African Leaders are saboteurs and enemies of progress

Africa Image Live By Lord Aikins Adusei It is a waste of time to argue that there is anything remarkable or worth emulating about the brand of leadership that is seen in Africa. Throughout Africa not a single country has been able to deliver its people from poverty, malnutrition and diseases. Almost all countries in Africa South of the Sahara are facing deep poverty and that includes resource rich counties like Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Senegal, Gabon, Cameroon, Ghana, and even South Africa. Everywhere in the world whenever the word Africa is mentioned four words come to mind: poverty, hunger, wars and diseases. Apart from Botswana where the leaders have relatively been able to use their resources to advance the development of their people, the rest of Africa is nothing but misery. Misery in sense that the average African is hardly able to live one-third of the comfort that a citizen of the global north (US, Canada and Europe) is able to enjoy in his/her lifetime. Apart from the corrupt politicians, dictators and their cronies who live in luxury, the rest of the population have to survive the harsh realities of the African economy on less than two dollars a day. Why is black Africa so different? Any time the question of poverty is raised black African leaders are quick to point to colonialism and slavery. But it is a fact that the era in which everything is blamed on colonialism and slavery is past and gone. India, South Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong were all colonised yet they have been able to shake themselves of what Damisa Moyo terms the 'four apocalypse of hunger, disease, war and poverty'. A visit to rural parts of Ghana shows that very little has changed economically since independence more than 50 years ago. In spite of the availability of tractors and other advanced farming technologies that can be employed to increase productivity, farmers in Ghana still cultivate and harvest their crops with cutlasses and hoes, tools their forefathers used before they were colonised. The situation in Niger, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Togo and Benin is not different from that of Ghana. The extreme poverty and deprivation in countries in the Horn of Africa region and Ethiopia in particular continue to baffle economists and development thinkers after so much aid money has been poured into that region to no avail as politicians divert aid money into their own private bank accounts. Any major study about why Africa is so different from the rest of the world points to the kind of leadership that exist in Africa. The leaders in Africa love power and will do anything to get it: rigging elections, organizing thugs to cause mayhem and violence, refusing to step down when their term of office end. The likes are Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, Mamadou Tandja of Niger and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe who employed violence and intimidation against members of opposition parties after loosing elections. The leaders love to be worshipped and served as kings even though they claim to be servants of the people. They love to live in fine palaces, drive in convoys, attend state functions, deliver long speeches yet do not raise a finger to fight poverty and deprivation that are so common in their countries especially in rural areas. African politicians and traditional leaders and those in control of economic and political affairs are always interested in titles and the financial rewards that go with their office not the responsibilities attached to the office. Ghana's current President is a Law Professor but he seems to have no clue on how to move his country forward. He is surrounded by others with academic titles similar to his but the ministries, departments and the sectors they head have not changed since they took office earlier this year. Malawi's president holds a doctorate degree but his country is no different from that of Togo, DRC or Gabon which are all being governed poorly by children of former dictators and thieves who took decades to mismanage their countries' economies and resources. Nigeria's current president has been titled "the first graduate president of Nigeria" but Nigeria with all its oil revenue and human resource is still steep in poverty, sometimes not even finding enough petrol to feed her economy despite being the biggest oil producer in Africa. This contrasts the president of Brazil, Lula Da Silva who used to be a shoe shine boy and street vendor but is increasingly turning his country into economic power house thereby steering his country into economic independence and freedom. Where did Yar' Dua leave his thinking cap when he became president or what did he graduated from? I want to know because I still wonder why they are not applying what they learnt in school to free their countries from the international disgrace and weakness that have come to be associated with the continent. A poor Cuban seeking to leave her communist country said she "would be prepared to go anywhere except Africa". When asked why she said "how can I jump out of a frying pan into fire?" Meaning she cannot leave a bad situation in Cuba and get into a worse one in Africa. In a conversation with a female Professor in Stockholm, Sweden about the poverty situation in Africa she asked angrily "well the leadership in Gabon claim to have used the huge oil revenue for infrastructure investment but is that the reality on the ground?" She continued, "Democratic Republic of Congo is a mess, Angola, Congo and Equatorial Guinea are an eyesore and as for Nigeria well I reserve my comment". Most of these leaders make annual pilgrimage to London, Washington, Tokyo, Berlin, Beijing and see the infrastructures and the living standards of the people in these countries yet nothing pricks them to help their countries to do the same. When they are sick they are quick to take the next available plane to America, Europe or North Africa for treatment but forget to build the same hospitals and other institutions and infrastructures for the good of their countries. After blaming their monumental failures on colonialism and slavery they have now found a new scapegoat: climate change and with it they can continue with their decades of inaction without having to lose anything. Yoweri Museveni seems to be okay living in his palace enjoying almost three decades of his loot of Ugandan resources with his family and cronies. Obiang Nguema and his circle of friends live in their mansions surrounded by bodyguards yet the only 600, 000 people in his oil rich country live in 18th century conditions and likewise Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville and Dos Santos of Angola. The black African leader will accept bribe from companies and interest groups to stop implementing policies, programmes and projects that could help alleviate poverty in his country. The failure of Omar Bongo of Gabon to make his country the Switzerland of Africa can largely be linked to the hundreds of millions of dollars he received as bribe from Elf which allowed the company to loot Gabon's oil proceeds. It is sad despite being the continent's biggest oil exporter Nigeria does not have a well developed petrochemical industry and has to import most of her oil products abroad. How come Cameroon is so poor when the country exports oil every day? How come Equatorial Guinea is so poor when it is the third biggest oil exporting nation in Africa? How come Angola is caught up in deep poverty when oil revenues bring the country billions of dollars annually? How come Nigerians live in 18th century environment when oil proceeds flow into the country every day? The answer is the leaders. They are corrupt, power hungry, arrogant, ignorant, illiterate and visionless buffoons, who can neither think out of the box or understand what it means to be president, prime minister, senator, MP, councillor, Assemblyman, or a chief and who prey on the ignorance and powerlessness of their people to stay in power while amassing wealth at the expense of their countries. Chief among them is Yahyah Jammeh a murderer, blood sucker, sometimes a president, sometimes HIV/AIDS healer who makes a mockery of himself and the seat of the presidency in The Gambia and who like the rest of his colleagues in Guinea, Guinea Bissau, CAR, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mauritania and Ivory Coast cannot devise plans to steer their countries out of economic predicament. Yar´Dua of Nigeria has decided to buy four presidential jets even though many schools in his corruption ridden country do not have computers, books and vehicles. These leaders are what Ghanaians call 'Konongo kaya' which literally means saboteurs who will not raise a finger to do anything to help their countries and yet will not allow others to do it. Saboteurs whose continuous stay in power is the cause of Africa's woes and underdevelopment. Saboteurs and enemies of progress and development who are interested in accumulating power while doing nothing to help their countries. Enemies of progress who prefer stealing from their poor countries and bank their ill-gotten wealth in Western countries to using the money to invest in infrastructures and projects that will benefit the poor.