A Sorry Race

There is a disturbing irony in the failure of any African government to clinch the Mo Ibrahim Prize for exceptional leadership for the fourth time in five years.  The award was instituted for leaders of the last frontier. But, alas, from government to schools, from the media to the communities, no one here truly has a feeling of the divine or a sense of mission. We have no soul beyond parody and vulgarity and this is our greatest enemy. The requirements for winning the prize are basic, and yet no winner again. Where else in the world would a president get the opportunity of winning five million dollars and recognition for running a transparent, inclusive government which guarantees the security and safety of its people, provides them with basic human rights and amenities such as education, water, access to healthcare, etc as well as reduce poverty by creating jobs? That means, of course, industrialization; being creative, having something of value, with value added to sell to the world.

Our situation in the “Dark Continent” is a pathetic one. In view of the above I think that it is clear that government is certainly not the solution to our problems. I would go so far as to say that government, perhaps or the style of leadership is the problem. Can we with the current dispensation drive this piece of rickety equipment that we did not build or understand? It certainly seems that the levers of power are too cumbersome for our leaders to harness, to control for the public benefit. The institutional rot is too deep and the inexperience of government too obvious. Are we trying to control what we really do not comprehend?

Nigeria has a numerical and resource advantage over most other states. We are supposed to champion a different perception of the African continent, yet we seem to be stuck in the past and replay over and over our relationship with the West. We think that they are the solution to our problem. They have the answers, but then why would they give it to us? Perhaps they profit more from the status quo. Our leaders are still acting as “middlemen” selling our natural resources, oil and gas and agricultural products in exchange for a desire to obtain Western trade goods, many of which from being mere luxuries are now necessities by design. This is the reason for our underdevelopment. We serve as economic, political and cultural agents of the West. We are their middlemen, their commission agents and only serve to oil the wheels of their development whilst we under-develop our resources and our youth, and mortgage our future in the process.    

We know, like Azubuike Ishiekwene rightly pointed out in his recent column, that “the continent (of Africa) needs leadership that will redeem it from being an absurd theatre of charity for foreign countries and the pity party zone of rock stars”.  We should ask ourselves why we languish at the bottom of all development indices. Whilst others are thinking ahead and applying ingenious methods to solving their problems, we export mineral resources raw and cheap, robbing our coffers, only to import refined products, which we subsidize to sell to our people. The mango tree grows here, we pluck it, export the fruit and import the juice which price we subsidize to sell to our people so they can afford it. Utter madness!

We will remain underdeveloped if we continue like this. Our youth will despair. They will remain half-trained and become a menace to society, drifting from city to city looking for a foothold. Others will look to escape, to get away from this slavery; to throw off the shackles here and to look for hope elsewhere. But the journey is tortuous. Unscrupulous human traffickers await them on the shores of the Mediterranean, ready to fleece their human cargo by landing them in unseaworthy vessels and drowning the dreams and the future of Africa. They die in their thousands and those that make it are not slaves this time but bottom of the food pile economic migrants. Their suffering is on our conscience and their blood is on our hands.

What does leadership mean to those presiding over such distressed humanity? How do we salvage our shattered pride? We need to wake up to our responsibilities. We need to stop looking to the center for answers. The change, if it is to come, will come from places and from people we have not heard of yet. Though we have lost faith in our leaders (indeed, they have failed us), we should remain resilient, self-reliant and capable of fixing all the problems we face on a daily basis in our backyard. We should defend the right to continue to do so and allow nobody to stand in the way of our progress.