By Charles Onunaiju
In 1991, fiery trade Unionist, Mr. Fredrick Jacob Chiluba then 47 years old, led his party the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) also known as New Hope MMD, formed only a year earlier in 1990, to power with 75% of total votes, ousting the veteran independence hero, Mr. Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia. Kenneth Kaunda and his United National Independence Party (UNIP) has held power since the country’s Independence in 1964, ruling for an unbroken 27 years.
Therefore, when the fiery trade Unionist and his then, brand new Party, the NEW Hope MMD showed up, the Zambians rallied around, delivering not the only the presidency in a snub to their veteran founding father but gave the New Hope MMB, an absolute majority in the parliament.
But the rule of Mr. Chiluba later to be dubbed “the Chilling Chiluba” was controversial. Despite issues around his original birth place, he made strenuous effort to deport Kenneth Kaunda, claiming the veteran independence hero was a Malawian. Following attempted military coup in 1997, something unheard of, in the East African nation, Mr. Chiluba, swooped on opposition politician, especially those close to former President Kaunda and had them arrested.
To add Spice to the eccentricity of his governance, he divorced his second wife, who have had 9 children for him and married his party’s women leader in her place. At the end of his rule, which delivered very little to the over-expectant Zambians, which showed no sign of shaking off poverty, he was charged along with his Intelligence Chief and other Senior Ministers with 168 counts of stealing public funds totaling more than 40 million US dollars.
In May 2007, he was found guilty of embezzling 46 million US dollars in a civil case in the U.K. The presiding London Judge, Mr. Peter Smith accused Mr. Chiluba of shamelessly defrauding his people from which he acquired expensive wardrobe of “stupendous proportions”
The fairy story of Chiluba’s rise with his party gaining power just barely a year after it was founded, scooping 75% of total vote and gaining an absolute majority in parliamentary is even more historically momentous, than the victory of President Bassirou Diomaye Faye in Senegal, whose party’ the African patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity known by its French acronym PASTEF, formed in 2014, won with 54% of the vote.
This is not in any way to down play the historic significance of the momentous election in Senegal, not least because of the shenanigan of the out gone president, Mr. Macky Sall, who did everything in order to stay put in office. When he grudgingly conceded for the election, he put forward a crony and backed him with state resources. That the opposition triumphed amidst several excruciating political landmines laid on its path is a crucial watershed.
Mr. George Weah, a former international footballer won the high office Liberia, West Africa’s oldest Republic amidst high expectation after the lackluster rule of former World Bank official and Africa’s first female president, Mrs. Sirleaf. Mrs. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has electrified the whole of Africa, when she became the first elected Africa leader in 2006. Her Victory was momentous because she has taken office after the brutal Civil war and lingering power struggles among the former war lords.
But the governance record of the first elected female leader was less than Salutary. Her son, Mr. Charles Sirleaf was charged with economic sabotage after he has unlawfully printed the local currency to the value of 75 million US dollars. Earlier in October 2014, her justice minister resigned in protest accusing the president of interfering with the criminal investigating into the illegal seizure of money from Korean businessmen in a hotel raid.
In 2017, review conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism cited Mrs. Sirleaf among list of politicians named in the paradise paper allegations. Liberia under Mrs. Sirleaf did not record any appreciable mileage in economic growth and overall social development. Currently, Africa’s oldest Republic rank among the poorest country in the world despite having elected an International football celebrity and a first female leader. Mr. George Weah whose party Congress for Democratic change (CDC) swept to power in 2017, winning 60% of the vote in the second run off was sworn as in 2018.
Having attained office at the age 51 and a promise to “weed out the menace of corruption”, it was actually greed and graft that became the hallmark of his presidency. Just months into his presidency the country’s media reported the alleged disappearance of about 96 million in banknotes, approximately 5% of the country’s gross domestic product.
However, an inquiry by Kroll, US based firm in Philadelphia funded by the US government discovered that banknotes had not gone missing but had been illegally printed and that another 16.5 million US dollars which has been printed in excesses cannot be accounted for.
In 2020, four auditors who tried to uncover the spate of scandals and corruption that has besmirched Mr. Weah’s Presidency died in just over week in suspicious circumstances. The death of the auditors in just over week sparked an outrage. In 2024, when the Liberians had a chance to interrogate the Weah’s Presidency, they gave him a cold electoral shoulder and elected former 78-year old Vice President, Mr. Bokai, unceremoniously terminating the political career of their football star.
Whether it is a formerly persecuted opposition sweeping to power or a young political outsider riding on popular dissatisfaction of the old political establishment to gain power or the women crashing the ceiling of gender barricade to assume highest office as in the case of Mrs. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia or Mrs. Joyce Banda in Malawi, what ails Africa is certainly beyond the sit-tight of incumbents or the rapid electoral turnovers of incumbents and oppositions.
The structural constraints of modern states in Africa largely from the consequence of its historic origin, nature and structure cannot be easily overcome, through the grandstanding of political bravado. It requires more than political affirmation and even determination.
The nature of modem Africa States and the structure of her engagement with the rest of the world have played outsized roles, though considerably neglected or ignored in the current travails of the continent. There will be no need to reinvent the wheel or disband the existing state as that would be toil in absurdity. But clearly, Africa contemporary states can be realigned to the autonomous reality of the various states in the continent, taking into account the popular values through which people communicate, engage and address their concerns.
The historic inquiry and interrogation of the facts about the living realities of the various people would generate a harvest of outcomes that inform genuine reforms of existing institutions and realign them to true public service. Whether it’s President Faye’s Senegal or Bola Tinubu’s Nigeria, William Ruto’s Kenya, Abiy Ahmed’s Ethiopia, or the two generals tearing Sudan apart, or Mr. Slyva Kirr’s South Sudan or the three strongmen in the Sahel – Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, the crises of the modern state in Africa and the consequence of socio-economic lethargy is beyond the type of rule but rather in the structure and nature of the State itself.
It will be unfair to wave aside, the genuine determination and good will of the leaders in Africa to deliver on good governance and its expected outcome of a better society, but history has clearly and consistently shown that these efforts are more or less perpetually vitiated by the objective nature of the State and its existential constraints.
For the avoidance of doubts, this is not insurmountable obstacle. Many states in Asia, especially South East Asia, like Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam have made some appreciable progress, despite starting from the same point as Africa; colonial domination.
The key to the modest and ongoing success is reinterpreting the inherited colonial state in the light of their then new reality and retooling their institutions to reflects and address concerns of their rediscovered social reality, which proceeded from a total understanding of their respective unique national conditions. The process refined and redefined their engagement with the rest of the world, giving them a reasonable handle in defining and projecting their priorities. Africa has the intellectual wherewithal, a repository and pedigree of historical renaissance to chart her own course in an increasing landscape of global disorder. The will to act could amount to sheer bravado and even the dissipation of energy in the wrong direction without adequate knowledge and understanding of what Amilcar Cabral, one of Africa,s foremost thinkers called our “weakness”. Therefore, the determination and the will to know is the essential prerequisite to any meaningful and purposeful action.
• Onunaiju is Research Director of an Abuja based Think Tank