Togo

Togo: Another View

Ikrama I. Hassan

Nigerian Newspaper Columnists, reporters and commentators and sundry, like vultures that have been attacking a decomposed carcass have in a bid to get rid of their monotonous life climbed up to a higher altitude searching for a fresh meat and lo and behold, they sighted in an obscure corner, a languishing Republic of Togo. All hell was let loose as they descended and feasted on that poor country deconstructing and offering hypothetical solutions to the country’s political differentiation and integration. Everyone is now adorning the new Togo of International Commentator from the comfort and safety of his home, satiating and massaging his ego, throwing the fate of thousands of Togo based Nigeria to the dogs.

I am not about to recount what transpired before and during the last election in Togo as there is little left to be recounted. But the point I set out to bring to the fore here is that irrespective of the result of the election and one’s view, an election was demanded for both by the Togolese and their international friends and an election was held. We shall letter examine whether it is free and fair or not as this is as subjective as it can be and depends on the vagaries of the different analysts.

It beats me silly why we should reject the election as it were, in Togo not based on any concrete evidence of irregularities but ostensibly because of the winner’s parentage. This is too simplistic pre-emptive and retrogressive.

We have painfully and regrettably carried with us a subconscious albeit, inadvertent acquiescence if not glorification of Western values and systems thus, adulating anything emanating from there while deriding ours. Else when has it become an abnormality for a man to become the president of a Nation simply because was sired by a former president. I do not wish to exonerate African leaders of the accusations of misgovernance, favoritism, nepotism and what have you but for goodness sake fairness demands equal yardsticks be employed in assessing everyone.

If the House of Bush was in an African Country, our vultures would have demanded that country be written off the continent because nothing fair and transparent would likely be seen in a situation where an immediate past president had two of his sons as governors in the country with one subsequently becoming the president. I am sure the other is also nursing same ambition.

The circumstance through which Bush Jr became president would flatly be tagged rigging if it happened in Africa. I don’t know what it was called when it happened in America. His second coming was against impossible odds and overwhelming and deafening opinion polls. It was ok because it didn’t happen in Africa.

If monarchy had emanated from Africa, it would have been a subject of intense ridicule and labeled archaic and part of African backwardness for some one just by accident of birth to wield such an enormous power, dissolving the parliament, headship of the Anglican Church and the Commonwealth of nation.

Heavens and earth cannot shield any incumbent head of an African state from the venoms that would spill from the pens of our commentators should he by any means even fair win re-election for two consecutive terms. Blair has done it and our reactions ranged from measured silence to applause for “the champion of the cause of the immigrants and debt relief”. Can you see that?

Back to Togo. The opposition in Togo is a study in despondency. It could never have won that election. Organization and purposefulness are the cardinal trademark of any opposition. But the disorganization and disorientation of the Togolese opposition group could be gleaned from a thousand kilometer. Gilchrist Olympio and Akintani Bob were for all intent and purpose working for individual vested interest in spite of their doomed eleventh hour wedding. Yaovi Agboyibo pulle d a hurried collection of some six weak parties to form his UFC. For God’s sake do the opposition groups in Togo believe they could win elections simply because they were in the opposition? This disorientation was further made manifest by their last minute desperate efforts at breaching the constitutional provision to postpone the general election. And who can convince one that Gilchrist Olympio, the main opposition leader was not out to avenge his father. As also a sum to a former president, what confers on him more legitimacy to the throne? Is that the path we want Togo to thread?

Nigeria is fast acquiring for herself and her citizens envy, mistrust, hatred and hostility the US had gotten through her actions in foreign lands. But while US has almost all her citizens except diplomats and solders domesticated thus, immuned to reactive molestation, unbearable economic situation has smoked out uncountable Nigerians and laid them bare in even less endowed countries like Togo. There, they are helpless and prone to attack and harassment at the slightest provocation. That’s why we must be cautious in everything we set out to do internationally. Lives of Nigerians must not be by any means put on a train track.

And if the Togolese rebuff any mitigation in the seeming monotony of their existence, how is it out business? It is their democratic right.