Trump's Supreme Court and Nigeria's Obidients

In late February, after the United States Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump's tariff policy, insisting that he needed Congressional authorisation, he furiously launched into a tirade against some of the justices who aligned with the majority judgement. He not only described the judgement as deeply disappointing and disgraceful, he bellowed that the jurists who ruled against his tariffs should be ashamed of themselves.  "They're just being fools and lapdogs for the RINOs (Republicans in name only) and radical left Democrats…very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution,” he added. And the two justices he nominated in his first term, he said he thought they were “an embarrassment to their families, if you want to know the truth,” and concluded that “their decision was terrible."

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Mr Trump, it is clear, is a milder version of Nigerian supporters of Peter Obi, a former presidential candidate in the 2023 election, the so-called Obidients. Before the election tribunal and the Supreme Court decided the petitions against President Bola Tinubu's electoral victory, the Obidients embarked on a furious campaign of denigrating the entire judiciary, calumniating some of the jurists, and threatening death and destruction to any judge who dared rule against their hero. They sustained the campaign with banners, billboards, advertisements in hostile newspapers, and ladled out curses and hostile skits on social media. After the justices dared them and ruled in favour of the victor, they became even more scurrilous, intensified the intimidation and name-calling of some of the judges, and proceeded to campaigning for the overthrow of the constitution.

The US is clearly not alone in the abhorrent culture of pulling down institutions over unfavourable judgements or objectionable policies. But while America may engage in brinkmanship and perhaps get away with murder, unstable democracies like Nigeria risk going under, perhaps as wished by anarchists, of which Obidients are proudly numbered.