By Tai Emeka Obasi
Dear Number 44,
Your case is that of a being, who God excessively blessed to near-perfection. Physically, He molded you to the envy of most men and idol to most women. Intellectually, He blessed you to the very top cadre. Wherever He did not make you to be at the very top, He more than compensated with the power of oratory.
It may have been 18 years ago but it seems like yesterday. That gracious moment on February 10, 2007 in Springfield, Illinois that you declared to run for the presidency of the United States will ever remain green in my memory. Watching on CNN from my country, Nigeria, I marveled at your oratory prowess in disbelief. As a very proud black man, it was so nourishing that after the great Dr. Nelson Mandela (who was nearing the end of his glorious era then) that we could be blessed with another of such high calibre in the name of Barack Obama, a Kenyan immigrant.
“Yes We Can.” It became a mantra we adopted as our daily speech in my country. As a filmmaker in Nollywood, we used that three-word mantra before we started shooting any scene. By then, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook and subsequently WhatsApp had not gained traction and we couldn’t visibly support your presidential bid. But whatever we missed in physical support, we more than made up with daily prayers.
Even when it was indeed a tough battle that she refused to concede defeat until four days later, your beating Hilary Clinton to the Democratic nomination ticket on June 3, 2008, made us roar in anticipation. We intensified prayers, hoping to behold a hitherto-perceived impossible mission – A BLACK PRESIDENT of the United States of America.
Your landslide victory, winning Republican nominee, John McCain with over 53% popular votes and 365 to 173 Electoral was on its own history assured. Then came your inauguration – an indelible day on January 20, 2009. To recall appropriately, Chief Justice John Roberts slightly misstated the oath of office during the swearing-in ceremony, forcing you to re-take the oath the following day on January 21. Another history!
The fanfare over, it was down to business. All eyes were on you to deliver on your campaign promises. The black race waited in huge anticipation, hoping you would bridge the huge gap of disparity in a country that was being perceived as still persisting in the master-slave mentality.
Yes, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the famed Obamacare was applaudable. So were efforts in Criminal Justice Reform; My Brother’s Keeper Initiative; Support For Voting Rights; Symbolic Representation; Addressing Racial Inequality; Economic Initiatives Addressing Disparities; and so on were quite commendable even though many did not record the successes as expected.
But the fact that Americans returned you for second term with another appreciable victory over Republican nominee, Mitt Rommy with over 51% popular votes and 322 to 206 Electoral votes was a clear statement that the United States is the greatest country on earth.
By this time, you had clearly become the most influential black person on earth. The people from your original continent of Africa were very hopeful that your policies would progress their respective countries, particularly in areas of healthcare, agriculture, education, easy immigration and above all, steady democracy.
Oh yes, you promoted reforms in Kenya that yielded a new Constitution in 2010. You also supported democratic institutions and processes in Africa, notably in resolving the crisis in Cote d’Ivoire that enabled Alassane Outara to assume office as president.
You equally launched President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR and Global Health Initiative, GHI that Africa benefitted from. We won’t forget Initiatives like Feed and Future for food security as well as Global Climate Change Initiative, GGCI. Notable are also the African Growth and Opportunity Act, AGOA and Partnership For Growth, PFG.
Indeed, you tried to positively impact Africa during your eight years in office. Nobody expected you to magically cure Africa in just eight years and we remain grateful for the much positives you impacted.
However, you completely ruined everything by not only promoting LGBTQ+ rights but also hand-twisting African nations to legalise same-sex marriage.
And coming to my country, Nigeria, you stepped too far. Because President Goodluck Jonathan, the only Nigerian president so far that practised true democracy, rejected your LGBTQ+ package, he was allegedly stopped from second term. You instead practically gave us Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, an act that continues to haunt Nigeria till date. But better believe it, it is haunting too.
You obviously forgot God, who excessively favoured you and made you a history focal point in the anals of black race. Same-sex marriage? God!
Let us get one thing straight at this juncture – I have nothing against LGBTQ+. It is their life and they are entitled to live it in their own way. But since God did not permit such acts from inception, why would any government enforce such practices as legal? No government survives with clearly making a legality what is sin before God. Thank God President Trump is back to put a stop to all that. You still don’t know why God brought him back despite your spending over a billion dollars to stop him? You may never know why God shifted the assassin’s aim to pierce just through his ears without further damage. God remains the owner of His world. When the founding fathers of America inscripted that mantra, “In God We Trust,” they weren’t drunk.
But as if such abomable act of trying to enforce same-sex marriage in a continent that holds very strongly to their traditions was not enough, you started stepping out of the boundaries of the Obama, who Americans loved and voted for.
The same God who chooses who to make king also chooses those to bring them down once His choice steps into deplorable acts of arrogance and autoritarianship.
One night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 30, 2011, you drew your own albatross without prompting – Donald J. Trump! What went into you to go to that extent of humiliating an American billionaire? That was the day you made Trump a president of the United States. Yes, Trump must have fired the first shot but you were the president. Every leader should accept criticism. It goes with the job and in America, the world’s famed biggest democracy, criticising any president is part of freedom of speech. But you took Trump’s personal! In so doing, you started building a hatred that metarmophosed to unprecedented level.
When Nancy Pelosi was acting like a wild cat and initiated an impeachment process, keen observers saw Obama’s hands written all over it. Many believed you were interested in making certain Trump ended up as ‘the worst American president in history.’ But you forgot that without your attempting to humiliate him at the White House, he would never have dreamt of becoming the president.
Your campaign to get him out of office in 2020 was done with so much hate. COVID-19, China and World Health Organization, WHO played their parts and the flawed mail-in ballots delivered.
But you were not done with the only enemy you intended to completely destroy. Many believed that you wrote, from behind the scenes, every chapter of weaponising the instruments of government against mumber 45. Apparently, you believed you had destroyed him with those felony convictions. You evidently never imagined he could attempt to come back as number 47, let alone get the Republican nomination.
The rest is history. But what were you thinking by going to black counties to tell them to vote for Kamala Harris because she was their own? How could you, of all people, ever campaign based on race? And worse, you lured that graceful woman God gave you as wife into it. God!
You see, the grace of God might have departed from you that moment you played God at the White House Correspondent’s dinner. But I personally believe that God didn’t bring you down immediately after because your presidency was not just about Obama. It was generally for the black race. And the almighty designed it for eight years. God used you to prove He did not create any race with limitations. He used you to encourage and motivate African nations that they can conquer poverty and become truly developed among nations.
Your not ignoring Trump’s criticism attracted you a downfall. God played His part in making sure your politics of hate against your successor is clearly all about Obama. Trump secured more black votes than any Republican president ever did. Your influence has significantly waned. You failed to instigate people of colour into your personal vendetta. Unless you intended to make Barack Obama the last black American president, your actions portrayed a dangerous trajectory for African-Americans.
You need to lock up yourself for days and seek the face of God. Start with, “forgive me Father, for even presidents can be stupid…” Then don’t forget to dwell significantly on all your seen and unseen efforts to make Buhari Nigeria’s president. Then get to the main business of asking Him to put the spirit of forgiveness into every white American for ever trying to bring race into play in the last election. They need to forgive you because despite having over 60% of America’s total population, they overwhelmingly voted for you twice against their own race for president. Your excessive divisive efforts will not end it for the black race. Another black man will be POTUS again. It is all about the contents of your brain and character. It’s no longer about colour. Martin Luther King’s prophecy will forever be.
Yours heartbroken,
Tai Emeka Obasi.