The impact of Information Technology in liberal democratic elections gained dramatic visibility in recent presidential election contests in the United States of America (USA). Vigorous contamination of election processes was deeply entrenched in the country’s politics.
Police dogs were used to frighten African-Americans who dared to arrive at polling centres.
What was new was the use of electronic messages to weaken enthusiasm in those likely to vote for Hillary Clinton; while FOX NEWS is accused of combining ‘’selling lies’’ to Republican Party voters, with not reporting what is tagged as ‘’SOCIALIST’’ views.
Multinationals have supported television and radio advertisements to promote racist attitudes against selected candidates; and massive repetition of slogans.
In Kenya, the 2017 and 2022 elections saw computers accused of altering numbers of votes against a candidate who was leading in opinion polls. In a late February 2023 interview, Raila Odinga asserted that a triangle of computers based in Holland, Venezuela and Kenya communicated with each other and awarded higher vote scores to William Ruto; while reducing votes cast for Raila Odinga.
The involvement of NATO’s diplomacy into Ruto’s victory in the 2022 elections is assumed to be as punishment of former president Uhuru Kenyatta and his ally Raila Odinga for financing the victory of Felix Tshisekedi in the presidential elections of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
His victory was feared to bring in patriotic governance which would resolutely combat chronic looting of the country’s rich natural resources. Moreover, Tshisekedi brought DRC into becoming the largest and most populated country (92 million) into the East African Community.
The success of African diplomacy in expanding the territorial and economic space of the East African Community had to be punished not celebrated by Europe. Buhari’s regime was showing that a creative Nigerian regime can inject new energy into West Africa despite the inflow into the region of weapons from a severely disrupted Libya.
Dictatorships in Sudan under Omar Bashir, was marked by a political blindness which led to the country breaking up when South Sudan seceded in 2011. Idi Amin’s Uganda and Arap Moi’s dictatorship in Kenya, midwifed the 1967 collapse of the East African Community.
A 2022 election victory in Kenya (generated by computers telling lies about votes scored), could lead to dictatorial impulses which could harm development in the region.
The defeat of Moyo in Zambia despite the use of squads which terrorized people (including extorting funds from market women for financing the president’s election campaign), did not stop victory by the opposition candidate with a margin of over ONE million votes. A fake victory achieved with lies by computers, would have been investment in severe loss of legitimacy; and potential conflicts by angry voters.
There is talk about a global retreat of democratic regimes into dictatorships. Africa suffered a collapse of patriotic democracy into military terrorism directed and planned by Euro-American intelligence operatives. Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of Congo was assassinated barely six months after his winning a democratic election.
A plot to simultaneously overthrow democratically elected Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Milton Obote in Uganda and Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya and replace them with Oscar Kambona, Grace Ibingira and Tom Mboya (Secretary Generals of ruling parties, respectively), failed narrowly.
The plot sought to create a shield of client regimes to protect the racist regimes in Southern Africa. The current plot to create ‘’computer-robot’’ leaders would protect what Kwame Nkrumah describes as ‘’neo-colonial’’ economies and dead politics.
There is a diplomacy of panic which has followed the injection of investments by China across Africa; with focus on constructing infrastructure. For over 60 years colonial governments (of Britain, Spain, Portugal, Germany and France),refused to construct them. African governments aspire to use infrastructure to push economic and industrial development.
Mao Zedung denounce those he called ‘’RUNNING DOGS OF IMPERIALISM’’. Dogs can be dangerous creatures. Those infected with ‘’rabbis’’ bite pass on a deadly disease. Regimes imposed through manipulated election results with computers, is ‘INVISIBLE TERRORISM’ against peaceful development in Africa. Just as rabbis kills by infecting the brain of a victim, this terrorism would kill governance by paralyzing patriotic policy-making.
Liberation movements in Algeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia and Angola modified skills for defeating dictatorships. Mao Zedung, Ho Chi Mihn and Fidel Castro wrote about these skills. Amilcar Cabral (in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde), and Samora Machel in Mozambique, ‘Africanised’ these reports.
Their focus was on ‘clearing the swamp of colonial poison’ in minds of impoverished, exploited and oppressed rural and urban compatriots. These conditions became ‘LAND MINES’ to exploded under the feet of colonial troops. They brought ‘’AWARENESS’’ of their conditions and their potential CAPACITY to change it. The mind received power in WORDS spoken by a political activist into eyes and ears.
Prof Oculi writes from Abuja
