By Wole Olujobi
The two video clips currently trending online featuring the ruins of the presidential palace of the late President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and arms build-up in Burkina Faso (allegedly of Chinese and Russian origins) intrigue me to no end, drawing old memories of misfortunes that Africans had had to endure in the process of searching for political and economic models that best served the development goals of the peoples of Africa.
Unfortunately, decades after military regimes became anachronistic worldwide, some parts of Africa are still plagued with the leaders that are either in full military gear or are in the civilian garbs but with the regimental mentality of combatants that belch orders and speak with their cudgels and horsewhips to exert the force and authority of their offices.
In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, for instance, the musket is laughing to scorn the tranquil essence of the ballot in the northern horn of West Africa where the military fatigue draped and cultured in monologue is drowning the primacy of popular debates that hallmark representative govenance.
For the hapless people forced to accept the terror of the guns as their fate by their leaders who in an unrepresentative capacity determine their destinies, living in fear of the guns is far better than perish in the cross fires by the opportunist competitors in armed conflict for power to serve their fancies.
It is safe to surmise that African socio-economic malaise has always been woven around the quality of leadership that steers the continent’s ship of state, which has often forced a cynicism that the foundational crisis that has caused dislocations in the primary model of survival in Africa seems to be eternal in nature, and this can be located in the crisis of identity after the infiltration of borrowed cultures into the continent.
Egypt’s modernity and superior science lost the innocence of her pyramid technology identity to the armed foreign invaders led by Octavius Augustus of Rome. The Libyans succumbed to the Yankees’ tricks and rebelled against Moaman Ghaddafi; and from their dainty tables at lunch, Libyans today make do with crumbs as scavengers in a country that once turned a desert to the oasis of development and good living. Other sections of the African societies suffered the same fate.
Earliest African elites and critics called the morals of such despicable culture ‘the economic exploitation and cultural enslavement’ that alienated the locals from the exploration, exploitation and domestication of the factors of production for the benefit of the people.
Yet the misguided educated elites of the time seemed not to know their time. They looked at the time, beguiled the time and couldn’t harness the fortunes of the time, ending up in the despoilation of their aspirations for prosperous future.
Buffeted by the harsh and gripping realities of their times marked by slide in the fortunes of African growth and development occasioned by colonialism and its associated evils, African foremost revisionist authors in literary production had sought to contextualise the growth agenda hiccups of the era, blaming the social ills associated with human factor at the heart of the crisis of identity that had plagued the leadership’s vision to drive quality development missions to save African peoples from the pangs of want.
To these authors, African leaders went through education but education never went through them to discover or rediscover themselves; the ailment that compounded the crisis of identity which continued to stalk all Africa’s growth initiatives over the years.
Ghana’s Ayi Kwei Arma in his book ‘Why Are We So Blest’ discovers a disturbing truth: the African educational process is the mechanism for recruiting the neocolonial elite riding high at the expense of the wretched of the earth.
Also in his another book ‘The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, the same author depicts the post-colonial era in Ghana where corruption is the norm.
Kenya’s Ngugi Wa Thiogo’s ‘Petals of Blood’ deals with social and economic problems in East Africa after independence, particularly the continued exploitation of the peasants and workers by foreign business interests and a greedy indigenous bourgeoisie.
Yambo Ouologuem in his book ‘Bound To Violence’ was more violent in his deconstructionist transcription of the realities in his country Mali in West Africa by contextualising the engrossing and tragic tales spanning the thirteenth to the twentieth century in the dynasty of the SaĂŻfs who reigned there as devious masters with the vivid descriptions of the brutality of local rulers and the slave trade.
Ouologuem’s biting satire also paints a universally relevant portraiture of violence and power in human relationships, the reality that still haunts in today’s totalitarian Colonel Assimi Goita’s Mali.
In his reaction to the complex malaise of the time, another Ghanaian writer, Kobina Sekyi, in his book ‘The Blinkards’ paints a picture of an African boy who was brought up to become an aficionado of European mannerisms, while shunning African culture. Following this path and by his hard work he got a scholarship to London where he studied Law. Whilst there, he realised that London was not all that they say it is. Thus, the verdict is that foreign sensibilities are stark nightmares to the African realities. And in the world driven by quest for survival that promotes general good for the people, idealism is one thing, realism the other.
