When I was really young, my late grandfather told me a story titled, ‘Shame Of An African President’.

The story goes like this: Long, long ago there was a President in an African country. Let’s just call this man, Mr. President. In this African country, the only time there ever was a general election that was considered free and fair that election was annulled. Till this day, there has been no free and fair election in that country.

Anyway, there was a time when a terrorist organisation controlled a substantial part of the country. The terrorists killed, looted and raped innocent citizens of that African country at random and Mr. President and his ministers couldn’t do anything about it. They were completely useless at fighting these terrorists.

One day the terrorists decided to go and kidnap some girls from a secondary school in this African country whom the terrorists said they would sell as slaves and child brides. Mr. President’s initial reaction to the kidnap was silence as if it never happened. As a matter of fact, on the day the girls were kidnapped Mr. President was seen dancing at a party.

The whole world was now shouting, ‘bring back our girls, bring back our girls’ then Mr. President decided to talk about it, thirty days after these girls were kidnapped, he asked for help to rescue the girls.

Everybody got involved, shouting ‘bring back our girls!’ Then some of Mr. President’s men said he was going to visit the parents of these schoolgirls who were kidnapped but the parents waited in vain for Mr. President. They thought Mr. President was coming to, at least, commiserate and sympathise with them. They were surprised when they were told that Mr. President had gone for a meeting in the land of the Franks.

You see, my grandfather told me that the Franks were very bad people who pretended to be good people. They were also very rich and powerful and a long time ago they signed an agreement with the people from the land of the Great Queen to both bleed Africa dry. The agreement stated that whatever treasures any of the two countries stole from Africa, they would both share equally. The agreement was like an ‘Etente Cordiale‘.

The land of the Franks and the land of the Great Queen used to have territories in Africa. Between these two countries, they had over forty different territories in Africa. However, one day, someone came up with an idea. The man said, “why are you risking lives and wasting money putting civil servants in these African countries to live among those African savages? Why don’t you appoint some of the natives loyal to you as rulers over them and you control those loyal natives from your countries? After all, you have telegraph and telephones now.” Good idea!

So, the people from the land of the Franks and the land of the Great Queen appointed some of their loyal servants to rule their territories in Africa and they controlled these servants, which is why there has never been free and fair elections in Mr. President’s country before. They called this arrangement, ‘independence’.

So Mr. President went off to the land of the Franks. Like I mentioned earlier, the Franks too had puppets installed in their territories who spoke their language. Mr. President went to the land of the Franks to have a meeting with the leader of the Franks and his African puppets who were speaking his language. Mr. President was the only one speaking the language spoken in the land of the Great Queen.

They were supposed to be discussing about the terrorists who had kidnapped those girls but Mr. President did not understand the language being spoken in the Land of the Franks, which the leader of the Franks was speaking with his African puppets. Two days after Mr. President returned to his own country, the terrorists, that the leader of the Franks promised to help Mr. President fight, attacked a town that was even far away from where the terrorists usually operated and killed a lot of people. The terrorists continued to attack Mr. President’s country, killing, raping and looting.

At that point I asked my grandfather, ‘was it because Mr. President did not understand the language spoken in the land of the Franks? My grandfather told me to keep quiet and listen to the rest of the story.

Meanwhile, the schoolgirls remained missing and people were fed up with Mr. President’s incompetence. Some of the parents of the girls were dying without seeing their children. Reports had it that some of the girls too had died.

Every time people protested or demanded that Mr. President should go and see the families of these girls they would be arrested by Mr. President’s soldiers and locked up.

Then one day a little fair skin girl, 17-years-old, grandfather said she was, came from the land of the Great Queen to see Mr. President.

You see, this little girl was not originally from the land of the Great Queen but they liked her so the rulers of the land of the Great Queen sent her on an errand to see Mr. President.

The errand was a simple one, ‘tell Mr. President to invite the families of the kidnapped girls to visit him at his palace and you will take the glory. We will give you that prestigious award that you narrowly missed last year’.

So, Mr. President sent out an invitation to all the families of the kidnapped girls to come and visit him at the villa as instructed by the little girl who was sent from the land of the Great Queen.

“Wow, what an interesting story, papa! So did the little girl get that award?” I asked
“The story is not complete”, grandpa said. “I’ll tell you the conclusion later. I’m tired now I have to go to bed”.

Sadly, my grandfather never told me the concluding part of the story as he died shortly afterwards.


The story above is fiction and any similarity to anybody, place or event is purely coincidental.


- See more at: http://www.urnaija.com/shame-african-president-short-story/

Hmmmmm. There really was a country. The worse thing to have happened to that country was the arrangeee called "INDEPENDENCE"