When Sir Abubakar Balewa, Nigeria’s first Prime Minister, delivered his first speech to the nation on October 1, 1960, he had no fore-knowledge of the situation in today’s Nigeria. However, the last statement quoted from the speech, 49 years old today, captured our situation today as if the former Prime Minister was referring to today’s Nigeria. Sir Tafawa Balewa, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr Nnamdi Azikwe and their ilk, were men of honour and integrity who sacrificed their entire life to make Nigeria a great country. A country that can stand in the comity of nations, where the right of its citizens is well respected, their lives valued and where access to education, health and basic necessities of life is ensured. But alas, contemporary political leaders deviated from the Nigerian dream; they changed and alter the foundation which these men of integrity laid for the country and its citizens. What we see today is a political leadership guided by greed, selfishness and highest sense of irresponsibility.
Balewa’s speech was a kind that one would love to listen and listen again because it was a speech coming from a leader with a vision and responsibility. A leader who knew the problem of his nation and who with honesty and sincerity was ready to confront it. Unlike today’s leaders, whose take in leadership is to amass wealth through fraudulent means, the founding fathers of modern Nigeria were people who died leaving behind them virtually nothing in terms of material things. They were political leaders with humility, dedication and service, unlike the boastful & arrogant political leaders of today, they were leaders with vision, unlike the corrupt and greed infested looters, short-sighted political nonentities we see today parading themselves as leaders.
As we are now, even if we pretend to join the band wagon by saying things are walking well, one knows that he was lying to himself. Nigeria is not working and by extension the country has collapsed. As am talking to you all state owned universities, with the exception of Ahmadu Bello University, which was suspended by ASUU leadership, are closed down due to strike by SSANU, ASUU and NASU, no town in the whole of Nigeria can burst of steady one hour power supply. Our hospitals are not only mere consulting centres, but according to a national daily in its editorial recently, are mortuaries. Public schools, whether primary schools or secondary schools are overcrowded with students, with dilapidated structures, in some instances the structures are not even there. Our roads remained death traps, where thousands lose their lives daily. The only institution that remains functional in the country, as of now, is the inner core of the People’s Democratic Party machinery, an institution that has direct access to the nation’s resources.
With over 90% of the nation political leadership under their control, PDP is to blame for our present woes. They sold our nation and our freedom; they turned us into slaves and paupers in our own country. In the last ten years the nation under the PDP, has witnessed an unprecedented income from the oil windfall that would have moved the country to the fore-front of leading economic viable nations of the world. However, gross indiscipline, inefficiency, ineffectiveness and wide scale corruption which was characterized by massive looting in virtually all sectors of our lives has totally destroyed everything, including the little hope that came with our return to democracy 10 years ago.
Today as Nigeria celebrates its 49th birthday, the inborn patriotic zeal we have seen when in primary school from our teachers, the selfless service we heard and see from them, the concern for unity and equitable development foresight of our leaders has been eroded. No thanks to the destructive leadership spearheaded by the PDP in the last decade. Our political leaders, majority of them from the ruling PDP, are people that pay little or no attention at all to our plights. Dilapidated infrastructure, collapsed educational system has been the characteristics of the nation. They deliberately allowed things to crumble, for instance lack of power supply has killed our industries thereby creating a huge number of unemployed persons. As we celebrate our independence, we are left to fight many wars; poverty, homelessness and above all insecurity.
Nigeria should not be allowed to continue like this; our leaders need to make a u-turn; they should realize that they have a responsibility. We need to realize that the existence of this country as a nation can only be possible when our leaders change from the non-challant attitude they show to the plight of the Nigerian people to real commitment. We have all what it takes to develop this country, but the country is held ransom by greedy and selfish leaders.
Nigerians have no problem; they have been obedient citizens for the past 49 years, withstanding the civil war, military dictatorship and abuse of power by political leaders. Our problem lies, as Achebe clearly put it, in the unwillingness of our leaders to rise to their responsibilities. We have lamented for so long; we have cried in frustration; we have complained virtually of everything but it seems our political leaders are not listening. The hope that tomorrow will be better than today is dashed by insensitive and greedy elites. May God rescue us and the country from these crop of leaders.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Niger and the burden of democracy in Africa
That President Mamadou Tandja of Niger has succeeded in destroying all democratic institutions in his country for his selfish ambition to rule the West African nation till eternity is no longer news. What is news however was the effort of AU and ECOWAS in trying to stop him. ECOWAS or AU could have stopped him long ago in order to avoid plunging the country into chaos and political crises. However, due to what analysts see as the moral burden of legitimacy hanging on almost all the leaders in the West African sub-region and the continent in general, most of them kept quite. To me the only leader that has the moral authority to talk to him or challenge this illegal move in ECOWAS is the Ghanaian President, Professor John Atta Mills, who the whole world acknowledged came to power through free and fair election.
