President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria lost his re-election bid in an election that has been rightly described as historic on an African continent where incumbent Presidents do not cede office even when they lose at the ballot box.
For the past 6 years, Goodluck Jonathan proved himself to be a surprisingly incompetent President presiding over a nightmarish administration that ensured that his legacy would be one of pervasive corruption, ineptitude and wrecklessness. He squandered the goodwill of Nigerians and the international community who wished him well and hoped very much that he would succeed as president. He and his party betrayed the trust of Nigerians and on March 28, 2015, the Nigerian electorate withdrew their trust and sent President Jonathan and his party packing.
Without a doubt, President Jonathan’s loss was a victory for Nigerians and the country’s democracy. However, it wasn’t the president’s loss alone. Bad African leaders also lost. Now, Nigerians have shown other Africans what is possible when determined people of goodwill rise up and embrace a vision to take their country back from lazy, uncaring, unpatriotic thieves. Africans from Yaounde to Lome to Harare and beyond who are living under the tyrannical rule of corrupt leaders need to take a leaf from Nigerians and understand that power will not be given to them voluntarily by their oppressors; they must grab the power and by so doing take their destiny and the fate of their countries into their hands.
With presidential elections coming up soon in Togo, the Togolese must understand that they cannot continue to complain if they once again accept what they are told is the result of an election rigged massively to keep in power the same family that has plundered the nation since 1967. They must demand an open, free and fair election.
Incompetent and corrupt African leaders should no longer be allowed any comfort. They should go to bed every night afraid that masses of regular citizens will come after them if they close their eyes to sleep. They should feel that they are being pursued by the ghosts of people who died as a result of the havoc of their presidencies. They should hear the footsteps and voices of the dead and the kidnapped propelling the living and the conscientious in a loud march toward sincere change.
Nigerians have done the right thing by getting rid of a very bad President who never really seemed to understand that his role was not just to preside over the looting of the nation’s treasury while children were getting kidnapped, youth unemployment ballooning and innocent people getting massacred by a crazed gang of religious zealots. Now, the ball is in the court of other Africans who labor and grind in hopeless aspirations daily, hoping against hope that something good would happen to transform their lives. Africa is a historically great Continent with a history like none other. The time to recapture and exceed that greatness of old is now.
May God bless Nigeria; God bless Africa.
Amen!
Amen!