning from approximately five thousand seven hundred and thirty one miles away before most Nigerians wake up, I make it a point of duty to indulge in the quality and enduring work that my friend Yinka Odumakin puts out every week. It is based on this established realism that I want to apologise beforehand that should this contribution not meet the already established high standards that we are used to, that you should please bear with me. I am just a delighted and motivated Nigerian- American with a pragmatic account to appropriate today on the just concluded American election.

A corroborating encounter

I desire to agonisingly share this intimate narrative because it offered me a front row seat access on how the Clintons operate when no one is looking. I hope that it should also remind those who for lack of illumination and relevant experience within the mass of Blacks support Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Based on the long strings of failures and destructive tittle-tattles that appear in every lake they step in, it is almost a foregone conclusion that they will NOT receive any sympathy much less my support and vote. This scrutiny considers Bill and Hillary Clinton one and the same.

Vcast ballots in the presidential election at a polling center in Miami, Florida on November 8, 2016. / AFP PHOTO

Their relationship has never been the typical husband and wife who lead separate professional lives.  They are joined in a robust lucrative political partnership. Before Bill Clinton became President of United States, Hillary was aspiring to succeed him as Governor of Arkansas.

Nearly a decade ago, the following verbal response was uttered in the office of then Nigeria’s First Lady by one of her aides:

“In what country, in what Bank and in which currency would your group like to process this transaction?”

My group members consisted of five individuals who travelled from different places across North America and Europe to Abuja to encourage the Nigerian government to invest and procure a ground breaking product, an HIV Rapid Test Kits manufactured by a Canadian company.

Our undertaking was not for money making for the members as much as it was compassionate in helping to reduce the plague of HIV/AIDS at the time. Our product was self administered with the capability to provide users without supervision, with more than 99 percent precision of their HIV status. The established manufacturing cost of our product was completely subsidised by the World Bank and the Canadian government. We were only allowed to sell the product at an agreed profit margin not to exceed $3 per kit. The ratio of the profit margin to the manufacturing cost was less than ten percent.

My group was well aware that the Clinton Foundation through the Clinton Health Access Initiative,CHAI, trumpeted a comparable product. We knew their product required refrigeration and was more expensive. It also required a medical practitioner of sort to be effectively administered. We were very confident that for all intents and convenient purposes, our product was far more superior and less expensive.

We also visited Ghana where we sought the unique advocacy of former President Jerry Rawlings to serve as our spokesperson. Rawlings gladly accepted to take on the task of helping to promote the awareness in kind with two conditions. First, we had to provide him with twelve of the HIV kits so that he can test and determine the HIV status of his entire household. Being a very principled man, he preferred to stand on a firm ground before he can encourage his fellow citizens to verify their HIV status. Secondly, he wanted us to take our product through the appropriate drug regulating agency for approval in Ghana.

The above question in the office of the First Lady was put to us without any understanding whatsoever of the product in question. As far as the First Lady was concerned, this was a valid reason to make a few bucks at the expense of ever credulous Nigerians.

We were highly recommended through an acquaintance of a former Head of State.  We were told we can sell as many as possible at the rate of $100 per kit. The leader of my group who is an outstanding public servant with the Canadian Foreign Service quickly shut down the conversation. This was not a get rich quick venture. Our collective conscience, integrity and his 35 years of dedicated service to his country was not going to be tainted over the snare of a few millions of dollars! In a successful Nigerian criminal enterprise aftermath, the collaborators would have got a share of the plunder based on the country, the bank and the currency question.

Currency question

Less than six months after our visit, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, CHAI, struck a deal with the Nigerian government to sell and distribute their brand of the HIV/AIDS Test Kit. The estimated amount was one hundred and seventy seven ($177) million dollars. For full disclosure, I do not know whether they were offered the same type of arrangement that we turned down. I have also been unable to independently verify that any single Nigerian was tested with the Clinton Foundation product. Given all the known and unknown circumstances, I have to assume the worst in this situation.