Tandja felt that since majority of his counterparts came to power through either fraudulent elections or imposed themselves on their people through military coup, nobody can lecture them on democracy. Tandja, who came to power ten years ago was to vacate office in four months time as his legal tenure expires in December, but decided to extend his tenure first by dissolving the parliament and later dismissing the country’s constitutional court. He went further to ridicule democratic tenets by organising a referendum described by civil society groups in the country as a sham, to seek the opinions of Nigeriens to allow him stay in office beyond the stipulated time of two tenures of five years each.
In Africa, a continent that is used to the power longevity of its leaders in office and where acts of political bullies are always non-events and political attitudes are more compliant and dictators come at a dime a dozen, Tandja’s story is one of many. From Egypt, Tunisia, Uganda, to the almighty Robert Mugabe to Ghaddafi, the present AU President – we have leaders who spent more than twenty years ruling their own countries, and who have no intention to vacate office. So Tandja is no fool, he knows that no leader in the continent can challenge his tenure elongation since majority of them are guilty of the same offence. Who do you think in the AU or ECOWAS has the moral authority to do so? Even those leaders that can speak out for instance, like the Ghanaian president, in ECOWAS or South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, who has a Mugabe in his neighbourhood, on whose support are they going to rely upon? Is it from Umar Hassan Albashir, Mubarak, or Mugabe? Or is it from Museveni?
Africa’s democratic experience is one characterised by leaders whose major take in the process is subversion of people’s will. A continent ravaged by AIDS, overpopulation, poverty, starvation, illiteracy, corruption, social breakdown, vanishing resources, overcrowded cities, drought, war, and war refugees, the continent’s problems were compounded over the years by greedy, selfish and visionless leaders whose main preoccupation is to amass stupendous wealth which even their 6th generation of lineage cannot spend . These are leaders who have turned their nations into their handbags and believe that their nations can not and should not do without them. In the process they turned their citizens into slaves, beggars and paupers denying them their basic rights of decent living as human beings. In some countries even the rights to choose leaders in election is not allowed, for instance Ethiopia, while in others elections are won before they are even conducted like the charade we have seen in Nigeria in 2003 and 2007! Constitutions are tampered with at will. Some have even groomed their sons to take over if there is an emergency or if they die. We have them in Egypt, Cameroun, Togo, Libya, Guinea, etc, not to mention absolute monarchies like Swaziland and Lesotho.
Tandja’s decision to manipulate necessary provisions of the country’s constitution to suit his purpose and actualise his vaulting ambition is not a new phenomenon in African politics; the only difference is the fact that nobody expected that from him. He has disappointed many of his admirers and draws the political progress of his country backward. The relative stability enjoyed by the country in the last decade has been fractured by Tandja’s actions and this constitutes a negative signal for democracy and the stability of this poverty ravaged country. With a history of military take-overs, nobody can rule out this possibility, as the military can use the present disturbances in the polity; arrest of opposition politicians, journalists and civil society groups, as a convenient excuse to take over.
But what is clear from the political crises in Niger is the fact that Africa is yet to come to terms with the advances achieved in other continents in the new millennium. While leaders in Europe, America and even Asia are guided in their leadership by service to their countries, developing new ideas, intelligent vision that can enable them to connect to their people, in Africa the opposite is the case. Everywhere the story is the same – of poor leadership, corruption, election rigging and intolerance of the opposition. Tandja and his sit-tight colleagues in other part of the continent are a disappointment. The challenge here is for civil society groups, democrats and journalist in African to stand up against these leaders who did not see their destinies as tied up with that of their fellow Africans.
Democracy, as it is now has become a burden to Africa and Africans. Our democratic development and our hopes of joining the league of free societies, where citizens elect their leaders who can rule according to rule of law is being impeded by sit-tight rulers like Tandja Mammadou and his friends. This will continue for a long time to come in Africa, because of hypocrisy from the Western countries in addressing Africa’s problems. Their sole interest in the continent is to have leaders that they can continue to use to milk the continent’s resources dry. They will continue to support them as long as they can get cheap energy for their industries and in return arm rebel groups to destabilise the continent.
