One more thing made clear by the outcome of the American presidential election of November 5 is that politics and many other things connected to it are aspects of the human sciences driven by human actions that can be explained, but not always with mathematical precision. When pollsters make projections within “the margin of error” and pretend to have unearthed incontrovertible scientific verities, they deceive nobody but themselves.

Those who followed the pollsters and the results of the different polls that predicted a close race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris could not have anticipated the comprehensive victory of the Republican Party candidate. The polls, or is it the pollsters, failed to reckon with human elements and the capacity of human beings to dissemble, put on an act and conceal their inner feelings. 

The pollsters, including most of the American media organisations that also conducted their own polls,  showed bias in the manner they went about their business and the people told them exactly what they thought the pollsters wanted to hear. Going by the nature of the American electoral system, there was nothing close about the election. Arizona, the last of the seven so-called battle ground states, was two days ago called for Trump. He has won all seven states, won both the popular and electoral college votes, taken over the Senate and appears poised to add the House of Representatives to it. What is more, Kamala Harris performed worse than Joe Biden did four years ago on key issues and among important demographics such as women, working class men, Black and Hispanic men which for long constituted the Democrats’ base. 

Liberal politics, pretentious and perhaps more destructive than its conservative counterpart that is less bashful about its agenda, seems to have overplayed its hand this time. In addition to the poor economy and immigration, the more consequential issues were those connected to race, gender and sexual and reproductive rights. On these key points that overlaid anxieties about the economy and border control, Americans generally opted to be conservative. But the Whites, in particular, are taking off the mask and showing their hand more openly despite their reluctance to say so. The result of all this is that the Democrats were roundly walloped and rejected in a manner that must have felt viscerally personal for their candidate. 

It was, in fact, both a personal and collective rejection. For one, America has shown that it is not ready as at 2024 for a female president, worse yet an African American or South Asian woman. Neither are they any more enamoured of that type of extreme liberalism that Democrats-led administrations have been exporting to different parts of Africa and other countries of the Global South in the name of minority rights and political correctness (read wokeism). Much of what is going on in American politics today is the backlash from the emergence of its first Black president in 2008. It is the White push back against being told what values to hold dear. Trumpism and the determination to Make America Great Again signposts White America’s rejection of “diversity”. Diversity-spawned changes might just be too fast and dizzying for the majority to swallow and they are fighting back. 

The conclusion to be reached from all of this is that America has been living a lie in the last 12 years of Democrats-led administrations. The mask is being taking off with the return of Trump and it would take a few more years of White triumphalism, right wing politics and, perhaps, the global alienation that must follow its return to isolationism, for America to recalibrate its ways. Where were the Nigerian election monitors in this election? I hope they observed cases of voter-inducement with food, money and a whiff of violence garnishing?

We saw some of this during the British election where Rishi Sunak distributed snacks. Trump shared food, gave a woman money in one of the battle ground states. Elon Musk spent a million dollars  daily in these states in the last days of the election. Were there not cases of machines malfunction in different places? Let Yiaga Africa and their cousins in the election monitoring and NGO business go easy on Nigerians as the Ondo State governorship election comes up this weekend.  

The Nigerian version of the American political lies are no less evident in the action of those now yapping about the prosecution of “minors” that were arrested and detained during the #EndBadGovernance protests last August. A huge chunk of those responsible for political malfeasance in the Northern part of Nigeria are minors. They are the foot soldiers often deployed to compromise electoral outcomes either as voters or vendors of violence. They may be minors but the consequences of their actions are neither minor nor easy. Proof of this was in the degree of violence many of them unleashed during the protests, looting businesses and homes and attacking and destroying government offices. It’s people like these minors with or under the control of older people that are responsible for the many cases of religious riots and the brigandage of extra-judicial murders that go with them. 

Suddenly, some Nigerian human rights activists are not only calling for their release but are demanding that Abuja take up their education. Is this as compensation for their crime? Why are knowledgeable people suddenly acting ignorant or engaged in false liberalism? I thought these children were arrested in identifiable states? Who should be held liable for their lack of education? What would happen if every juvenile case of criminal liability is treated this way? Yes, they are minors (which is not to say that they are babies or idiots) and their case could have been handled with care and not the official insensitivity that resulted in many of them being detained without trial for so long and ultimately left malnourished. 

There should be consequences for actions. If because some people don’t like the present president and so decide that the door should be left open for all kinds of misconduct, we might be asking for real trouble sometime soon. Nobody needs this pretence that is increasingly introduced into public discourse and the serious issues of nation building. It clouds good judgement.

Why should Ali Ndume describe as dead on arrival tax reform bills he has not read? There are four of these bills and yet this Senator could openly say that he would not read them before dismissing them offhand, perhaps, because of the VAT element in it that he and his political ilk find objectionable? What’s his job as a legislator if not studying and working on bills? How about our Donald Trump wannabe, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and his dream of what could have been? Where does politics end and statesmanship begin?