Friday,
May 16, 2014
Folks, happenings in many
countries in Africa make me wonder whether the leaders and citizens of those
countries really want to do anything useful for the sake of posterity. Is there
a “tomorrow” that those people should work for? No hindsight to guide them? I
wonder; I really wonder.
No other continent is known to
have suffered as much adversity as Africa has (mostly through no fault of its
own). But has anybody learnt any useful lesson from what history has taught us
so that history doesn’t end up being repeated?
Let’s go down the memory lane
first. Africa has a history of the worst form of human beings’ inhumanity
toward their fellow human beings—European colonialism and the Trans-Atlantic
Slave Trade—that combined to doom the continent and consign it to the backwoods
of human existence.
Historians have given us the
gloomy and gripping accounts of the devastating impact of the Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade on Africa. They have also scared us with the fact that Africa cannot
easily recover from that shocking exploitation of its able-bodied human
resource. Those asking for reparation won’t go anywhere with their demand
because the beneficiaries of that inhuman trade don’t have any ear for their plea.
They may use the IMF and World Bank to massage our feelings only to punish us
all the more.
The impact of colonialism is
ineradicable at several levels: the imposition of artificial boundaries that
separated (divided) ethnicities, scattering people of one family across
different countries and ensuring that they don’t ever unite to redeem
themselves and the physical exploitation of Africa’s human and natural
resources has remained the continent’s bane.
Let’s land to face the reality
that Africa’s historical development has given us to see. Gaining political
independence hasn’t provided any solution; at best, it has only deepened our
woes as each country seeks to go it all by itself only to end up returning to
the bosom of the former colonialists to be manipulated all the more and refined
to do the master’s bidding. The divide-and-rule strategy is still at work and
succeeding at several levels to ensure that Africa doesn’t ever unite to fight
a common cause.
A political-and-national-flag independence
without the backing of a strong economy can’t take Africa out of the woods. As
if unsure of how to do things, the leaders of the 55 countries on the continent
are more wont to act as puppets than managing affairs to reverse the negative
impact of colonialism and its associated evils. Caught in the neo-colonialist
web, they preside over the exploitation of their own countries and citizens and
compound problems as they lead the looting brigade.
Internal strife and stiff
political differences have torn most of the countries apart. Ethnic differences
and abject intransigence have destabilized many. And paralyzing incompetence,
troubling mismanagement of the affairs of state, plain thieving of national
assets, deep-seated bribery and corruption, and many other negative factors
that characterize governance have combined to deepen the woes of the continent.
No wonder, Africa still remains the only continent that can’t solve its own
problems of under-development, which has impoverished the people. Nothing works
well to uplift standards. Anger and disaffection only!
To worsen the situation, a new
crop of problem has emerged. Terrorism is gaining grounds and will likely
destabilize many parts of the continent if not tackled. Hitherto, acts of selective
sabotage (attributable to the acts of rebel fighters of the Jonas Savimbi
type), civil wars (as happened in Nigeria and Liberia), or the genocide in
Rwanda had caught the world’s attention.
Today, the picture is different.
Terrorism is fast gaining grounds as a result of the emergence of such groups
as the Somalian al-Shabbab and Nigeria’s Boko Haram, which have all claimed
allegiance to the dreaded al-Qaeda. There may be cells of these or other terrorist
groups already existing in other countries, waiting to strike when prompted.
Fear looms all over.
One characteristic of these
terrorist groups is their claim to be inspired by religion—Islam—and the desire
to fight against the status quo in the vain hope that it will help them
establish an Islamic state wherever they operate. This recourse to religious
extremism propels their activities.
For a people on a continent already
weighed down by excruciating poverty and still bracing themselves up to face
intractable development challenges, the emergence of terrorism is really frightening.
It is too scary for belief. And good reason exists to suggest that this spate
of terrorism won’t end soon because conditions exist to promote it. Don’t ask
me why, but it all can be traced to the incompetence of the various African
leaders that has caused disaffection among the population (especially the
millions of unemployed youths who are easy targets for recruitment by agents of
the terrorist groups).
It has just been reported that “Two explosions
have struck the Gikomba market area of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, killing at
least 10 people and injuring scores, officials say” (according to the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27443474).
Kenya is no stranger to such terrorist acts by the Islamic militant group,
al-Shabbab.
Nigeria is also grappling with
the Boko Haram terrorist group and has now been joined by the international
community (the US, China, Israel, the UK, and France) to take the fight to Boko
Haram. The kidnapping of more than 200 school girls a month ago has sparked
international outrage, which is why support is forthcoming to deal with Boko
Haram.
The bitter truth is that the
Nigerian government’s approach to the terrorist acts by Boko Haram has been
lukewarm, creating the unfortunate impression that it is heartless and
incompetent beyond measure. What has come forth from President Goodluck
Jonathan is disappointing. No wonder he is himself unsure of what to do. And,
for security reasons, he has just cancelled a visit to Chibok (the hometown of
the kidnapped girls). He has fears for his life but not for those of the Boko
Haram victims.
Rather sadly, the continental
talk-shop called African Union (AU) hasn’t reacted so far to the Boko Haram
threat nor has it offered any practical solution to tackle it. Yet, it is
regarded as the body to bring together all the countries on the continent to
fight a common cause. It is so dormant as to challenge Ban Ki-Moon’s United Nations
for the unenviable title of the “Most Useless Institution of the 21st
Century”.
On its part, the sub-regional talk-shop
ECOWAS is making its presence felt mostly by the noise coming from its chairman
(Ghana’s President John Mahama), not any practical action that it has
recommended or taken to help solve the Boko Haram problem.
I have no doubt that al-Shabbab
and Boko Haram are well established and have the means to spread their domain
far and near. They don’t lack the material assets (especially sophisticated
weapons) and the fertile grounds for recruitment. They seem to be poles ahead
of the security services of the countries in which they are now operating and
will step up the game unless concerted efforts are made to thwart them.
The question is: How will they be
eradicated? How can they ever be crippled when the governments of the countries
in which they are based cannot muster up the political will to identify their
main actors and snuff them out? How can they be neutralized when there is no support
from other governments?
You see, the conditions spawning
terrorism on the continent are glaring and unless the leaders act fast to use
the power vested in them to solve problems, terrorism will sooner than later
become Africa’s latest problem. And it will add to others to deepen the
continent’s woes.
For now, we must shift attention
from the harm done us by colonialism and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to
concentrate on this home-grown terrorism. Concerted efforts should be made to
clamp down heavily on al-Shabbab and Boko Haram before they move beyond Somalia/Kenya
and Nigeria, respectively.
The governments should invest
resources in penetrating these groups so their leaders and sources of support
can be identified and zapped. Only then can they be stifled. Then, good
governance must be practised to solve the problems that make the people
disaffected. When the people enjoy the benefits of good governance, they will
not hide behind any religious smokescreen to perpetrate terrorism. God is a peace-loving
God and won’t bless terrorism under the cloak of religion. But the political
leaders must act fast first to eliminate the conditions facilitating terrorism.
Clearly, Africa is at the brink of another scourge.
I shall return…
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E-mail:
mjbokor@yahoo.com
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