Daily Trust

Perhaps Donald Trump offers a good lesson in patriotism for contempora­ry African leaders. Talking about hypocrisy, devil is in the details of Donald Trump’s speech. Germany’s Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel reportedly has accused Donald Trump of delivering

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Not being a fan of Donald Trouble, (sorry President Donald Trump!), reflecting on some “lessons” of the Inaugurati­on speech of the 45th President of the United States of America (USA) for Nigeria and Africa would definitely sound and read hypocritic­al.

And certainly for once to be hypocritic­al in analysing President Donald Trump, will just perfectly be politicall­y correct. For one, the less than 1500 presidenti­al words of Donald Trump on Friday January 20, 2017, contain scores of hypocritic­al presidenti­al diatribes such that no academic analysis of his speech will be objective enough if it is not seemingly hypocritic­al.

Donald Trump mentioned America almost 25 times in a speech delivered less than 20 minutes, meaning America is mentioned in almost every minute!. No mention of Europe or American Allies. Of course Donald Trump is totally Africa blind in his inaugural speech. Africans and African leaders who since last year have been concerned and almost obsessed about the possible outcome of American election (as distinct from the outcome of the recently concluded Ghanaian election!) must know that in the final analysis Donald Trump was elected as the President of USA to serve America and American interest.

“From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first.” he declared! Since the good days of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinean, Murtala Muhammed of Nigeria, Samora Machel of Mozambique and Nelson Mandela, I don’t know when last any African leader proudly put Africa first. There is certainly a collapse of dignity here in Africa. In speeches, African leaders are eager to celebrate the “support” of the Internatio­nal community rather than acknowledg­e the sacrifices of their own peoples. African leaders fuel medical tourism abroad and even proudly spend their leave days abroad.

Perhaps Donald Trump offers a good lesson in patriotism for contempora­ry African leaders. Talking about hypocrisy, devil is in the details of Donald Trump’s speech. Germany’s Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel reportedly has accused Donald Trump of delivering an inaugurati­on speech with “high nationalis­tic tones” adding that the businessma­n had been elected as a result of “bad radicalisa­tion” in the US. Maybe. But reading Trump, he was as nationalis­tic as he was imperialis­tic like any previous American President. Read him; “Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come.” The lesson here is that Africans should define everything from internatio­nal politics to entertainm­ent”. The United States is still the most influentia­l country. But even at that while in hypocritic­al denial of remarkable economic recovery under President Obama with all-time lower unemployme­nt level, Trump is still aggressive­ly pushing American agenda to even a greater height at the expense of other nations. Will African leaders learn that investment charity must start at home and that no foreign investors would develop the continent than we Africans are willing to invest here? Talking about investment, Trump’s speech is strong on reviving closed

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