Statesmanship in Africa, a fool’s prize

THE leader of the South African opposition,
Julius Malema, says President Zuma and the
South African state promoted a culture of
violence and xenophobia which led to Black
South Africans attacking migrants and
foreigners whom they blame for their own
economic misfortune.

In many cases in Africa, violence is often
state sponsored, an idea that prompted many
arguments between myself and my
colleagues at the London School of
Economics and political science (LSE).



From the Sorbonne, which if I am to be
honest, cared little about the Black
experience, to the LSE where both students
and professors often held either antiquated
views about Africa, or beliefs which
infantilised Africans by blaming only the
West for its misfortunes, I would often argue,
much to my colleagues’ stupor that there is
nothing wrong with Africa or Africans beyond
the lack of political will to do right by the
majority of citizens, due to the self-interest
and greed of the same elitist cabal which has
been in power in most countries for decades.
Most Westerners cannot begin to fathom that
any government or person of power and
means would be so selfish (or crazy) as to
engage in factitious activities meant to
divide and instigate violence for personal
gain.

Not only because such crimes are
punishable but because the ethics and code
of conduct which public officials are forced to
abide by in other climes, are too strict to
allow such actions: the public in Europe or
America wouldn’t stand for it, talk less of
seeking to pardon those who we all
acknowledge have wronged us, as it is done
here in our very own country, Nigeria.

Forced leaders on the people
Julius Malema reportedly said about
President Zuma’s call to end xenophobic
attacks: “his body language did not suggest
a leader”. He continued: “Your own son
continues to say these people must be
killed…Your son is such a typical example of
a family member you cannot whip in line.”
One would have thought Malema was
referring to our own President and his wife
whose xenophobic utterances and miscreant
demeanor have embarrassed Nigerians,
degraded the polity and ultimately cost her
spouse his re-election.

One encounters similar situations all over
Africa: those called to lead, those forced
upon the people, are hardly ever the best.
Rather, they are the result of the sort of
alliances and political calculations one
would not even need to bother with if
politicians simply did the work they were
elected to do and developed their
constituencies rather than promote ethnic
bias and fool citizens into believing only a
member of their ethnic group can have their
best interest at heart. Africa has long since
stopped developing statesmen.

We are no longer even breeding politicians.
What we have today are con artists who
defect to other parties based on whims and
lack the courage and determination to
develop their countries.

The irony is that PDP dares to accuse the
APC of promoting a one party state,
forgetting, because it is now in opposition,
that the PDP is in fact, the originator of the
one party, winner takes all mentality.

PDP
should perhaps hire historians and
strategists to find out how the then ACN
survived in a country where the centre is the
big-man one must reckon with.

Our politicians support thugs (or become
thugs and touts themselves), promote
violence or in the case of the infamous Ayo
Fayose, turn the state into a hideously
divisive (and derisive) freak show.

What other way can one rule (the word itself
is a problem, politicians are not kings, they
must govern) if one has no inkling about
policy? I shudder every time Jonathan is
called a statesman. Emotion and selective
amnesia cannot make anyone claim his
actions have ever put him in the league of the
Jomo Kenyatta’s, Nkrumah’s, Awolowo’s,
Azikiwe’s and Tafawa Balewa’s (or even the
Buhari’s and Obasanjo’s) of this world.
Times of strife and trouble
In Kenya, shortly after reports of the Garissa
University attack, President Uhuru Kenyatta
addressed citizens on television.In times of
trouble and strife, our own President has
been either absent or timid and indecisive,
imagining every critic to be an enemy, rather
than possessing the humility of a true
statesman, that is, the capacity to look at
situations objectively and to try to
understand the point of view of others.
Blaming everyone except oneself for
mistakes is also not in the makings of a
statesman. Now, suddenly, our “statesman”
decides he wants a refund: after trillions of
naira spent, his loss, clearly, is something he
still cannot stomach. Indeed, ministers,
aides, state officials who absconded with
party funds, should refund said monies in a
transparent process; otherwise, it will only
be looted again.

However, what is interesting is that
Jonathan, yet again, (perhaps intentionally)
misses the point. His actions helped cement
a system where individuals can make away
with state and party funds.

Nowhere else in the developed world, do
ministers personally receive funds to
“mobilize” support and there should be
adequate checks and balances within parties
to stop any member, no matter how highly
placed, from using party funds for personal
profit.

The APC recently sacked party heads it found
guilty of such misdeeds. Is the PDP still too
big to do the right thing? Moreover, PDP is
not the Nigerian state or the Nigerian
government, so where are the trillions from?
The ministry of petroleum? What sort of
gangster’s den or opaque mafia government
are we operating? Africa is not doomed to
continuously repeat the same mistakes but
as a people, we must shun the culture of
mediocrity that awards honour where it is
not deserved.

In our usual self-deluded manner, a failure
presiding as close to a failed-state as one
can get without full-scale war, is called a
hero for doing nothing more than what many
others before him have done. Sarkozy
conceded victory to Hollande who is now the
President of France.

Gordon Brown conceded victory to David
Cameron, neither of these men was called a
hero for doing what is expected of them.
History might not even remember them and
that also, is accepted as part of life.

Mass poverty

Not everyone can be exceptional or larger
than life, although living in Nigeria tells you
the opposite as even a gateman can develop
a God complex, believing he is the best at
opening doors.

So, our Presidents are often fooled into
believing they are their people’s messiahs
although none of their loot serves to develop
anyone beyond themselves. One could say,
“they are all the same” and that I am wrong
to place such faith in the APC and in General
Buhari.

But as Oscar Wilde said, “we are all in the
gutter, but some of us are looking at the
stars”. Rather than be big fish in a small
pond of mass poverty, some of us would
rather be big fish in an open society, where
real competition and opportunities separate
the men from the boys. Of what use is being
the best if one is never challenged, if one
never has to prove that one is the best?

Pardon for
I SOMETIMES wonder if
some people come from
the same planet as the
rest of us law-abiding
citizens.

The logic here would be:
he is not the only corrupt
politician, some others
(Alamieyeseigha) were
pardoned so why not him?
Jonathan has so subverted our judicial
process and morals that such ideas can even
be entertained. So, if only one criminal is
caught rather than a hundred does that
excuse the crime? May 29th can’t come fast
enough.

Buruji Kashamu

INTERNATIONAL media calls him “the man
indicted for allegedly smuggling heroin into
the US and who became an elected senator”.
Only in Nigeria! Of course, the Senator-elect
claims it was his dead brother. Nigerian
politics is a telenovela, a cheap series of
painfully embarrassing events where our
dignity is mercilessly trampled by desperate
individuals.

Jonathan’s perceived protection of Kashamu
(as the Nigerian government did not extradite
him) and other characters that are equally
perceived as dubious, contributed to his loss.