Nigeria sets no good examples for Africa

That Cliché about African Leadership

What is happening in Africa today bothers me a lot because it all concerns leadership – poor leadership, rotten leadership, leadership acquired by violence and corruption, leadership held onto without offering good governance, idiotic leadership and sprinklings of good leadership.

Very few countries in Africa can boast good leadership, there is hope, but what does surround us now is chaos.

For instance, today, Darfur in Sudan still represents an intractable problem of genocide that is quickly fading from urgent action; the completely botched elections in Kenya has caused so much unrest, violent displacement and killings that it might slip out of the control of the political leaders, Zimbabwe has registered an inflation rate (150,000%) that makes the mind boggle and rebels are trying to unseat a government in Chad.

Africans adrift in Africa

The result of this is Africans are refugees in their own Africa, displaced because of policies implemented by fellow Africans who want power and give no respite to their people – savagery, murder, hunger and displacement becomes the lot of the masses whilst the middle-classes and the rising prosperous classes are completely oblivious or indifferent of those problems in the slums, villages and the hinterland.

However, I only have to go back to my blogs in April 2007 where I lamented the issues around the Nigerian election to see why Africans are unlikely to have African solutions for African problems.

Africans silent to African suffering

The issue in Darfur never became a crisis until others outside the continent decided they could not stand for such large-scale suffering, Africans are still dragging their feet on the matter.

The elections in Kenya were most definitely flawed as the head of the electoral commission eventually said he was not sure of who won. African leaders then welcomed the imposed president who “stole” the elections whilst he left his country behind burning.

The entrenched eternal incumbency of Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe should have come to an end with the people of the country being able to choose who would lead their country out of the morass it is in, but for the appeasement of African leaders that continues to make a bad situation worse.

It would take the threat and actions of the French army in Chad to keep a democratic dictator, Idriss Deby who has done nothing for his country in all his years in power that others who think they can do the job better have to resort to arms to unseat him.

Where is the country?

The question is, where is the African country with the authority, clout, gravitas and respect that can speak up for the downtrodden masses and exert the kind of influence to ensure things are done right in the “Dark” continent, such we can all be seen in the light as enlightened, emancipated and in control, able to solve our problems with confidence?

Step forward – Nigeria? The Giant of Africa in size offers none of this ability, its institutions are still mired in corruption, its elections are flawed that it cannot condemn the ones in Kenya, its leadership skirts illegitimacy so it can say nothing to Sudan, Zimbabwe or Chad.

In all that has been happening in the last few weeks, we have heard not one squeak from the Heart of Africa because it has a bad heart.

The insignificance of the giant

We have the biggest sporting event going on in Africa and the grand populace of 130 million could not produce a team that could survive the first stage of eliminations.

This is result of our polity not realising the example we should be setting for Africa so that things can be done right and if done wrongly, we can be a model for correction.

Unfortunately, South Africa cannot step into the breach because they have not been able to raise the expectations of their people beyond subsistence; they would end up with a leader very much in the mould of the many that gives Africa a very bad name.

Africa can only begin to solve its own problems when we deal with each other honestly, truthfully, fairly, justly and with mutual respect based on leadership and governance that eschews corruption and nepotism, that embraces transparency and begins to tackle with vigour the problems that affect Africa and Africans.

There is hope for Africa, but in the meantime, it would require a lot more international intervention and scrutiny to ensure what we are doing is well beyond reproach and within globally acceptable standards before we are respectfully left to maturely seek African solutions to African problems.

PS: This was written to highlight the frustration of a fellow Nigerian about his country not being able to address African issues with boldness because we have set bad examples and lost the moral authority that could be projected with our greatness in Africa.

Zoe's wrecked ark

A zoo is not that safe at times

I have always enjoyed visiting zoos but never been under the illusion that those animals behind fencing, walls, enclosures or cages are not wild, dangerous and when let lose could wreak untold havoc.

When on Wednesday I heard of the tiger mauling in the San Francisco Zoo where there was one fatality and several injured, it brought home the fact that all is not that as tame as it seems in the zoo.

The thickening plot indicates the enclosure wall was a metre lower than the recommended height; tigers we forget are climbing animals and it only takes a moment of animal inspiration for those enclosures to dissolve into nothing and people to become victims like another episode in the Netherlands where a gorilla broke out to attack the unwelcome amorous glances from a lady visitor.

The new adopt-a-kit

And so the angels of mercy and saviours of little Africa have returned from Chad to France to serve the remainder of their 8 year sentence for kidnapping Chadian children ready to selling onto foster parents in France who would lavish love and care on helpless, hopeless children.

There are many who would have thought after Madonna and Angelina Jolie took their gift-wrapped African pseudo-orphans out of the deepest darkest Africa, anyone with a Western bleeding heart can traipse into Africa and forklift a child from the foreboding oblivion of starvation and deprivation into the grand opulence of Western excess.

Whilst, every little helps from people who selflessly commit themselves to helping Africa where untold governments have failed in their basic duty of governance and the care of the children of Africa, there isn’t enough in place to ensure that the desire to adopt is properly channelled though the requisite legal means.

Zoe´s Beached Ark

The workers of Zoe’s Ark might have either exploited the absence of checks and balances to ensure that children are not extricated by enticement or duress from their families, labelled as orphans, exported to Europe, robbed of their heritage and their identity.

In another light, they might have been naïve, situations are tough in Africa and just as the slave trade of old, it took locals who knew the lay of the land to get the slaves and then sell them to merchants who took them to the new world.

There might have been unscrupulous people who for the money to be made, seized Chadian children, presented them as Darfuri orphans and cajoled the Zoe’s Ark people into thinking their mission of mercy for the children and benevolence for the foster parents was as humanitarian as it could get.

Hard African Lessons

I think it is now clear that Africa is no playground for naïve Good Samaritans, you can get caught up in a very serious situation as these people found themselves and were sadly almost cut adrift by their government.

Naivety, however, is no excuse for such debacles and whilst these people would not suffer the hard labour conditions of a Chadian gaol, having been returned to France , it might just have become ever so clear that people with a humanitarian inclination should approach Africa with smart caution.

Extra steps should and must be taken to ensure that any activity undertaken regarding the adoption of children in Africa is above board, stands the scrutiny of Western standards and are properly signed-off by the competent authorities in the countries, failing which a clear set of UN guidelines must by applied and reviewed by independent personnel.

Beyond this and the media frenzy that surrounded this case, one wonders if the children would all be returned to their families and the government that fought to keep them in Africa would now step up to provide the promise that leaving to France was supposed to offer them – a future, a life and the possibility of being able to change their world – this must be the attainable aspiration of every child born in Africa.