Other worrisome issues: In order to fully evaluate a candidate’s suitability for any exalted office such as the presidency of the United States, it is necessary to apply different parameters such as character, aptitude, relevant experience and referrals from private and public sources.  For the sake of a complete review, Hillary Clinton’s spouse, former United States President, William Jefferson Clinton record in office should be factored in.

Bothering on morality and ethics, I was unable to come to terms as to how President Bill Clinton was offered and he accepted a staggering seven hundred thousand dollars ($700,000) each for two 45 minutes speaking engagements in Nigeria. Nigeria’s depressed economic condition and the quality of life for the average Nigerian has to be known by the Clintons. A country where just about most infrastructures and public institutions are completely broken down with workers being owed several months of unpaid wages. It is unimaginable that he will accept any fees of that magnitude in any economically depressed locality in the United States. In the United States the Clinton’s speaking fees average about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($250,000)

Lucrative travel business

In 1993 after their inauguration, Bill and Hillary Clinton fired the White House Travel Office employees after serving seven Presidents to facilitate a takeover of the lucrative travel business by their wealthy Hollywood friends. This led to the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, the Government Accounting Office,GAO, Department of Justice and the Oversight Committee. The Clintons under sworn testimony claimed that the firing was due to financial misdeeds but the investigating agencies cleared the employees on all counts. The Clintons were forced to remove their friends and reinstate the employees.

The Bill Clinton Foundation is currently under massive probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Prior to the eye popping revelations by the Wiki Leaks, it has been previously suspected that the Foundation is a cesspool of corruption and vehicle for exchanging government favours for donations when Hillary was Secretary of State. How do you explain the millions of dollars in donations that came from known rogue and repressive regimes in the Middle East? The fact that their only daughter Chelsea had to use the Foundation money to pay for her wedding when her parents’ net worth is conservatively estimated at a quarter of a billion dollars is reprehensible.

As Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton fought for two years to keep Boko Haram off the United States government terrorist watch list. The faceless sponsors of Boko Haram and their friends donated generously to the Clinton Foundation which explains her position at the time. The classification requested by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Justice would have given them the legal backing to devote appropriate resources to fight Boko Haram. Hillary Clinton, the self proclaimed champion of women issues failed the Chibok young girls when they were abducted a few months later.

Hillary Clinton’s shortcomings and failures in public service have for a very long time eclipsed her mammoth political ambition. It is beyond me as to why her sponsors failed to see what the American electorates saw one week ago. While I concede that she may be incredibly charming, mesmerizing and eloquent, I tend to share the same sentiments with her detractors who believe that she should be in jail.

After a combined 32 years of service for the Clintons as Arkansas Attorney General and Governor, President of United States, Senator of the great State of New York and Secretary of State, it is my considered opinion that the American people duly sent them into overdue retirement. With her defeat at the polls, the late Ambassador Stevens who was murdered in Libya along with three other Americans due to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s incompetence and the increasingly marginalised Christian minority groups all over the world including Nigeria may have grounds to smile.

Enduring superpower

In conclusion, it appears that providence assigns every American President in my lifetime some sort of a tacit but distinctive task that sustained or strengthened the Union. Over the years, America being the only enduring superpower has actually overstretched itself beyond what is realistically sustainable in the near future. This conclusion also means that some of America’s significant interests and values which are vital but now appear too small to be noticed may be in jeopardy. One of such interests is the fortitude and success of the Nigerian try out which have suffered serious setbacks in recent time.

It is my enthusiastic conviction that a Trump presidency will revert and revive not only such forgotten interests and values but will also pursue with focus a reinvigorated American interest. The rate of return on American involvements, generosity and limitations has been less than satisfactory. The financial bleeding that adds daily to their indebtedness is simply not sustainable. The world especially the small and weak, needs a strong and vibrant America. It is my reckoning that America will emerge stronger under a President Trump.

Hillary Okoronkwo wrote from Michigan,USA.