At the sudden firing of the former US Secretary of State, Tex Tillerson, by President Donald Trump (DJT), I had made the following remarks: It couldn’t have been imagined a couple of years ago that a US president would fire his Secretary of State, and on Twitter, while the latter was away on a foreign trip! This detracts greatly from the image and reputation of the US as a stable, ordered, and orderly democracy, where governance is organized in a most systematic manner.

By the way, instability is not just about an incessant and unpredictable change in, and of government – which once characterized Africa. As a conceptual category, it is also about the fact of rapid turnover in personnel of government, the type the Trump White House has come to represent. What we are confronted with in all of this, is the new USA that is fast losing its much-acclaimed exceptionalism, of course with grave implications for not just Americans, but indeed the entire world.

He is an unrepentant populist who will pander to any idea that will earn him some form of applause, no matter from what source, or how despicable such ideas are. He was there for the white supremacists in Charlottesville. He supported Roy More for the Alabama Senate seat. Soon after the man lost the election, Trump claimed he never quite wanted him anyway. He worked against the Democratic candidate,  Mr Conor Lamb, in Philadelphia, only to begin to patronize the man as soon as he won the election. This was to the chagrin of his own party, the GOP, whose candidate had just narrowly lost. Trump made a commitment to stand up to the National Rifle Association (NRA) soon after the Parkland shooting, only for him to enunciate a position on gun ‘control’ a few days later that the same NRA found too good to be true.

Trump has demonstrated time and time again that he has very little respect for Africans and other peoples of colour. That is the reality; and there is no basis for any denial on our part, no matter how soothing that may sound and feel.

It is also a fact of the moment that Africa has receded considerably in strategic relevance to the West, especially the US, in the past couple of decades. To assume DJT would go all out in pursuit of a position he feels is worthy and beneficial to Nigerians, therefore, is to miss the point. You take such a step only on behalf of people you respect, not people whose countries you’ll rather see as ‘shithole.’  I am afraid, we have started making the same mistake about DJT as many made on Barack Obama.

When Obama was elected, the whole place (in Africa) was agog as people erroneously assumed he was going to specially benefit Africa because he was supposed to be a black man, of Kenyan origin to boot. We forgot that the guy is as white as he is black. By the way, methinks it is a part of the racist narrative to refer to any white person with a drop of black blood in their vein as black; and not white – assuming whiteness is the preferred category. Anyway, it didn’t take too long for us to realize that Obama was not going to be in any way a benefactor of Africa. That is why in much of the black community in the US today, Bill Clinton remains the first and last ‘black president.’

Now talking specifically about what Obama supposedly did against ‘us’ in 2015, I really fail to recognise any. What did Obama do against Goodluck Jonathan that has not been done against Nicholas Maduro? Why has the moustached one in Caracas not handed over Venezuela to the US by reason of that? I do not think we should lay the failure of Jonathan to assert himself and hold his ground when it mattered, at the doorstep of Obama. Our man simply wasn’t available.

He practically went on vacation, and could not exercise the high office he occupied. Pray, what type of president would leave his presidential palace to attend a meeting called by an American Secretary of State in the US embassy located in his country? In diplomacy, that is tantamount to complete abdication!

I reiterate again that diplomacy is as much a game of substance as it is of symbolism. It was evident that DJT had wanted Tillerson out since the ‘moron’-president incident. He also needed to fire the Secretary in a most disrespectful manner, to sweeten up the revenge. That he chose to do it while the guy was visiting Africa is emblematic of the little regard the US president has for the continent.

He wouldn’t have sacked the man while he was crisscrossing Europe or Asia-Pacific. For God’s sake, firing Tillerson has nothing to do with whatever the former Secretary said or did not say, did or failed to do in Africa, including Nigeria. There is no point in deluding ourselves that he was dropped because he was warm towards PMB. Waiting on DJT to help us advance the frontier of the restructuring battle may mean that we would wait in vain.

It is perhaps only when the White House sees that Nigeria has started imploding that it may be obliged to do something, and mind you, not necessarily for us, but to save us from ourselves, and avert yet another immigrant crisis for the West.

Professor Mimiko is a former vice chancellor