POLITICS: OUR LEADERS NEED TO LEARN

MUHAMMADU BUHARI

History is about to repeat itself if feelers coming out from Trump transition committee is anything to go by. President elect, Donald Trump held meeting today with Mitt Romney.

Romney was one of Donald Trump’s arch critics who described Trump as phony and fraud during the Republican primaries. He was even at one time contemplating running when it seems Trump will not make it and he was the head of #NeverTrump before and during the RNC Convention.

Romney told CNN in June that a Trump presidency could bring “trickle-down racism, trickle-down bigotry, trickle-down misogyny” to the nation. Trump said Romney “choked like a dog” in his failed bid to unseat President Obama in the 2012 race.

Today, Donald J. Trump is the elected President of the United States in waiting and in trying to build his team, has invited Mitt Romney as a potential pick for Secretary of State in the new administration.

The same scenario happened in 1860 when Abraham Lincoln ran for President of the United States. Edwin McMasters Staton has said of him thus: “You don’t want a tall, lanky, ignorant man like this as the President of the United States”.

The “tall, lanky, ignorant man” he was denouncing was Abraham Lincoln who became the 16th President of the United States.

While Lincoln was campaigning to be the President, Stanton was his bitterest critic who went around the country, denouncing, ridiculing and caricaturing Lincoln who at 6 feet, 4 inches was such an ungainly figure that a biographer wrote that “his eyebrows cropped out like a huge rock on the brow of a hill; his long sallow face was wrinkled.” If anybody must be President of the United States, Stanton was determined that that man must not be Lincoln.

While Lincoln campaigned, Stanton also went about denouncing him in highly derogatory speeches and articles, distinguishing himself as Lincoln’s chief public enemy.

But, despite Stanton, Lincoln won. In assembling his cabinet, Lincoln stunned the world when he nominated Stanton as his Secretary of war.

“Mr. Lincoln, are you a fool?” his close adviser charged, capturing the mood of all Lincoln associates. “Do you know what Mr. Stanton has been saying about you? Did you read all those derogatory statements that he made about you?”

Lincoln replied, “Oh yes, I know about it; I read about it; I’ve heard him myself. But after looking over the country, I find that he is the best man for the job.”

I see the same thing happening between Trump and Mitt Romney. Can this kind of thing happen in our own Country Nigeria? The answer is NO!!

Buhari after coming to power in 2015, instead of tapping from the progress made by the GEJ administration; both in the Agricultural sector and numerous other sectors, rather scattered everything in vengeance manner.

Today Nigeria is lying prostrate and there is no clue that this man knows where he is going. I am learning; Politics without bitterness.

Country first!!

By Cassidy Osuoha