From Washington to Kinshasa: Trump, Mobutu, and Abacha are now part of the same warning about state capture and institutional decay.
By LaBode Obanor
There was once a time when the United States lectured the world with the moral arrogance of a republic convinced of its own institutional superiority. For decades, Washington lectured Africa endlessly about corruption, executive overreach, patronage networks, and the dangers of converting state institutions into private instruments of political survival. Even American diplomats, think tanks, and media elites spent decades portraying African strongmen as cautionary tales of democratic collapse and elite looting.
Now history is laughing.
The United States of America is beginning to resemble the very political pathology it once mocked abroad. America now confronts the uncomfortable spectacle of becoming what it once condemned.
In the last few days, just as we have been seeing the steady blizzard of decline of the American political culture since the return of “the Donald,” reports surrounding the proposed settlement negotiations involving the U.S. Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and Donald Trump, President of the United States should terrify anyone still capable of distinguishing between constitutional government and personalized power. What began as a legitimate lawsuit over the unlawful leak of Trump’s tax information has metastasized into something far more dangerous — now becoming a potential state-engineered patronage structure financed by public money and orbiting political loyalty.
Pause there. Because this is precisely the kind of story American foreign policy elites once used to describe countries in the global south. To understand the gravity of the current controversy, one must first understand its origins.
It started in 2019, when Charles Littlejohn, a former IRS contractor, unlawfully leaked confidential tax records belonging to Donald Trump and other wealthy Americans. This breach of privacy sparked widespread national outrage, highlighting deep failures in taxpayer confidentiality and institutional oversight. Littlejohn later admitted guilt and was sentenced to five years in prison for his actions.
In January 2026, following his inauguration and now wielding control over every lever of the executive branch, Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against the IRS and the U.S. Department of the Treasury — both agencies under his own administration — seeking billions of dollars in damages. Trump alleged that these government bodies failed to protect his taxpayer information, but many critics labeled the suit a sham, noting the glaring conflict of interest since Trump effectively oversees both plaintiff and defendant.
The situation escalated when, months later, Treasury, the Department of Justice, and Trump reportedly reached a settlement. What began as a straightforward privacy lawsuit quickly evolved into a constitutional and institutional crisis. According to multiple outlets, the settlement negotiations include restrictions on future IRS enforcement actions involving Trump and his family, raising concerns about undermining the impartiality of federal agencies.
Additionally, the settlement reportedly established a taxpayer-funded “Anti-Weaponization Fund” valued at approximately $1.7–$1.8 billion. The fund was intended to compensate individuals who claim to have been “unfairly prosecuted” or targeted by federal authorities. Allegedly, Trump allies, political operatives, January 6 defendants, and individuals associated with his political movement may be eligible for compensation. Oversight mechanisms for the fund remain unclear, and the commission responsible for administering these payouts would be politically appointed, further fueling concerns about transparency and accountability.
Also read Labode’s article on Trump January 6 Pardons: Forgiveness or Favoritism?
In effect, American taxpayers may now be supporting a politically driven compensation mechanism — one that centers around the president’s supporters and movement. This development has sparked widespread alarm, as it threatens to transform public institutions into instruments serving partisan interests rather than upholding constitutional principles.
One must ask what exactly separates this from the patronage structures Washington spent decades condemning across the developing world? Is there a difference in the elite impunity, state looting, and democratic decay that the U.S. sermonized on Africa?
The deeper scandal is not simply about Trump, but how rapidly Americans have normalized behavior they once associated exclusively with “banana republics” and fragile postcolonial countries. The abnormal no longer shocks the public because partisan tribalism has anesthetized constitutional instinct. Remember the sociopolitical phenomenon of tribalism and ethnic clientelism that bemoaned Africa for much of the 20th century? “The thief is my tribesman. As long as he is our thief, we must protect him” — that highlights how primordial loyalties often override national interest, ethics, and the rule of law. This is precisely how those republics begin decomposing from within.
Consider Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu did not destroy Zaire’s institutions in one violent rupture; he hollowed them out gradually until the state itself revolved around him and his personal preservation. The country’s agencies ceased to function as restraints and became extensions of the president’s private shield and political survival. America is not yet Mobutu’s Zaire. But the institutional symptoms are becoming disturbingly familiar.
Or consider Sani Abacha, whose regime became synonymous with elite extraction. Billions disappeared while institutions withered beneath executive dominance. The lesson of Abacha’s Nigeria was not merely theft, but institutional paralysis. Oversight mechanisms ceased functioning because the state itself became subordinate to his personal power. That is the direction that should terrify Americans today — because once the public begins perceiving that state institutions can be repurposed to reward political allies, compensate ideological loyalists, and negotiate insulation for the powerful, democratic legitimacy begins hemorrhaging from the inside. Citizens stop viewing law as neutral principle and begin seeing it as tribal weaponry controlled by whoever temporarily occupies the White House. At that point, democracy survives mostly as theater.
And let us speak plainly about the grotesque irony unfolding before the world. The United States spent decades sanctioning foreign officials accused of politicizing institutions while now flirting openly with the creation of what critics across the political spectrum are already describing as a taxpayer-funded political slush fund. The U.S. warned the global south against executive overreach while executive influence now appears increasingly capable of bending institutional outcomes at home.
The hypocrisy is no longer just embarrassing but disturbingly staggering.
Democracies do not die because constitutions are burned in public squares — they decay when institutions that once restrained those in power are slowly converted into instruments of protection for the leader. The forms remain, but the spirit retreats. Elections continue. Courts open their doors. Agencies issue memoranda. Yet beneath this choreography of normalcy, the democratic tissue begins to rot.
This is the modern anatomy of democratic decline fueled by normalization, fatigue, and by the quiet conversion of public institutions into machinery for political management. Yes, America still has courts, federalism, civil society, and a press capable of investigation — but institutions cannot save a country when citizens excuse in their own leaders the very abuses they once condemned abroad.
That is the final irony — a country that warned Africa about kleptocracy is now receiving a lesson in democratic corrosion from within its own borders. By the time Americans fully recognize this impending danger, the republic may not have collapsed dramatically but may simply have learned to live with its own decay. Thus, it is up to citizens, lawmakers, and civil society to demand transparency and uphold constitutional principles before these trends become irreversible.
