Two-time impeached former President Donald Trump unceremoniously departed office at 8:30am yesterday November 20th. Even without formally conceding victory to his main challenger and winner, Joe Biden, Donald Trump was constitutionally compelled to vacate office, underscoring the triumph of democracy over a president who was palpably hostile to all referee-institutions, including the Electoral College which once pronounced his victory.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (2018), in their celebrated international best seller, “How Democracies Die”, showed how during his first year in office authoritarian Donald Trump tried to “consolidate power” through the triple-strong arm strategies of “capturing the referees, sidelining the key players, and rewriting the rules to tilt the playing field against opponents”.

A day after the 46th President of the United States of America (USA), Joe Biden assumed office, my interest can only be academic as much as ideological. Four years ago, Trump’s inaugural speech featured some 1,500 words. His Farewell (assuming farewell does not mean “good wishes, but bad conduct on parting”) yesterday was almost twice the word counts of 2016. In 2016, I observed that Donald Trump mentioned “America” almost 25 times in an inauguration speech delivered in less than 20 minutes, meaning America is mentioned in almost every minute!

The departing speech yesterday exhibited same “Americanness” with background of sound bites of his ever xenophobic supporters shouting “USA, USA”. Again, he sidelined key global players: no mention of Europe or American Allies. Of course Donald Trump remained totally Africa-blind at departure as at assumption of office. As he was in the beginning so he was at the end of the most dreadful insular four years tenure. Thank God that the “Commander in Chief” in presidential bigotry and insularity was tamed by constitutionalism!

During Trump’s four-year reign, allies were referred to as “NATO countries” who “are now paying hundreds of billions of dollars more than when I arrived just a few years ago”. There is no better evidence why Africans (often with bowl in hands) meant nothing to a departing transactional president. “We restored American strength at home and American leadership abroad. The world respects us again. Please don’t lose that respect. We reclaimed our sovereignty by standing up for America at the United Nations and withdrawing from the one-sided global deals that never served our interests”, he said.

Claude Prestowitz (2003) is the author of the “Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions”. Claude Prestowitz rightly agonized about the pitfalls of American unilateral rejection of the Kyoto Treaty to control global warming and unilateral war in Iraq. He poses an “overriding question of what America wants to be: the bully on the block …or …the city on the hill”? That was long before Donald Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States of America (USA).

What would be the author’s overarching question today as what he termed a “Rogue Nation” under the heel of a rogue President Donald Trump stoking an insurgency against Capitol building during an electoral college results certification? Trump even dared not to hand over to Joe Biden. He desperately prevailed on Vice President Mike Pence not to accept election results. He was also absent at Biden’s inauguration.

All these unsavoury undemocratic behaviour of Trump notwithstanding, by seeing the back of the most divisive and authoritarian President, America and Americans have shown the world how democracies can survive those who want to subvert it, even including autocrats elected to defend democracy such as the twice impeached former President Trump.

Watching the star-studded, virtual inauguration of both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris yesterday brings home the point that democracy is work in progress. It was democratic America that enslaved blacks some 400 years ago, but it is the same democracy that abolished slavery, thanks to the resistance and struggle of the slaves.

It was democracy that produced a conspiratorial Donald Trump who at the point of departure still peddled a conspiratorial term: “China Virus” to describe COVID: 19. He was eager to celebrate the numbers of shares and stocks which he claimed to soar under his administration without even remembering 400,000 Americans who have died due to his Virus mismanagement. Yet it is the same democracy that has thrown up the statesmanship of Joe Biden who in his speech paused to remember the virus victims and called for national unity against the pandemic.

The lesson for Nigeria is that the solution to insufficiency is more democracy, not despair and dubious ambiguity in nostalgia for discredited authoritarianism or military rule. I agree with the newly sworn President Joe Biden that democracy has prevailed even as it is “fragile and precious”. The founding fathers of American constitution knew that the choice they made was far from being perfect. No wonder they envisaged a “more perfect union’’. It is this optimism that democracy can be deepened that has nurtured American democracy towards inclusiveness. It was refreshing that Joe Biden offers a global perspective compared to the bigotry of Trump. The world awaits Biden’s promise of “power of example” as a departure from the past dictatorship of different standards for the world by previous American Presidents.

Point blank: what is good for America at home i.e. renewed defense and deepening of democracy, unity and mutual respect, empathy and solidarity are desirable everywhere in the world. It is refreshing to read from Biden that America “will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again, not to meet yesterday’s challenges but today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.”