Which African muscle, Mr. President?

According to an Adom FM online news report, Ghana's President Atta Mills have called on Africa to “flex her muscle and prove to the world that she can handle her affairs.”

I quote from the report: “President John Mills says the time has come for Africans to take their destiny into their own hands and prove to the world that it is capable of handling its own affairs.

Speaking to a group of African diplomats in Ottawa, Canada, the Ghanaian leader called for Africans to unite.

This is the time for Africa to come together. It is the time for us to flex our muscle. This is the time for us to show the world that when given the opportunity we can live to expectation.

Whilst conceding that the continent is plagued with several challenges, he was convinced that with the right caliber of leaders, those challenges will be surmounted.

Africa has had quite a number of problems but I am really happy that we are seeing a new kind of leadership in Africa. A kind of leadership which would strive in order to raise the living standards of the people. That is the only reason that we are voted into office,” the president said.

The Dean of the African diplomatic corps who also doubles as the Ambassador for Zimbabwe Florence Zano Chideya assured President Mills of their cooperation in his four-day stay in Canada.

“We shall be with you all the way. Rest assured that you are our president today; you are my president…” she said.”

Source: http://www.adomonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11381:it-is-time-for-africa-to-flex-its-muscle-mills-&catid=25:general&Itemid=233

Hmmm
Honestly, it is quite difficult for me to understand what our leaders in Africa eat, drink and smoke.

But it is a sure thing that they do not feed on the same staple like the rest of us ordinary mortals.

Gosh!
So President Mills discovered that: “This is the time for Africa to come together. It is the time for us to flex our muscle. This is the time for us to show the world that when given the opportunity we can live to expectation.”

Africans since the dawn of time have had their quest for unity thwarted by the inability of their leaders to get their acts together. The aspirations of the African people and a few progressive leaders to forge continental unity have been frustrated by the selfishness of African leaders.

Selfish leadership has been the single impediment to African unity.

Whilst the colonialists that sundered our continent into meaningless, useless, and unviable nation-states have discovered the joys of unity and had built their European Union, African leaders selfishly continue to hold on to their fictional states – happy with the puny, largely symbolic appurtenances of their fake nation-states.

Almost fifty years after the signing of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) protocol, our leaders meet year and make sanctimonious noises but has yet to move beyond three months residency for their citizens.

And today we are being given lectures on the desirability of African unity and of the need of our coming together.

I beg your pardon, Mr. President, but what did Nkrumah fought for some fifty years ago?

Ah!
Where does one even begin to make sense of the president's call?

With due respect to the President, the call is patently laughable given the recent events that has taken place in our beloved continent.

This year, 2011, will surely go down as one of the momentous in Africa in contemporary history.

Not since the heady days of 1960s, when the wind of change blew across the continent, have there been such momentous happenings across Africa.

Epic events arose in North, West and Southern Africa with Ghana conspicuous by its deafening silence.

It was like the land of the Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah has lost its voice in international fora.

Under President Mills' watch, whilst neo-colonialist forces assailed and battered the continent, Ghana, Africa's Black star and the continent's erstwhile moral compass, muted its voice.

Our country neither contributed nor participated in shaping any of the epochal events that re-jiggled Africa's geo-political configurations; we were helpless and hapless side-line watchers.

We were even reduced to mere spectators in the giddy events across our western border that affects the core of our strategic interests.

It is difficult not to question whether or not the Mills administration has a foreign policy at all.

It is true that there is a functioning ministry of foreign affairs (housed at the unused presidential palace built with an Indian loan) and ministers and officials that go through the motion, but no objective observer can opine that Ghana has a well-articulated foreign policy.

Those that wish to attempt a spin should just tell us what these policies are; how they are articulated and defended.

It could be true that officials at the Castle (seat of government) and at the former Flagstaff House (which house the foreign affairs ministry) have well-laid out plans, but the truth is that they have not been well articulated and craftily pursued to further the interests of the nation.

Let's begin at our backyard in La Cote d'Ivoire where, incidentally, Ghana has its most strategic investments in the oil fields.

CIV is the most prized jewel in France's colonial (note that I did not write 'neo-colonial' or ex) possessions in Africa.

History teaches us that France has little, actually no, inhibition at all when it comes to pursuing its national interests in the only place that still gives it world-power pretensions – Africa.

France, more than any Western power, has supported more brutal surrogates, organized more coups, and financed more uprisings in Africa. It continues to maintain more military bases in African than any other power.

The Gaullist state still tenaciously holds on to its vast colonial possessions in our continent, and continues to use every trick in the colonialist handbook to hold on to its ill-gotten possession.

Through the Colonial Pact with its supposedly ex-colonies, France continue to maintain a stranglehold on vast tract of African land and resources.

Ghana, were it to be fully awake, ought to have learnt some useful lessons from Nigeria especially where crude oil is concerned.

During the Nigerian civil war, for no other reason apart from petroleum, France abandoned its relations with Nigeria and sided with the secessionist Biafrans, who controlled the eastern part of Nigeria where, incidentally, the bulk of Nigeria's oil wells lie.

That was the first but not the last time France will stabbed Nigeria in the back.

