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United States Of Africa: Wither The Thought? By Patrick Obahiagbon - Crime - Nairaland

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United States Of Africa: Wither The Thought? By Patrick Obahiagbon by JJYOU: 11:10am On Mar 02, 2009
[size=18pt]United States of Africa: Wither the thought?[/size]
By PATRICK OBAHIAGBON
Monday, March 2, 2009

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It was Basil Davidson, the author of the classic, The Blackman’s Burden, Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State who compared contemporary African leaders with their forebears who sold millions of their compatriots into slavery.
Davidson had harsh words for present Africa leaders.


He called them pirates in power. Indeed, except for some exceptional leaders like the late Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Modibo Keita, Ahmed Sekou Toure, Amilcar Cabral, Nelson Mandela, Leopold Senghor, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Samora Machell, Thomas Sankara, Aminu Kano, Muritala Muhammed, the majority of African leaders in the Post-colonial era are indeed pirates and flops in power.

As Jean Francois Bayart has argued, politics, for majority of African rulers, is politics of the belly.
While European, Asian and American leaders toil day and night for their citizens and thus, impact on their lives, African leaders have turned Africa to killing fields. From Darfur in Western Sudan to Harare in Zimbabwe, through Somalia, Chad and even Nigeria, the story is the same. It is the sad story of corruption, nepotism, tribalism, sit tightism, immorality and indiscipline perpetrated by the African governing elite.

You can hardly point to ten out of the fifty-three African countries today that are well managed. We can point to Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, Ghana, Arab states of Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Libya and a few other where the lives of the citizens have been transformed in socio-economic terms. Event at that, we must be careful in our claims because some of the states, north of the Sahara, have refused to grant their citizens the rights to choose their leaders. Ghaddafi of Libya and some other African Arab leaders have repeatedly argued that Africa has nothing to do with participatory and competitive democracy.

African ruling political parties hardly loose presidential elections. This lack of respect for the ballot box, the rule of law, citizens rights and independence of the judiciary all combine to subvert democratization and good governance in most Africa. With the poverty of governance in Africa, development, as the late erudite scholar, claude Ake contended, is yet to commence in Africa. Ake cannot be faulted. Where is the development in Africa? Where is the technology in Africa? Even agriculture which was the continent economic mainstay prior to the integration of the African countries for greener pastures from minerals like gold, diamond, oil, limestone and others. The gluttonous exploration of African minerals by African leaders in collaboration with the priests of international capital brought about the phenomenon of resource curse to several African countries. Nigeria is a classic case of œresource curse, where oil, which has generated well over 800 billion dollars in the last forty years, has turned a curse rather than a blessing in the oil bearing states of the Niger Delta. It is reported that well over 400 billion dollars of this oil money is idling away in foreign accounts of
successive Nigerian rulers and their hangers-on.

This phenomenon of œlootocracy_ is not peculiar to Nigeria. It is a dominant factor in African politics. Mobutu Seseko of Congo Democratic Republic, Emperor Bokassa of Central African Republic, Idi Amin Dada of Uganda, Frederick Chiluba of Zambia and countless African leaders were reported to have defrauded their countries of huge financial resources. In all this, it is reported that well over sixty percent of the seven hundred million Africans live on less than a dollar per day. In spite of the enormous human resources, mineral resources, vast arable land, rich in flora and fauna, Africa is reported to contribute less than two percent to the total volume of world trade. The failure of governance in Africa has generated crises all over the continent since most of African countries attained independence, starting from the late 1950s. Today, Darfur, in Western Sudan, Somalia, Chad, Ivory Coast,

even Nigeria is experiencing crisis of various dimensions and magnitudes. Darfur crisis has been described as genocide by the international community. African Union has not been able to stop the killings of children and women in Darfur by the El-Barshir Arab-led government in Khartoum. Somalia is almost a lost case, a completely failed one.

So, when muammar Ghadaffi, the unelected leader of Libya for forty years now and some other dreamers in the African Union (AU) boisterously talk about the United States of Africa, one is tempted to dismiss the current chairman of the African union and his fellow dreamers as merely playing to the gallery. They dont and can never believe in what they are proposing. Ghadaffi himself knows that there is no basis for a United States of Africa now. He delights in cheap publicity, deluding himself as the lion of Africa.

First, what is Ghadaffi impression of the Negroid African? What has been Ghadaffi position in all cases of negroid-Africans and Arab-Africans conflict? What was his position in the Chadian crisis? Indeed, what is Ghadaffi Position in the on-going Darfur genocide in which the Arab-African led-government of Omar El-Barshir in Khartoum has been decimating black Africans of Darfur in Western Sudan since 2003 when some groups in Darfur opted for self determination? A dispassionate analysis of Ghadaffi positions in all cases of Arab-Africans and Negroid Africans confrontations reveal Ghadaffi as a committed Arab nationalist, who want to dominate the rest of Africa with his rabid Arabism. His self righteous claims to Pan-Africanism is suspicious. What I expect from Negroid African leaders is to remain constantly suspicious of Ghadaffi crusade for a United States of Africa. Ghadaffi Six million people in Libya cannot be whatever imagination become the leader or savior of Nigeria 140 million people in the guise of Pan-Africanism. This brand of Pan-Arabism cannot serve the interest of black Africans.

Why it is true that Pan-Africanism made meaning in the 1950s and the early 1960s under the leadership of characters like the great kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Nigeria Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, Modibo Keita of Mali, George Padmore, William Dubois and other great African Patriots and Africanists, I sincerely call on the Nigerian authorities, intellectuals and the civil society to be ware of this new found wave of Pan-Africanism currently being championed by Ghadaffi and his collaborators.

Ghadaffi may have opened up to the West, he is yet to show respect and love for the black race. Reports are bound on how the Libyan authorities manhandled and disrespected Nigerians and other black Africans in the past and even in present times. Ghadaffi may have assisted some small African countries with Libya rich oil resources in the past, the point is that such assistance have been exploited by the Libyan strongman to dominate the African Political space. More so, political divisions in such countries have been deepened by Ghadaffi involvement in the domestic affairs of such countries like Chad.

•Honourable Patrick Obahiagbon is a member of the House of Representatives, representing Oredo Federal Constituency.
Re: United States Of Africa: Wither The Thought? By Patrick Obahiagbon by stoikjoy: 7:10pm On Mar 04, 2009
patrick i hav watched u talk several times.Pls where did u school? cus u sound very very intelligent. the good tin abt it - is that u make ur own phrase- how do u generate them(phrase)

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