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Dotun Oyeniyi
 Author, Economist and Practicing Attorney
London, England

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Nigerians are Nigeria’s worst enemies and Africans are Africa´s worst enemies.  We do all the wrong things at the wrong time for all the wrong reasons.  Like a madman dancing naked in the market square, the world look at us and shed tears in pity but we only chuckle at ourselves as if we are doing the best of things.   An Obama who would not have had the slightest chance of becoming a Nigerian Councillor is aspiring to lead the greatest nation on heart and we seems not able to learn any lesson from this.

 

BARACK OBAMA AND THE LESSONS FOR NIGERIA, AFRICA AND THE WORLD.
 by Dotun Oyeniyi
 

Before the emergence of this enigma called Barack Obama, It was really tempting to conclude that the last chapter in the world’s book of modern political heroes have been worthily grabbed by immortal Nelson Mandela.  However, with his exploits in the ongoing democrats’ primaries in the United States, Mr Barrack Obama has used his tiny but virulent wrist to literally push millions of political historians, at one fell swoop, back to the drawing board.  A new chapter has begun to be written and the main dramatis persona is most deservedly Barrack Obama.

To me, whether Obama eventually wins the democrats´ primaries nomination and the race to the White House appear to be totally beside the question now.  The more probing issue is how this hitherto anonymous senator from Illinois, with such a humble background, had managed, against all odds, to overcome what initially appeared to be an attempt at a Sisyphean labour, to become currently the most colourful politician in the globe, and the lessons of that metamorphosis.

Obama is not sturdily built like a tank, if anything; it is Republicans’ Senator John McCain that can be tagged with that description.  Neither did he has the glamour nor the fascination which Senator Hillary Clinton has, a seeming disadvantage given our present world that is so grossly besotted with female attraction that even television adverts are no longer appealing unless they are projected by beautiful ladies with some daring feminine exposures. In spite of these, Obama has proved to be the quintessential person for whom was coined the expression – what has stature and glamour got to do with it?

Prior to the democrats’ campaign trains rolling into town, Mrs Clinton appeared to be the heir apparent for the democrats.  Her supposed automatic nomination was hinged on her outspokenness as a senator and the popularity of her husband – Bill, a much loved ex president.  Not a few thought that ´only a maverick out for some political fun and self-publicising rascality´ would think of contending the democratic presidential nomination with Hillary.  Not so, Obama appears to have said, this contest is not about coronation but proper election.

So did Obama campaign train roll through the American states, using its gigantic wheels to crush, convincingly and decisively, to everyone’s amazement, both the myth of blacks-can-never-do-it and the supposed invincibility of Hillary Clinton.  His campaign presents, subconsciously, an embodiment of what our world should attain to be, one in which the insignificants – the colour of the skin, the age and the genealogy of individuals became resolutely submerged in the tide while the real substance – what individuals are capable of offering, stayed afloat. The brain but not the skin maketh a man. 

One of the fallouts of Obama´s metamorphosis is that the United States has shown us all once again why it is the world leader and will remain so for a long time to come.  World leadership is not just about having the military capability to dislodge an unrepentant dictator from a palatial Baghdad palace and turn him, like a rat, into an inhabitant of a tiny, scarcely ventilated chamber in a warren of underground bunkers.  It is also about giving individuals an unfettered chance to attain their fullest potentials, irrespective of their skin colour and genealogical antecedents.  Which other white nation in the world will concede the head of the totality of its military operations into the hands of a blackman as the US did with General Collin Powell in the nineties?  And currently, one of the most powerful political offices in the United States is occupied by a black lady – Condoleeza Rice.  

For over a decade now, the US has annually been offering citizens of other less developed nations the chance to become American citizens via the so called diversity lottery. 50,000 or so people acquiring US citizenship annually without going through the rigour of  leave to enter; leave to remain; indefinite leave; leave to marry; ´leave to eat´; ´leave to sleep´; ´leave to use the toilet´; and other endless ´leaves´  which the UK immigration authorities especially, are so obsessed with.  Which other nation can do that? 

