DEMO-CRAZY AFRICANA AGAINST THE PEOPLE
The transition from violent governance to that based on the consent of the people is difficult, contends Okello Oculi
At a celebration of Professor Adele Jinadu in Abuja, Professor Okwodiba Nnoli spoke with rage about the lack of talk about struggles by Nigeria’s majority population in villages against poverty and negligence by thieving politicians and administrators.
Academics and journalists are conspiring to define ‘’DEMOCRACY’’ without noting the angry contempt by Chinua Achebe and Fela Anikulapo Kuti for governance anchored on brutal and greedy contempt for ‘’the people’’.
They cynically wave Abraham Lincoln’s definition of ‘’DEMOCRACY’’ as a ‘’Government of the People by the People and for the People’’. Lincoln was against recent African immigrants from across the Atlantic Ocean being classified as non-citizens. Africans and indigenous Mayas and Aztecs were excluded from politics in the same way that Greek elites had done to slaves in their society.
This virus of ‘’DEMO-CRAZY’’ has had widespread manifestation across Africa. British, French, Portuguese political engineers nurtured it by segregating education and military structures along southern and northern ethnic groups. Examples of this format were in Uganda, Nigeria, Togo and Libya.
In Uganda educated southern elites shared the mistaken view held by British and American diplomats that as a military officer from the north, IDI AMIN was an idiot who would easily fall in a counter-coup.
An impending 1971 elections would return Milton Obote’s to democratic legitimacy; entrench his abolition of domination of ethnic groups by monarchies in Bunyoro, Toro, Ankole and Buganda, and, more importantly, enable him demolish a racial commercial monopoly by INDIANS. Britain had imported INDIANS to prevent the growth of a Ugandan capitalist class likely to challenge British economic exploitation.
Obote had protected a civil service of educated staff to political patronage against southern groups. Nevertheless, a Muganda governor of Uganda’s Central Bank smashed Obote’s portrait on the street to show his passionate welcome for Idi Amin. He was soon murdered by Amin’s security operatives.
Likewise, AMIN later claimed a DIVINE command to expel all ‘’INDIANS’’ from Uganda within 90 days. Obote’s delayed political and economic democratization were aborted by foreign propagators of democracy.
In Kenya, President Jomo Kenyatta, a graduate in Anthropology from London University, lied when he proclaimed the doctrine of ‘‘HARAAMBEE’’ (all Kenyans working and benefiting together), after telling a British journalist that he would create an ‘’ARISTOCRACY’’ in Kenya.
He dismissed from his cabinet Bildad Kaggia and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga because they insisted on redistributing land to those who had fought in the MAU MAU war. He degraded the citizenship of landless Kikuyu, and other majorities. His legacy of corruption for creating DEMO-CRAZY ‘’aristocrats’’ exploded into a horrendous violence after post-December 2007 election fraud.
In Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah wrestled with applying American examples of keeping off British, French, Spanish and other European plots intent on wrecking her newly won independence; ensuring security by the use of war on the American landmass to expand the country into a united territorial power, and combating local allies of foreign interests.
Unable to wage war to expand territorial space as the Americans had done, Nkrumah turned to diplomacy and ‘’rhetorical radicalism’’. By 1963, a total of 33 African leaders established the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).
Nkrumah’s anti-colonial nationalism combated a hostile diplomacy (including the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo and Silvanus Olympio in Togo), by British, American, French, Spanish, Belgian and other allies, and failed to achieve a UNITED STATES OF AFRICA (UNSA). Failed assassination attempts and a military coup impeded the growth of internal Ghanaian democratic politics.
In Senegal, Leopold Sedar Senghor anchored his politics on financing trade in groundnuts by local religious autocrats; protecting monopolies of import and export trade by French companies; depositing 85 per cent of foreign earning in France’s Central Bank; giving priority to French companies for contracts, and hosting French military units in Senegal. His rhetorical commitment to building ‘’African Socialism’’ was too impoverished by France to build a democracy that developed the welfare of the people.
In Nigeria, a pattern of violence-based ancient slave economies, ranging from: militarized Ibadan, Benin, Arochukwu, Saifawa Bornu to Hausa states (over which the Sokoto Caliphate was grafted), remain fertile soils for Fela’s ‘DEMO-CRAZY’’ – as opposed to welfare-based democratic politics.
Doctoral thesis on Muri Emirate and Kanem Bornu emphasize rulers combining violence and intensive economic exploitation of dominated communities. Chief Awolowo’s strategy of giving small grants to market women was eroded by government officials stealing funds.
Colonial officials complained about local officers not separating public tax returns from their personal welfare. The struggle between power and people’s welfare has many routes.
The transition from violent governance to that based on the consent of, and legitimacy by the governed, is difficult. Politicians resort to bribing election officials to falsify election results; ‘’buying votes’’ at polling stations. Aluta continua; CHANGE CRAWLS ON.
. Prof Oculi writes from Abuja
