Reverse psychology, Nigeria and the Trump factor

In my opinion, recent events in the United States point to a very telling reality: Republican leaders do not understand reverse psychology.

The mood in America right now is like an angry young man. Donald Trump is like a beautiful but controversial woman. Republican leaders are like parents clashing with the angry young man and ordering him not to marry the controversial beauty.

The more hardline the parents are, the more attracted the angry young man would be to the controversial beauty. All this time, the controversial beauty is saying all the right sweet nothings into the ear of the young man who is eager to eat the bearded meat that his parents forbid for him.

How do I know this? Because this is all Déjà vu to me.

In my native Nigeria we saw this phenomenon play itself out.

Many young Nigerians were too young to remember the days when a certain dictator seized power through the barrel of guns and pronounced himself military head of state on the eve of New Year’s Day 1984.

They could not remember how soldiers brutalized ‘bloody civilians’ because they were either not born or were too young to to cognize happenings around them.

They did not live through a time were the promised utopia became a dystopia in which erratic and draconian currency control and economic policies drove away foreign investors already in the country and scared away those who had announced plans to invest. In which the value of the currency plummeted and the value of human life went in the same direction.

They had no clue of the runaway inflation that erupted after Nigeria had lost her credit worthiness or the long lines for ‘essential commodities’.

Stories of how the media was muzzled and truthful free speech was criminalized were like tall tales to these youths.

Today, many of them are angry at Trump for his suggestion that he would deport 11 million illegal immigrants yet won’t believe if you tell them that Nigeria deported 700,000 Ghanaians between 1984 and 1985.

When they were told about how certain disfavored politicians were targeted and tried and retried and tried the third time just to get a conviction, they branded their tellers liars.

This was the stage that was set when their elders told them that a dictator may grow old but he does not grow democratic.

They refused to listen and the more they were warned, the more they found what they were warned about seductively attractive.

And so the wedding held and the marriage was consummated and it was not long before the things that their elders warned them about began to manifest.

But by then it was too late for them to grasp that what their elders could see sitting down remains unseen to them even if they climb a tree.

On Social Media I came across a youth who disavowed the Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, for his UK Telegraph interview where he said inter alia that “Some Nigerians claim is that life is too difficult back home, but they have also made it difficult for Europeans and Americans to accept them because of the number of Nigerians in prisons all over the world accused of drug trafficking or human trafficking”.

What was worse was the headline in the Telegraph which screamed ‘Nigerians’ reputation for crime has made them unwelcome in Britain, says country’s president’

As I read the youth’s vituperations, I urged him to download a song entitled ‘Beast of No Nation’ by Fela Kuti and listen to it to find out if anything in that song reminded him of the comments of President Muhammadu Buhari for which he was complaining.

He returned some 4 hours later and recited a line from that song which goes thus ‘my people are useless, my people are senseless, my people are indiscipline”.

‘Who do you think Fela Kuti was quoting’ I asked him? The answer to that question proves what psychologist have been propagating for decades namely that ‘time changes but human nature does not change’!

While the situation in Nigeria is not exactly the same as in America, if I were to give my two cents, it would be to advise the GOP establishment to stop fighting Donald Trump. The more they do, the more they make him attractive.

Now, except that is their true intention (selling him to America) they really ought to soft pedal on their objections to his candidacy.

Just four days ago, rap icon, Foxy Brown, revealed her admiration for Trump. Asked why she admired him, Foxy Brown (real name Inga Marchand) said “No matter how many people sabotage his campaign, it keeps growing and growing and growing.”

Sound familiar?

Now this is exactly my point. Here you have a life long Democrat, in the person of Foxy Brown, expressing a soft spot for Trump not because of his policies, not because of his personality, not because of his wealth and not even because of his party.

The only reason she supports him is because “many people (want to) sabotage” him.

It goes back to the Garden of Eden. When a fruit is forbidden, it becomes all the more attractive. In 2016, Donald Trump is the forbidden fruit!

Omokri is host of Transformation With Reno Omokri, the founder of the Mind of Christ Christian Center in California and author of Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God and Why Jesus Wept.