Presidents Buhari and Trump in Washington
BY TAIWO FAROTIMI
The London-based Financial Times created some ripples with a report over the weekend quoting President Donald Trump of the United States allegedly making a degrading comment about Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari . According to the paper, President Trump had told White House staff after President Buhari’s visit last April that he didn’t want to meet the Nigerian leader again, adding that he is “so lifeless”.
President Trump who has had a reputation of making degrading comments about national leaders with who he had contact or some interaction was said to have made the statement even after he commended Buhari administration’s effort in the area corruption war among others.
The White House has not reacted to the report, but if it is true President Buhari would not be the first to suffer such treatment from the American president.
Sometimes last year he advised Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom to not ” focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!”
The U.S. president had reacted to a statement suggesting that he should not have shared videos considered as “hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions.” Unfortunately the president’s tweet initially went not to the prime minister or the official Twitter handle for her office , but to a private person who then was at best a dormant user of the social media platform. The owner of the account who was said to have only six followers, had tweeted for nine times in eight years!
Then at another instance he described
as “insane” an action by Angela Markel of Germany. But that will be ‘mild’ (as he said of another leader) really compared with the tweet in a response to Iranian president’s warning of the consequences of imposing sanctions on his country. He wrote: “NEVER EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKE OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE”.
In the tango between him and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada on differences over tariffs he said this of the country’s leader: “Prime Minister Trudeau is being so indignant, bringing up the relationship that the U.S. and Canada had over the many years and all sorts of other things”.
It has therefore become the new culture in the White House to rail at heads of state on Twitter without recourse to diplomacy. But the reported statement against President Buhari was not on Twitter. Rather it was something said in “whispers” to presidency officials in Washington. That means it was not said with as much conviction as the other ones said through social media.
Thus it is understandable that the Buhari Media Organisation , BMO scoffs at it saying it will not stop the president from doing his work. The organization made reference to the encounters that Trump had had with other world leaders and concluded that the American president was only acting in character.
The meeting with Trump last April had earlier generated some controversy of a different kind when some people suggested that President Buhari signed a food import agreement with his US Counterpart during the visit. It turned out to be untrue.