How PNDC/NDC Underdeveloped The Nation (1)

'I will not pay bribes,
I will not seek bribes,
I will work with others to campaign against corruption,

I will speak out against corruption and report on abuse,

I will support candidates for public office who say no to corruption and demonstrate transparency, integrity and accountability'.

–Transparency International's Declaration against Corruption

 
What makes the educated African in leadership position on the African continent behave like a well-fed pig throwing his or her weight about spoiling for a fight like a Sumo wrestler? What makes the educated African in leadership position behave as if the education he or she have had is an end in itself to amass illegal and filthy wealth at the expense of the people he or she is supposed to serve rather than a call to duty?  What makes the educated African in entrusted position fail to remember his or her humble beginnings and rather assume the role of King Zeus sitting on his throne on top of Mountain Olympus while surveying his kingdom? Why is that history means nothing to the educated African politician while in his or her full glory in position of power? What makes the educated African in an exalted position behave like an idiot? What makes the educated African at the head of the pack forget that there is death after life?

 
The answer is simple.   The educated African went through education. However education never went through the educated African. Education is meant to form a character. Education is meant to make you humble. Education is meant to build humility in you. Education is meant to make you a patriot. Education is meant to make you God fearing.  Education is a call to duty. Education makes you realize your failings and shortcomings. Education makes you aware that the more you learn the less and less you realize you know. Hence education should have humbling effect on you and built the humility of a child in you.

Why is that after almost sixty years since independence came to black Africa, the African political leadership remains in the hands of certified criminals most of whom are half-baked illiterate buffoons and supported and hacked by highly educated sycophantic, bootlicking, miscreants who create corrupt looting machinery they use to loot and share the wealth of the nations whose affairs they preside over among themselves?   Why is Africa littered with petty tyrants and despots who use their fertile but criminally warped mindset to glutinously and gleefully loot their nation states causing massive underdevelopment and poverty? Why has Africa failed to produce a productive educated middle and senior class but instead has produced a parasitic educated elite who live off the fat of the land through non-productive activities dependent on political patronage and fraudulent sale of their nation to their crooked foreign partners through fly by night schemes like judgment debt? Why is it that the suffering silent majority continues to behave like hen-pecked husbands and waifs   suffering in silence while they allow those vagabonds-in-power to treat them the way the shepherd boy of old treated the sympathetic villagers by always crying wolf to disturb their uneasy calm? Why is it that the poor suffering masses wait for things to get out of hand before taking the right path to throw away the usurpers who always enslave them after illegally coming into power?

History clearly has proved that the African in exalted political position is the most idiotic when it comes to learning anything from history.  Mobutu Seseku, despite all the enormous power he grabbed for himself and the gargantuan amount of the wealth of Zaire he stole and salted in foreign lands, almost died far up in the sky of the belly of a plain but for the generosity of the Moroccan monarch to allow the plane carrying him looking for a landing place to die to land in Morocco. Kwame Nkrumah, despite all the dictatorial tendencies he amassed for himself and his self-proclaimed messianic powers died fart away in exile at a time he was hallucinating that he was still the president of Ghana. Siad Barre of Somalia considered himself the supremo of his country and found himself dying in exile.

Laurent Gbagbo refused to recognize that the curtains had fallen over his orchestra and today find himself a broken man on trial in a far away foreign land.  Reports indicate that his wife was even raped as part of the bargain in his capitulation rom power. John Fiifi Atta-Mills refused to accept that fact that he was dying and allowed the sycophantic idiots around him to jog himself to hasten his death on the tarmac of the nation's international airport. The sad thing is that like a common criminal under PNDC regime, the nation was never told how, why and when he died. Michael Sata followed the foolish example of Atta-Mills by concealing his treatment in Israel as a working visit. In the end he also died in a foreign land far away from home. The former Nigeria president even did better. At the time when he was obviously dead and sleeping soundly thereafter in a mortuary in Saudi Arabia, the vampires around were proclaiming that he was sound and fit and proper person to perform the role of  president.

The list is long and unending.  The latest casualty is Blaise Campaore

Blaise Compaore sparked public anger after he tried to extend his 27-year rule. There was just one more year to go before change could finally come, through the next presidential election. After 27 years of Blaise Compaore, the people of Burkina Faso were set to wait patiently until November 2015. But Mr. Compaore's attempt to force a constitutional change sparked near unanimous outrage. “It's as if he was disconnected from reality or not acknowledging what was going on,” Rinaldo Depagne, director of ICG's West Africa programme, said. “With nearly a million people in the streets (in a country of 17 million), any sensible politician would have withdrawn their proposed bill.” But Campaore did not.

Today Uganda, Cameroon and Ghana are surely on the line to follow Burkina Faso's example. Since the days of Kutu Acheampong, never has public anger and general public discontentment in Ghana ever boiled over in this country as it is happening toady under John Dramani Mahama NDC administration. Even under Kutu Acheampong, the dislocation between the governor and the governed, the mistrust and lack of faith between the ruler and the ruled, was never so palpable as we are witnessing today. And yet John Dramani Mahama continues to play the part of Nero playing his warp while Rome burns. John Dramani Mahama continues to treat the feelings of the good people of this country with contempt and impunity while taking advantage of every second to fly out of the country on jamboree. And yet John Dramani Mahama is behaving as if he is disconnected from reality or not acknowledging what is going on. With every sector of the population and the citizenry up in arms against the John Dramani Mahama NDC administration and taking to the streets or staying at home on strike, any sensible politician would have thrown in the trowel and  quietly left the state house for his lonely village. But John Dramani Mahama is made up of the same rotten stuff as other African leaders who came before him and either died in exile after they had lost their throne and fled into exile leaving their shoes and sandals behind.

By Kwame Gyasi