Tandja felt that since majority of his counterparts came to power through either fraudulent elections or imposed themselves on their people through military coup, nobody can lecture them on democracy. Tandja, who came to power ten years ago was to vacate office in four months time as his legal tenure expires in December, but decided to extend his tenure first by dissolving the parliament and later dismissing the country’s constitutional court. He went further to ridicule democratic tenets by organising a referendum described by civil society groups in the country as a sham, to seek the opinions of Nigeriens to allow him stay in office beyond the stipulated time of two tenures of five years each.
In Africa, a continent that is used to the power longevity of its leaders in office and where acts of political bullies are always non-events and political attitudes are more compliant and dictators come at a dime a dozen, Tandja’s story is one of many. From Egypt, Tunisia, Uganda, to the almighty Robert Mugabe to Ghaddafi, the present AU President – we have leaders who spent more than twenty years ruling their own countries, and who have no intention to vacate office. So Tandja is no fool, he knows that no leader in the continent can challenge his tenure elongation since majority of them are guilty of the same offence. Who do you think in the AU or ECOWAS has the moral authority to do so? Even those leaders that can speak out for instance, like the Ghanaian president, in ECOWAS or South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, who has a Mugabe in his neighbourhood, on whose support are they going to rely upon? Is it from Umar Hassan Albashir, Mubarak, or Mugabe? Or is it from Museveni?
Africa’s democratic experience is one characterised by leaders whose major take in the process is subversion of people’s will. A continent ravaged by AIDS, overpopulation, poverty, starvation, illiteracy, corruption, social breakdown, vanishing resources, overcrowded cities, drought, war, and war refugees, the continent’s problems were compounded over the years by greedy, selfish and visionless leaders whose main preoccupation is to amass stupendous wealth which even their 6th generation of lineage cannot spend . These are leaders who have turned their nations into their handbags and believe that their nations can not and should not do without them. In the process they turned their citizens into slaves, beggars and paupers denying them their basic rights of decent living as human beings. In some countries even the rights to choose leaders in election is not allowed, for instance Ethiopia, while in others elections are won before they are even conducted like the charade we have seen in Nigeria in 2003 and 2007! Constitutions are tampered with at will. Some have even groomed their sons to take over if there is an emergency or if they die. We have them in Egypt, Cameroun, Togo, Libya, Guinea, etc, not to mention absolute monarchies like Swaziland and Lesotho.
Tandja’s decision to manipulate necessary provisions of the country’s constitution to suit his purpose and actualise his vaulting ambition is not a new phenomenon in African politics; the only difference is the fact that nobody expected that from him. He has disappointed many of his admirers and draws the political progress of his country backward. The relative stability enjoyed by the country in the last decade has been fractured by Tandja’s actions and this constitutes a negative signal for democracy and the stability of this poverty ravaged country. With a history of military take-overs, nobody can rule out this possibility, as the military can use the present disturbances in the polity; arrest of opposition politicians, journalists and civil society groups, as a convenient excuse to take over.
But what is clear from the political crises in Niger is the fact that Africa is yet to come to terms with the advances achieved in other continents in the new millennium. While leaders in Europe, America and even Asia are guided in their leadership by service to their countries, developing new ideas, intelligent vision that can enable them to connect to their people, in Africa the opposite is the case. Everywhere the story is the same – of poor leadership, corruption, election rigging and intolerance of the opposition. Tandja and his sit-tight colleagues in other part of the continent are a disappointment. The challenge here is for civil society groups, democrats and journalist in African to stand up against these leaders who did not see their destinies as tied up with that of their fellow Africans.
Democracy, as it is now has become a burden to Africa and Africans. Our democratic development and our hopes of joining the league of free societies, where citizens elect their leaders who can rule according to rule of law is being impeded by sit-tight rulers like Tandja Mammadou and his friends. This will continue for a long time to come in Africa, because of hypocrisy from the Western countries in addressing Africa’s problems. Their sole interest in the continent is to have leaders that they can continue to use to milk the continent’s resources dry. They will continue to support them as long as they can get cheap energy for their industries and in return arm rebel groups to destabilise the continent.
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