In the struggle for idealistic living in the competing interests that divide the world, we have seen leaders of countries in their ideal for sovereign magnificence turned their countries into servile states to serve their personal interests and that of their overbearing compradors. The sad reality is that nothing has changed in spite of vivid pretensions.
This we have seen in South Africa where former President Jacob Zuma, a foremost freedom fighter, was jailed over allegation of corruption and obstruction of justice.
Though an apostle of non-violence, freedom fighter President, Dr Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, later turned a dictator. Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and President Idi Amin of Uganda became monsters terrorising their people even as they built astounding fortunes for themselves inland and abroad, so much so that some European countries that were less endowed than these countries now rank the fastest growing countries of the world because their leaders see the destinies of their countries as the collective destinies of their people as against the dictators and corrupt leaders who see their personal destinies as the collective destinies of their people.
For effect, it was estimated that more than three million people were killed; those who survived were left to struggle with homelessness, starvation, and disease when Sese Seko, leveraging the support by the America CIA against Russian influence in Zaire, turned his guns against his own people while mindlessly looting the country dry. Same for several other leaders. Today, Mobutu’s most expensive presidential palace in African history that cost his country fortunes is in ruins and inhabited by rodents and reptiles as revealed in the video.
In the.scrambles for capital and political control, most of other military African freedom fighters have long abandoned military discipline and liberty creed for politics, which, according to Chief Afe Babalola, is the most lucrative business in the continent. And what do they dispense to the people they purport to be their voices in politics if not tokenism?
And so from a humble background of militaty discipline that scorns acquisitive instincts, they become upstarts, abandoning the principles of proletarian pretensions in which they were dubiously cloaked, to build real estates in regional capitals of the world, live in opulence and move around in posh cars while misery is writ large on the faces of the people they purport to fight for and on whose behalf they climb to the positions of authority in government as can be gleaned from Nigeria’s Wole Soyinka’s “A Play of Giants”; the satirical dramatic production that brings together three great dictators of Africa, ruthless in their demonstration of power, boast of their glory and how innocent people lie grovelling at their mercy.
Besides, several other African countries have also lost focus and fortunes over foreign interference in their lives that profited few misguided locals, for instance, Libya; unlike a few other countries, such as Botswana and Rwanda (with 8.2 per cent growth in 2022), that are now building their economies from the alienation of the past to a true capacity founded on patriotism and local needs to build virile nations for their people to make progress.
Conversely in other parts of Africa, contemporary system failures, such as elevation of ethnic nationalism and solidarity over and above merit and standard, including corruption, have all coalesced to mount a road block against development.
In West Africa in particular, the trending regional gun and garrison alliance and solidarity in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger Republic at the risk of economic isolation by the world governed by democratic ethos reminds us of Wole Soyinka’s “A Play of Giants’, which highlights the personal egos of the military rulers, who, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, set for their people the standards they won’t personally embrace, including turning their bayonets on the heads of their people to terrorise them, as citizens become “casualties of freedom”.
In one sorry moment of human tragedy in Africa, Ivory Coast (Cote D’Ivoire) moved from the riches of cocoa to the ruins of Cocody, as Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara, while seeking self-glorification, ignited a smouldering cauldron that incinerated the once prosperous, beautiful and sprawling Cocody city, which Prof Adebayo Williams in his sizzling essay described as a metaphor for human tsunami.
Today, Africa’s latest axis of evil (Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso) notoriously famed as the terrorism capital of West Africa allegedly fueled by foreign interest, presents a worrying alliance that threatens to isolate the people of that region of Africa from the economic federalism that drives and shapes the universal welfare agenda of the people of the world.
Their leaders: Colonel Assimi GoĂŻta of Mali, Captain Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso and Niger Republic’s General Abdourahamane Tchiani, heavily backed by Russia and China, and evidently African pretenders to the thrones of Otto Von Bismarck and Cyrus the Great, and caricature of Moamar Ghadaffi of Libya, never represent the Africa’s great hopes and aspirations for development.
