Pangolin is a scaly ant eating creature. It is lizard-like; but without agility of lizard. Also, if one wants to insult crocodile, comparison can be made. However, it has neither the courage of crocodile nor its amphibian dexterity. Pangolin is a tropical animal whose extinction is now a global concern, albeit, it litters Africa’s palaces of power. The most manifest feature of pangolin is its choice of food and how it traps its preys. Ant is pangolin’s delicacy; to prey on ants, pangolin stretches forth its peculiarly long tongue outside its mouth, leaving multitude of ants who mistake it for sugar-coated tongue swarm on it as if it’s a gold mine. Not sooner they have gathered on the deadly tongue, pangolin withdraws its tongue thereby turning its belly to ants’ burial ground. Pangolin is strong against the weak but weak against the strong. Whenever pangolin see any other animals outside ant, it speedily folds itself like a threatened millipede, leaving its scaly body as shield of defense. Pangolin is a cowardly creature whose only moment of strength is when it sees hapless harmless ants. In character and in conduct, African rulers are pangolins. They feast and feed on the poor and the weak of their states in order to weaken resistance against their regimes of grafts and grabs! Natural resources abound in Africa but no value addition to them other than their crude exploitation and shipment to Europe and America to earn peanuts that end up in the pockets of these toxic rulers. Rather than governance, corruption is a single word that continues to define African rulers. They kill their states with corruption and bury them with debt through borrowing they never plan to repay. Like the shape of its cartography, Africa has become example of improper concept of development with gross domestic products that don’t reflect per capita Income and growth that hardly lead to development.
Long throat culture is the orbit on which governance in Africa has been revolving, crystallizing scandalizing inequality, crimes, conflict and violent extremism across the length and breadth of the continent. With history of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism; Africans have become gratuitous to their oppressive non-performing rulers. Africans are enmeshed in frozen timidity and slave-mentality to the extent that they find it unpatriotic to hold their rulers to account. Africa is a one huge accountability free- zone to a level that even after the death of her morbid tyrants, there are caustic powerful mediocre to defend their estates which are manifest evidence of proceeds of grafts and crimes. They even go further by blackmailing people with recklessly timid phrase that culture does not permit to ‘speak evil of dead persons”. What a mentality! What a culture of outlandish stupidity!
Yes, never mock the dead, for you, the bell tolls too! Also, never forget the deeds of the dead; good or bad, it’s injustice to generations whose only link with ancestors is evidence of history on tattered papers with fairly legible blurred ink of foot prints! It’s kindness to historians when vaults of the dead are opened for flowers of those who left behind good deeds to flourish and the maggots of bad ones with evil deeds to be re-strengthened so as to have more energy to devour the rotten pangolins whose living produced the maggots in the first place. Even in death, Africans still want to canonize tyrants. Hundreds of tragic revisionist hagiographers are waiting in the to make the flatulence of pangolins smell like roses. After also love naming edifices after same men that made morons out of them with grip hands of tyranny and terror. Death is not vaccine for evil deeds. It’s injustice to those who are good if we allow the viral loaded lives of bad people get traction of sainthood in death. ‘Gulliver’s Travel’ was a book I picked up at age eight in my father’s Book Shop. It was the story of a ‘giant’ and’ ants’ liked people called ‘Lilliputians’. Like any child, the pictorial attraction to me then was more compelling than its literary values. I could relate it with the Biblical story of Goliath and David. I enjoyed the fictitious life of children; innocent world where none die, life of incredible immortality! The giants and the ants, in the two stories, though different times, died ultimately. Uganda once produced a giant that looked close to one of the stories. Doctor, Alhaji, Field Marshal Dada Idi Amin self-appointed Field Marshal, with truck load of titles was the Head of State of Uganda in the 70s- a scoundrel and a terror to his natives and foreigners. He had a perpetually thirst for tears and blood. Yet, African don’t want to talk about the dead. Speaking conscientiously about evil deeds of a dead person is justice to the living. That was how we learned that Hitler was a demon. In those days, Africa has a legion of