UK Elections 2015: This election needs a human face

Some background

In 1968, my father then training to be an accountant and working for the NHS went to a pub with some of his English colleagues whereupon he met with his local MP and an exchange ensued.

This MP was Enoch Powell and the encounter was soon after his Rivers of Blood speech, the content of which traded on the fears and insecurities of the electorate by demonising selected minorities for political advantage. Immigration!

Populist demonization

This was a populist and sometimes right-wing campaign strategy, it is not new, and today we see the same elements of demonising minorities all around the world for political capital.

Be it minors, womenfolk, the poor, the different by race, tribe, religion, custom, beliefs or sexuality, the disabled, the powerless or the voiceless, some opportunistic politician has found something to excite the basest of our instincts to garner votes.

In this general election season in the UK, the leader of the UK Independence Party in debates decided to aim the crosshairs at refugees with HIV he falsely claims costs the NHS £25,000 for treatment.

This is sensationalist bunkum, but it gave impetus to a malevolent listener to this reprehensible invective to take the picture of an innocent man and make him the face and person of Nigel Farage's rotten lies.

It’s about real people

Bisi Alimi, whose story we know as the first Nigerian to come out on national television, who suffered personal and institutional persecution then had to flee Nigeria narrowly escaping death was the target of the atrocious besmirching.

We granted refugee status to Bisi Alimi and he has been of the most exemplary conduct, contributed immensely to the cause of LGBTI minorities and many human rights issues all around the world. If he remained a refugee, he is one we want amongst us as an inspirational figure and more, but Bisi does have a British passport, he is not a refugee.

However, that is beside the point, this attack was aimed at those who have sought refuge in our country with the devilish intent of persuading us to put cost above our humanity. That has been the bottom-line of the UKIP agenda, making cost the issue at the expense of our greater humanity and tendency to compassion.

The heart of who we are

When people come to the UK seeking refuge on humanitarian grounds, we have had a tradition of welcoming them and helping them thrive in our communities and society. This has been the case for centuries and long may we continue to set the standard for compassionate relief and humanitarian consideration.

The personal attack on Bisi Alimi was not only contemptible but completely unrepresentative of who we are. Yet we must know that this campaign strategy is shocking and awful, one trading on our fears to put wedges of division and difference within our communities.

Nigel Farage is a canny politician and he knew what he was doing by sowing seeds of suspicion and anger in the hope that some amongst us might act unconscionably and irrationally, along with his intention of shoring up support for electioneering purposes. We must repudiate this kind of talk completely.

Taking the fight to Nigel

However, under the auspices of the Thanet Trade Union Action, the irrepressible Bisi Alimi is taking the fight to Nigel Farage in the constituency where he is contesting to be the local MP and you are invited to Meet Farage's Tourist.

My hope is by the time Bisi Alimi has finished speaking we would see Nigel Farage for who he is and give him and his kind of populist rhetoric the heave-ho.

Nigel Farage is not the face of our hearts and minds, I believe Bisi Alimi more represents who we are and the example we want to better be to the world - open, empathetic, considerate, helpful, fair, just and truly British.

Please attend if you can and share with your friends.

Meet Farage’s Tourist

Thursday 30 April at 19:00–21:00

Odd Fellows Hall,

142 High Street,
Ramsgate, Kent.
CT11 9TT

Thank you.

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.