Oil was also the main reason France backed Cameroon in its dispute with Nigeria over the Bakassi Peninsula which, once again, was oil rich.

Nigeria dared not go to war with Cameroon which has a defence pact with its former colony, and had to ignominiously accede to cede its territory to Cameroon - over the anguish of its citizens.

Ghana should have used the occasion of the impasse in CIV to voice its concerns over the happenings in its western neighbor and forcefully articulate its strategic concerns and interests.

Alas, the government of President Atta Mills kept quiet and allowed France forces to kidnap the sitting president and installed a pliant, puppet regime in CIV.

Today, the president, in far away Canada, tells us that it is time for Africa to flex its muscle.

Ought we not ask, Which African muscle, Mr. President?

The headline news on myjoyonline.com this morning reads: “Ghana, Ivory Coast border dispute looms if…”

According to the report, “An oil dispute could break out between Ghana and neighboring Ivory Coast if immediate steps are not taken to redefine the boundaries between the two nations.

Ivorian authorities have been meeting with some oil companies in Ghana ordering them to stop their operations. Ivory Coast is reportedly laying claim to portions of the huge oil wealth in the deep waters of the Western region of Ghana.

In the new development, Ivory Coast is laying claim to much of Tullow Oil's Jubilee, Tweneboa, Enyenra and Owo discoveries, among others, plus the West Tano-1X find and several prospects.

Joy News checks indicate that even though talks between Ghana and Ivory Coast have not been concluded, Ivory Coast now plans to develop its own gas processing infrastructure, ostensibly duplicating proposals advanced by Ghana.

Officials at that country's oil company Petroci unveiled a controversial map last week that redraws the maritime border between the two nations, which have been in long-running talks over the disputed area.

Meanwhile, the Jubilee Partners have already raised concerns about the boundary problem.

Texas-based oil explorer, Kosmos Energy has expressed fears about the development.

The oil producer says the future of a portion of its license in the Deepwater Tano Block is uncertain as the issue remains unresolved. Kosmos fears it may lose some of its license if changes are made to the maritime boundary demarcation between Ghana and Ivory Coast.

Uncertainty remains with regard to the outcome of the boundary demarcation between Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire and we do not know if the maritime boundary will change, therefore affecting Ghana's rights to explore and develop its discoveries or prospects within such areas.”

http://business.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201112/77669.php

Today, Alhassan Outtarra, a French quisling installed by French marines, sits in the Presidential Palace in Abidjan (a building owned by a French company) and we should expect him to do nothing but the bidding of the French.

Aside petroleum, two third of the people in CIV are of the same Akan ethnic stock as the majority of the people of Ghana.

This, coupled with the strategic oil interests, should have made Ghana vibrated with outrage when France schemed to take over CIV.

Alas, Ghana's voice was muted and France had its way.

We can also ask where President Mills, who today calls on Africa to flex its muscle, was when the imperialists ran riot in Libya and foisted an atavistically racist puppet regime on that country?

Whatever we might think of Brother Ghaddafi, we cannot take from him the fact that he was the only leader in Africa that has used the resources of his nation to improve the material condition of his people and gave them decent livelihood.

Under Ghadaffi, Libya consistently came top in Africa in all the indices on development. And Libya was the only truly independent African country whose policies were not been tele-guided by any power.

Ghadafii's Libya carried out its development programme without getting into the debt trap into which many African nations have stupidly sank. The so-called brutal Dictator Ghadaffi got 80% of the petroleum income for his country, unlike our democratic Ghana which stupidly signed agreement to receive a paltry 10%, and then go to grovel to Western institutions and had to declare itself Highly Indebted and Poor Country (HIPC) in order to receive the so-called aid.

Tchaah!
We also cannot take away Ghadaffi impeccable credentials an African patriot who concretely championed Africa's self-determination – through his advocacy and support for African Central Bank, African Independent Satellite, African Investment Bank and an African Monetary Fund.

We may question why President Mills did not find his voice to condemn the fiendish and illegal murder of a sitting African president; the overthrow of two African governments and the impositions of puppet regimes in Abidjan and Tripoli.

His government also did not come out to condemn the BBC report that the Arab settlers regime in Libya are holding and torturing seven thousand Africans in appalling conditions.

Yet, the president expects us to take serious his call for Africa to flex muscle!

What muscle, Mr. President?
There are many, many more question we can ask President Mills like: What muscle are we supposed to flex, Monsieur La President, when Western MNCs dominate the commanding heights of our economy; when we get a paltry 6% royalty for our gold and an insulting 10% for our oil? What muscle do we have when we signed agreement to allow the importation of every junk into our land? What muscle do we flex when we depend on food imports to feed ourselves; what muscle are we going to flex when we cannot generate and distribute enough electricity to power the few dis-articulate industries in our land; what muscle do we talk about when every idea we used is foreign to us; what muscle, sir, do you talk about when you have even banned the pouring of libation at our state occasions? What muscle are we supposed to flex, Mr. President, when we have been reduced to a classical neo-colonial state? What muscle can we flex when Ghana has a Defence Agreement with the United Snakes of Amerikkka and when the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has its West African headquarters in Ghana's capital?

What muscle do we indeed have to flex, Mr. President?