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Obasanjo Scores Some Marks By Dr. Johnson Odesola
Although hackneyed, the phrase “Give the devil his due,” is appropriate this time. Specifically, it’s to West African States and the African Union. The states and the AU faced and dealt with severe cases of a malaise many Africans wish away daily: bad governance that has often degenerated into state thuggery.
The West Africa nations go by the name of the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS an ugly name from the outset, ECOWAS bungled job after job.
As a result some of its members like Sierra Leone and Liberia became slaughter fields. They are limping back to statehood. So far ECOWAS and the AU are clinging to a slender string to stop Cote d’Ivoire from going the Somalia way.
Past bungles were inevitable, Nigeria, the only ECOWAS member with meaningful political and economic clout, had problems. Charity, the saying goes, begins at home. Nigeria is sorting itself, mostly. It’s playing its role.
It’s therefore, not surprising President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is also AU chairman, is man of the moment. Although not head of ECOWAS, he rallied its members, combined that with his country’s clout to stopped Togo from slithering back to 1960s. Mr Eyadema was the world’s second longest serving ruler after Cuba’s President Fidel Castro. Fortunately, there weren’t buddies.
President Eyadema’s death would have ushered an end to the era of political dinosaurs in Africa were it not for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, 81. He trails Mr. Eyadema by fourteen years on the seat. Fortunately, Africans have increasingly become allergic to Big Men and are losing taste for stale palm wine in new gourds. In the past few months, ECOWAS and the AU cheered on.
Even in a classic case of myopia, Togo’s military puppets to elevate Mr. Eyadema’s son, Mr. Faure Gnassingbe. He was in diapers when his father grabbed power. Although a political novice, he’s reputed to have close ties with the people who kept Dad on top of a rotting seat: the military.
The plot was amateurish. The military got the National Assembly to change the constitution. Mr. Gnassingbe would have succeed his father and complete his term in 2008. President Obasanjo saw red.
The explanation in Lome was that the country couldn’t afford a power vacuum. Foreign Minister Kokou Tozoun made a fool of himself, telling Reuters news agency: “Can we be without a president for sixty days?” The question of power vacuum was mute. The constitution provides for National Assembly Speaker to take over and call elections in 60 days. That’s power. Media reports say when Mr. Gnassingbe showed up in Abuja, Nigeria, he got a naughty schoolboy-type reception.
ECOWAS moved fast. It imposed sanctions, including a travel ban on Togolese leaders and an arms embargo. It threatened military action, if necessary. The AU supported the measures. The EU, which has imposed sanctions against Togo for more than a decade, told Lome to get on track. The United Nations piled more pressure. The United States stopped military assistance. It remained unclear why Togo needed Washington’s military aid. AU tightened the screws and suspended Togo from the organisation’s activities. It banned Togolese officials from travelling in the continent. Togo’s leaders were under national arrest, an African invention. Mr. Gnassingbe stepped down. The legal arrangement remains dubious, but a usurper had been forced to retreat.
His father bequeathed him a political and military machine to guarantee that. But Mr. Gnassingbe now knows notoriety has a price. Most important in the saga is that African leaders were at the forefront of chastising one of their own. That’s why AU’s publication of a secret report on Zimbabwe is good news.
The document is a record of a 2002 visit by experts from the AU Commission on Human and People’s Rights. It calls Zimbabwe a deeply divided society beset by police abuses, demolition of people’s home, a shackled media, illegal land invasions and a politically compromised judiciary. When it was tabled last July before AU foreign ministers, Zimbabwe’s Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge called its authors “Blair messengers,” a reference to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. African heads of state adopted the report at their summit.
The Togo mess could have been avoided had African leaders earlier told the late Eyadema the smell of fart stuck on them everywhere. The same can be said of Mr. Mugabe, who is presiding over a power keg. It isn’t fruitful to bemoan lost opportunities, though. What matters most is that African leaders are finally taking the issue of continental governance seriously. The cult of silence, which amounts to complicity, is dying. It might not be long before the suffering of African sing Hallelujah!
Johnson Odesola is from Osun State, a Regional Coordinator in the Redeemed Christian Church of God. He holds BA (Honours) degree in theology from Greenwich School of Theology London, MTh in Missiology/Anthropology from Queen University of Belfast, a PhD in Christian Education from Ashland University and another PhD in Intercultural Studies from Trinity International University. He is presently a missionary in Southern Africa based in Zambia
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