The worthless life of Africans

Editor | Wednesday April 18, 2007 00:00

No wonder the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo told the perplexed world this week that the Saturday state elections had 'gone on very well across the country'.   This is despite the fact that 34 civilians and 10 policemen have lost their lives in clashes over the weekend poll.

It beats logic why the leader of Africa's most populous nation should accept as normal an electoral process in which lives are lost and property destroyed.  Several factors could help explain this situation, leading among them the obsession with making the elections as not free and unfair as possible.  As a result, scant attention is given to the creation of a proper electoral infrastructure that ensures the conduct of elections is free and fair. It is common knowledge that elections however heated or big should not cause death and destruction. Otherwise how do countries such as the US, Japan, and others with comparable populations manage to hold elections without the unnecessary loss of life and property?

If anything, some African leaders go all out to ferment chaos, in which they ultimately thrive.  Obasanjo, a former jailbird of Sani Abacha's military regime, has ensured chaos prevailed in the run-up to this month's state and presidential elections in Nigeria.

For a start, he has tried everything in the book to make sure his nemesis and vice-president Atiku Abubakar does not stand for elections.  Obviously, Abubakar's unforgivable crime was to deny Obasanjo an opportunity to violate the Nigerian constitution and seek a third term in office through a misguided amendment.

Having failed to achieve his primary objective, he resorted to a well-tested Plan B, which in recent years has been effectively deployed by Frederick Chiluba of Zambia, Bakili Muluzi of Malawi, and Sam Nujoma of Namibia. The strategy involves the imposition of an anointed 'stooge' on the reluctant populace. Obasanjo subsequently unleashed trumped-up corruption charges against Abubakar.

 One would have thought the much-touted African Peer Review Mechanism was meant to sort out such matters.  His African peers, however, have decided neither to see nor hear anything evil as Obasanjo embarked on subverting the presidential contest which could be the first time a civilian administration hands power to another in Nigeria since independence.      

                                       Today's Thought
             There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it.

                                  -  Henry David Thoreau