At best, they represent the grotesque totems of redemption that worship and serve themselves. And this the Burkinabe leader demonstrated recently when he pronounced five more years for himself on the throne before the citizens of Burkina Faso could vote to have a government of their choice, even as poverty ravages the country with the despondent young people braving the ocean in their stowaway bids to escape to Europe.
For Captain Traore of Burkina Faso who is building an unprecedented arms stockpiles as revealed in the trending video, the totalitarianisation of the guns is far better than the democratisation of the ballot! And in him, a Ghadaffi is dead; for while the former Libyan leader had a vision and mission to grow his country according to her needs while sacrificing self-interest, foreign interest drives these new African belligerent states to their isolationist agenda to alienate their people from the world’s universal economic agenda.
Even as the scars of colonialism are still fresh and festering in Africa, for these soldiers of fortunes, self-serving agenda is nobler than universal governance agenda for collective prosperity; all driven by capitulation to foreign interest that holds no promise for their despondent people.
Meanwhile, Niger’s junta has confirmed that rebels damaged an oil pipeline carrying crude oil to neighbouring Benin Republic. The Patriotic Liberation Front, which is fighting for the release of former President Mohamed Bazoum, who was overthrown in a coup last July, said it was behind the attack. The rebels threatened to continue the attacks on the pipelines run by the Chinese companies until China withdraws support for the junta that sacked the democratically elected government of President Bazoum on July 26, 2023.
And in Mali, Col Goita has jailed 10 opponents of the ruling military junta, including leading opposition politicians, for demanding a return to civilian rule. Those in the junta’s gulag include the heads of parties, groups and former Justice Minister Mohamed Ali Bathily, who signed a March declaration urging the restoration of democracy. They were accused of illegal gatherings and plotting against the “legal authorities.
For the Libyans, they don’t need any historian to remind them about their immediate past and their present sordid condition, particularly the misfortunes that have befallen them after a blissful run under Ghadaffi’s benevolent leadership care in Tripoli.
Though a dictator, Ghadaffi was steadfast in his belief in the Libyan identity, which he deployed to make Libya a great nation in Africa before Libyans were misled into their current misfortune by foreign interest, the effects of which have spilled over to some parts of Africa, including Nigeria, where terrorism arising from the proliferation of lethal weapons from Libya’s conflagration now thrives.
Today, the three burdensome African states that can scarcely survive without their neighbours in the West Africa sub-region are seeking expansion of their terrorist bloc by asking other West African countries to join their misery train oiled by foreign interests that thrive on economic exploitation and political slavery to deepen Africa’s identity crisis that has stunted the continent’s growth over the years.
This is a new twist to the misfortunes of the African people in the context whereby individual interests of the ambitious soldiers are cloned to represent the collective aspirations of the generality of the people, all scented in foreign interest to compound the gripping and nightmarish conditions of the 21 century into which Africans have been sentenced.
All this ill-motivated crisis of identity that alienates state’s operators from the sensibilities that drive their people’s agenda for growth only profits the characters driving the agenda against the good of their people!
The question now arises: how long will Africa continue to wallow in this disillusionment arising from the crisis of identity fueled by foreign interests and corrupt lifestyles that have become the Bible of some African leaders and which have plagued the continent’s growth and development over the years?
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is the leader of the West Africa bloc, must double his efforts to ensure that the sub-region does not slide into dictatorship again. He must not allow West Africa to become foreign arms dumps for ideological war between colonial masters contesting the control of the world.The relics of dictatorial regimes in Africa are so gripping and scary to be embraced, so much so that the sub-region cannot afford to play the game of chance with the destinies of the people desperately in need of salvation that the world’s democratic governance guarantees. African communal ethos nurtured by representative governance must triumph over gun-point foreign imperial capitalist agenda that serves only its promoters.
- Olujobi, a journalist and Commissioner in Ekiti State Local Government Service Commission, writes from Ado-Ekiti