Now with the overwhelming support given to Obama as he continued to win from one state to another culminating in eleven straight defeats to Clinton, the United States has indeed come of age as a nation for all and most deserving of its world leadership position.  We just hope that other nations especially the United Kingdom, whose immigration policies appeared to be too daunting for foreigners, especially Africans, and Germany with a seemingly institutionally arrogant and discriminatory police and immigration authorities can follow the Unites states’ example.

In most parts of the African continent, it is only through a military coup that a 46 year old could emerge as a president or a likely contender for it.  The politics of Africa is controlled by the quadripartite influence of gerontocracy, monetisation, hooliganism and godfatherism.  Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Mwai Kibaki of Kenya at 77 and 84 respectively, to mention just two of Africa,s Methuselah presidents, could easily have grandfathered Obama, yet they remain in power, sitting compressingly atop thousands of other young, brainy and far more competent ones who could have brought salvation to their famished nations.  Until African political practice centres around brains but not brawls, manner but not money, political flavours but not political favours and wisdom but not age, that continent will continue to struggle to put flesh over its skeletal citizens for lack of foods while citizens of the rest parts of the world are struggling to shed their too much flesh for having too much foods.  

In my own Nigeria, an Obama cannot even aspire to become a ward councillor unless he was a moneybag, a biological son, a godson or subservient follower of a politician of note.  This is why human recycling has now become a part and parcel of Nigeria’s politics.  Umar Yar´Adua´s father was a federal commissioner in the first republic and his elder brother, Shehu, was a military collaborator and deputy to Obasanjo as head of state between 1976 and 1979.  Bukola Saraki is not only a governor of Kwara State where his father is the political lord, his sister; Gbemisola is one of the three senators from Kwara State.  Senator Kamoru Adedibu is the son of the ´garrison commander´ of Ibadan politics – Lamidi Adedibu.  Not to mention Senator Iyabo Obasanjo whose father is the ´grand commander´ of the PDP.  The Speaker of the House of Representatives rode to that exalted office on the back of his father’s membership of and connections in the old National Party of Nigeria.

Those who are not biological children of top politicians needed to acknowledge the leadership of and abide slavishly with the wishes of a party leader, willy-nilly.  From the ward levels to the national levels, what we hear these days is ´my leader said we should…´, ´my leader said we shouldn’t…´  People who have not the least vestiges of leadership qualities have become the ones dictating who should be what in Nigerian politics. 

Chief Obafemi Awolowo would shake his erudite head in the grave, in pity and disbelief, at how bastardised the word ´leader´ has become in Nigeria today.  For it was this late sage that introduced the word into Nigeria’s political lexicon in 1952.  In a bid to show that he was the leader of the majority party in the Western House of Assembly, even though real power was in the hands of the British Colonial Governor who was not a member of the party but nonetheless presided over the cabinet, Awo took the name ´Leader of Government Business´, in addition to the portfolio of Local Government which he held.  That was how Awo began to be addressed as ´Leader´ by his partymen from 1952 until his death in 1987.  And Awo was truly a political leader per excellence from all ramifications.  Can we ask party leaders of today what qualities they have to be deserving of being so called? – Thuggery! Money! Connections!

Nigerians are Nigeria’s worst enemies and Africans are Africa´s worst enemies.  We do all the wrong things at the wrong time for all the wrong reasons.  Like a madman dancing naked in the market square, the world look at us and shed tears in pity but we only chuckle at ourselves as if we are doing the best of things.   An Obama who would not have had the slightest chance of becoming a Nigerian Councillor is aspiring to lead the greatest nation on heart and we seems not able to learn any lesson from this.  A nation that is seriously desirous of attaining greatness would not have left Gani Fawehinmi and voted for Obasanjo in the 1999 presidential elections and it would not have left Pat Utomi and voted for Yar´Ádua in the 2007 presidential elections.  For Gain Fawehinmi and  Pat Utomi, without political godfathers, without an army of accompany thugs and without billions to finance their presidential campaigns were truly our own Barrack Obama in the 1999 and 2003 presidential elections.

 

 

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