demons, none compared to the legendary tyranny of Idi Amin. He was tyranny personified. I still wonder till today why dictionary is yet to recognize him as synonym of tyranny. As powerful as he was, he became overwhelmingly timid, poor, and vulnerable and died a little lower than chicken in exile. Bamuzu Banda, Gokoni Wadeye, Mobutu Seseseko and much more other did not suffer lesser fate in the hands of death. Sani Abacha was the Nigeria’s model of tyranny. He stood tallest among the tyrants that governed Nigeria. Twenty one years of democracy has not shown Nigeria the path of her glory, with rights being bruised, gulf of inequality widening and with exponential rising twin of poverty pole and contentment in oppression. The yesterday men of power tremendously proofed while in power that nothing is as dangerous as power irresponsibly used and no one is as stupid as those that defend it. They died villains and their bootlickers disappeared without trace the moment they lost in games of power. These were rulers with unimaginable fist of iron who used the State to kill the poor and opponents for not keeping the law these rulers were protected to break. In spite of democracy professed by many states in Africa, greed and reckless gut still control African rulers with fratricidal wars to show for it in Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, South Sudan Democratic Republic of Congo and unending violent extremism in Nigeria, Somalia, Somali land, Burkina Faso among others.
We never take mastery of anything. We discovered natural resources we became slaves to them and they become our nemesis. We found creditors, we never let go. We became slaves to them. We became a people who think that we are created to be spectators in a world of active players. We found relaxation in foreign football; almost all African youths today have become slaves to foreign round leather tournament. In each case we look for beautiful names like ‘fans’ to replace football slaves so as to make our slavery looks like diamond.
Our history is riddled with servitude, indolence, self-worthlessness and acceptance of low racial classification as certificate of helplessness. The earth has never been two. One world, yet the rights of our forefathers became prey to the active.
Our forefathers and mothers were foolish enough to be carted away as slaves. Our fathers also stupid enough to be colonized and we are still here saying China is a better master than the West. Are we under generational curse? Are we beyond redemption? Are we going to allow our children become Toys in hands of Taiwanese again?
From West to East, from North to South, African rulers continue to turn argument of development into rocket science. They have sustained the notoriety of being comprador agents of imperialism, diminishing the dignity of their own people through cruel rights abuse; brutal repression and putting on them excessive weight of poverty in order to further their grip on power.
The historic duty of people in the states of Africa is to first realize that the longer they stay down, the harder it becomes for them to stand up. There is no better strategy of ameliorating disaster than risk reduction. African rulers are monumental hazards, predictable disaster, with painful historical evidence to support absolutism of their greed for grafts!
Africa must make a giant historical shift. There must be new waves in Africa that will generate cyclone of new leadership that will atomize neocolonial tendencies as development models. Africa must chart its own part in a world that is brutally built on uneven globalism where prosperity of a nation depends on power to dominate and suppress others. We must revolutionize our conception of governance and development. Mapping out streams of development triggering issues such as human capital development, next generation technology and other intermingling youth – and women- centered vocations that will make Africa a converging center for appropriate technology innovations. Africa must build on its vibrant, healthy and highly skilled youth, images of its own future, in order to put an end to the vicious cycle of failure and lamentation, poor and irresponsible leadership have caused. Africa’s destiny is not in the hands of the pangolins in power who have laid debt trap for the generation next. It is neither in the West nor East. Africa’s destiny is in the hands of women and men, boys and girls who recognize dunes of history and generate vortex of wands that shuns out thoughts, ideas and innovations that propel technology compliant development. Only then can we have a continent that is breeding ground for prosperity and a burial ground for oppression. Africa must reinvent or perish!
Gbenro Olajuyigbe is the Executive Director of Emergency and Risk Alert Initiative
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