Okello Oculi
24 June 2009
opinion
Ugandan scholar Mahmud Mamdani has recalled a moment when the Pan Africanist Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem was so angry at how bad leadership had wrecked the welfare of Nigerians that he told a Kampala audience that: "If an American ship docked at Lagos port today with a huge banner reading "Slave ship to America", there would be a queue of millions of Nigerians wanting to get on that ship".
It is worth recalling him in relation to recent historical events.
"Those whom the gods will destroy they first make mad", is a saying popularised by Prof Ola Rotimi with a play by that title. It has sprung to mind on a tickle by an event reported by Nigerian newspaper, The Punch, this week under the heading 'Governors Forum cancels Harvard Training'. Like all things literary, the tickle is by association - a linkage between disparate events across branches of imagination.
Tragic death
The events stretch across time and space. At the beginning are pictures on walls of several Egyptian pyramids I saw while on a guided tour. The pictures were of daily events during the lifetime of a Pharaoh; the activities a Pharaoh undertook at home and while hunting in the wilderness, and details of items and persons in attendance at court. The Pharaoh was also buried accompanied by women and others, including slaves; a practice that is found all across Africa among peoples who were either directly descended from Ancient Egyptians or strongly influenced by its world view and rituals of power.
The second item of association has been the tragic deaths of two high profile persons, namely Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem and President Omar Bongo Ondimba of Gabon. While Taju died in a car accident on a road in Nairobi, Kenya a month ago, Bongo died in a clinic in Spain. Taju, who lived as the first unofficial President of the United States of Africa, lived his pan-Africanism to his last breath of surprise and shock by dying on African soil while on a mission to promote a campaign for maternal health in Kigali, Rwanda's capital.
Omar Bongo, the longest serving ruler in Africa (with 42 years of rule, some would say "misrule", to his credit), expressed his passionate wish to be adopted into European culture by dying on European soil. During his term as Chairman of the Organisation of African Unity, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt relied openly on President Bongo to help sort out inter-state conflicts in Africa. However, both presidents as close allies of President Chirac looked away as France aided the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Bongo also died as French magistrates waved charges of corruptly sharing funds looted out of Gabon's treasury with some French citizens.
The third member of this 'trinity by association' is Professor Robert Rotberg, the American academic who is reported to be "in charge of the programme" through which governors of Nigeria's 36 states were to "undertake a capacity building programme in Harvard University, Boston, United States of America". Since the early 1970s, Rotberg has become a familiar name with students and scholars of African politics.
Vision and commitment
The Pharaoh in this trinity would be Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, the passionate, volatile criss-crosser of Africa who preached the unity of the continent. He urged vision and commitment to democratic politics, economic and human development, and human dignity of the millions of ordinary people African leaders rule over; to rule them not as victims but as citizens. He was as combative against intellectuals, politicians and ideologues who justified and devised schemes for the domination and exploitation of Africa as he was brutal in denouncing, mocking and lecturing corrupt dictators in power across Africa. Both Bongo and Rotberg earned his wrath many times over; often with open name-calling.
Professor Rotberg is much remembered for contemptuous depiction of Africa's rulers. In a much quoted essay, he emphasised their venality, corruption, brutal dictatorship and blocking the development of their countries. He called out no exceptions. It therefore comes as some shock that he would be a key animator of a scheme for "capacity building" involving 36 State governors in Nigeria.
The political scientist in Prof Robert Rotberg may also have seen an opportunity to outdo British imperialist Capt. Frederick Lugard's "indirect rule system" which was anchored on local chiefs and emirs who were supervised by British District and Provincial officers. Prof Rotberg's is a scheme that Tajudeen would involuntarily denounce and curse.
President Omar Bongo was once very popular with young officials attending summit conferences of the Organisation of African Unity, OAU. They recalled his short stature and his creative way of exploiting that attribute by wearing custom-made "platform shoes" to lift him up higher.
President Bongo, in power in his youthful years, would express pan-African rhythm across a polished floor at Africa Hall in Addis Ababa. While these African leaders danced, they hid the guiding hands of France, the United States and their NATO allies, instructing Mobutu and Bongo to oppose and sabotage the early creation of a Union of African States; and a central authority with power to enforce policies adopted at Addis Ababa.
Relevant Links
Behind the dancing were shadows of malnourished and dying children and adults in wars, villages and slums all across Central Africa. Tajudeen had always lashed out at continuities in their "crimes" of failed leadership.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Harvard University has turned into high financial earning its propaganda mission to win back minds in that former empire from communism to capitalism.
Its professors have expanded the practice of exporting workshops and "training modules" to "emerging democracies". All are delivered as "capacity building" for the promotion of democracy and "market reform economies". Some critics have alleged that "419 Courses" that award "degrees" after two weeks of being a student at Harvard, have also emerged.
This being the case, Taju would condemn Rotberg as cynically using the fumes of Harvard's "high status" as the opium of Nigeria's leaders
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