What Life Has Taught Me (About Political Leadership)

We are approaching the era of the extinction of the immediate post colonial leadership in Africa. The period between the sixties (the era of escalating independence) and now has been characterized by more examples of bad leadership.

We have come to associate the majority of those post-colonial leaders with words like dictators, politricians and the likes, and their governments have been recognized more with words like, corruption, embezzlement, misuse of office and widespread propaganda.

These attributes are all cultivated as evidenced by their predominant absence in traditional governments before its corruption by those who thought they possessed better governmental systems. Moreover, the majority of these leaders had acquired their education from western nations. In those days it was the norm rather the exception that Western sponsored African Leaders would have spent some stage of their educational journey in states like United Sates, England, Russia and Germany. 

Happily, those days are gone, but what is the hope for the African Leadership? An extensive number of individuals hoping to dabble in their country's political environment are swimming the tide of globalization. Garnering experiences from self acclaimed established and exemplary democracies. But what are the lessons that are been learnt? That a presidential election can be determined by the brother of one of the candidates, that the president can have extra marital affairs as long as the wife is allowed to carry out her own clandestine relationships, that the office of the president can be degraded and disrespected and constantly mocked, that rhetoric comes before the needs of the people they're representing, that party affiliation trumps all policy goals, that propaganda is one of the best tools in the arsenal of the opposition, that re-designation of terms in an unfavorable light is an art that scares the uninformed from supporting policies that may end up been for their own good, that having at least one news outlet in your pocket is a must so as to dump your propaganda unto your base, that  a country's interest comes before all others, that intervention into other nations affairs is one way to insure the person in power always leans towards addressing your country's national interest, that as long as you don't massacre people, you can get away with imprisoning a large section of a demographic group without been considered tribalistic, that you can be corrupt as long as you have juniors who can take the fall when you are found out, that you can get away with a gulf in income and wealth distribution between the classes as long as you don't allow some people to starve to death, that there are more ways than one to establish a system of presidential succession by kin. That money can buy your freedom from the law and at the same time take care of any problems you may encounter. That justice depends on who you know. That you can kill your political opponents before they are strong enough to challenge you as long as you can provide enough obfuscation about the circumstances surrounding that assassination.


Yeah Yeah Yeah, i hear you saying that all systems are corrupt and the whole system should not be judged by those individual failures... Can you say double standards... Colonial powers did not afford Africans that excuse when they made it a policy to systematically destroy the intrinsic traditional leadership structures in the name of knowing what was best for "those people". Why then should the same excuse be afforded them.

Growing up i always used to hear that we the children are tomorrow's future. Tomorrow is now here and the same voices that were wailing against the injustice of the leadership in Africa are the same ones their now exercising the same prerogatives that they knew then were wrong. The thirst for power at whatever cost, (another admirable attribute cultivated by our Western Educated leaders) has blinded their eyes to the plight of their people. It is a malaise, that will only continue to be exacerbated if we fail to go back to the leadership we were born into. The traditional leadership characterized by a chief who cares for his subjects, guided by elders whose wisdom in all leadership matters is one of the many attributes the young aspire to attain.