NOBODY BUT AFRICANS CAN RESCUE AFRICA Part I

By Farouk Martins Aresa

If Africans are waiting for some white, gray or black knights to rescue them, they might as well wait until kingdom come. But any knight smart by half looking to scoop up the disintegration of Nigeria has failed in his homework despite the calls by some Africans for the return of colonial powers. They are the same ones that gave us religions to justify motives for killing one another. Young Africans will rise up and take the continent back.

There is nothing wrong with Africa itself, outsourced to contractors in mufti who bungled and mismanaged it. Knights could not have done worse than contractors, so why would they get their hands dirty? Nevertheless, it will be derogatory to say Africa is short of noble men and women dedicated to causes that can lift the Continent as a whole. If they can become the Pope, rule in Europe and America, though only once in a century, they can rule Africa efficiently all the time.

Do not be surprised if those who have never lifted a finger to defend a colleague at home or that was mistreated at work or discriminated against as untouchables suddenly become the local champions. The loudest town criers for those who have milked Africa dry while Nigeria still miraculously staggers. These charlatans have no scar to show in defense of the down-trodden, the meek and the gentle but they are ready to die for crumbs from their heroes, not for Nigeria, not for Africa. Everyone has a role, a contribution good or bad.

They are like civil servants to Any Clown In Power or bureaucrats on whose shoulders and backs the looting class rests by giving ideas and implementing loopholes for the safe keeping of their masters’ wishes. You can never underestimate them because they are suave, highly lettered, articulate but without a conscience. In a sense, they are worse than the leaders since they are the cheer-leaders who transport vitriol, bile and acid to recruits as sugar pills needed to cure corruption. Failed commissions without implementations are set up to buy time, as culprits seek court protections.

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While some are public relation officers, they come on internet, in every profession including yours and mine. Call them all kinds of names, they have one thing going for them: they appeal to our sense of poetic justice, fair play, and due process they deny others. They are vigorously animated if caught red handed crying for the best lawyers money can buy but forgetting the power their leaders abused as dictators. They changed the focus of Africans from self actualization to self gratification.

Africans know what the problem is and fortunately what solutions are but those are what will be debated to death while generations beg for action. The solution has to be perfect or nothing. These Africans preach that they are so engraved with fairness and equity in the face of imminent annihilation. They hang on to the principle that they are willing to die first and complain later. But the beneficiaries live sumptuously first and die later.

In the relatively short history of the world, men are well known to have sold one another into slavery but since its abolition, the vestiges of slavery are still stuck on the African leaders in attitudes and cognitive display. For years Africans have blamed others for their plights but we are now tired of the blame game. We sell ourselves willingly to the highest bidders legally or cross the desert trying to get away illegally in brain drains; and thank God when we safely arrived. Those in Diaspora do not have to be told about our “dark Continent” to scare them anymore, we tell them our experiences as refugees.

Yet, no people has ever survive turbulence, terror real or imagine, and corruption without killing the monsters first rather than die first. There are ways civilized people behave when the waves are peaceful and people are reasonable. Even in the time of war, humans are not supposed to be cannibals and we do not suspend all rules and order during declaration of emergency. The courts as a neutral body, must function when individual, group and minority rights are trampled on, so that brakes, check and balances are applied.

If you have not seen the way Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of the Republic of Congo was killed in January 1961 by fellow Africans, take a good look and you will see some vindictiveness of Africans on Africans. From that time in Congo or the time Tafawa Balewa, Aguyi Ironsi and Adekunle Fajuyi of Nigeria were killed resulting in reprisal killing of ordinary people, Africans have not slept. Today, bureaucrats still justify the killings of Saro Wiwa, in Zakim Biam and Odi. Some of those who instigated strong action behind the scene are usually the first to condemn in public.

On the economic front, it was so easy to use Africans against Africans that Arusha failed very miserably in the hands of Malibu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania because he dared to be self-sufficient and Kwame Nkrumah was ridiculed out of power in Ghana after allegation of corruption. As it turned out, Nkrumah did not even have a house to his name. He tried cocoa cartel well before oil became black goal and failed.

Corruption was not the real issue then, until Mobutu of Congo, Achempong of Ghana, Idi Amin of Uganda and Gowon another consensus leader of Nigeria acquired voracious ego for western luxuries: soldier in Mercedes 500 to fight war, mansions as barracks, and big civil war weddings! Insatiable greed camouflaged to righting the wrongs of whom?

In Nigeria we had Chief Obafemi Awolowo who imprudently wanted to probe the previous Military Government in 1979 for corruption even before he got there. Needless to say, General Aremu Obasanjo accepted interpretation of two third of a State from a prominent Lawyer, Richard Akinjide who vigorously defended his Party as he should. Alhaji Shehu Shagari became the President of the Country.