We can right say that the question of why corrupt leaders in our land get away with their plunders of our wealth and live happily ever after is as old as Methuselah. Contemporary answers in search of lasting solutions to this debilitating act do not come in a monochrome. There are different shades and colours of ideas on how to halt the plunder and redistribute the wealth of the nation for the common good of the electorate.

A discerning management consultant or an MBA student with focus on the dynamics of political economic in Africa might readily collate all these shades and colours of reasons why corrupt leaders get away with their corruption and seat them upon a tripod of governance misadventure. The components of this tripod might also be identified as infantile management control practice, leadership failure and electorate conspiracy. The problems of infantile management control practice and leadership failure in governance misadventure in the process of democratization in our land will be punctiliously examined some time in the near future. We are paying attention today on the third but most potent component capable of reversing leadership failure and instituting efficient management control system in governance.

Electorate conspiracy is the connivance of silence, pacifism and inactivity in the face of leadership failure that undermine the welfare of the electorate. We default and are convicted of electorate conspiracy in the court of humanity when we take no affirmative action against political leaders who do not live up to expectations and yet continue to perpetuate themselves in office. We give these political leaders tacit consent to continue to mislead us by cooperating with their hold on power because we cannot stand up and take collective action against their failure.

Ours is a docile generation that is guilty as charged with electorate conspiracy. Simply put, when the electorate cannot speak up against the evils of political leaders in governance, when the electorate is intimated by the bayonets given to soldiers funded by taxpayers sweat, when the electorate cannot chart a path for posterity and endure a long-term deprivation like Mandela for positive change because of transient pains, when the electorate cannot see a vision of tomorrow by escaping a pain of today then it is a docile generation. It is a generation that concurs with the evils that few leaders perpetuate.

The fear factor we project as the principal cause of our inability to take action against leadership failure in governance is lame. All of the fears – fear of what to eat, fear of the unknown, fear of death – only exist in the realm of shadow. When we face these fears, they recede fast into oblivion and we are faced with our realities.

What we should realize and deal with is that the absence of our collective determinism in the land can be attributable to our primitive home education. We have believed and continue to affirm that children are to be seen and not heard. Our children grow up with this mentality and never learn to express themselves even when their welfare is threatened. So they just play along, consenting instead of reasoning to agree or reject the proposals put before them. The girl child is worse off in this predatory environment. Then again, we also push some trite clichés to the extreme of rationality. Of course, common sense agrees that silence is golden but that is certainly not in the face of leadership failure that creates misadventure in governance, tyranny, dictatorship, oppression and terrorism.

Our people can purge itself of electorate conspiracy if it learns to take a ‘No’ for an answer when dealing with devious political leaders in governance. Now, this sounds so simple, right? A ‘No’ for an answer appears like a clergy’s appeal to his laity to resist the inordinate urge for temptation. You know the struggle that we mortal experience with the wars of the flesh. The clergy too are not exempted. They know the art and therefore always earnestly plead with their laity to resist the passion. The direction of the appeal to the electorate to give a ‘No’ answer is much more stronger and forceful than the clergy’s appeal. It has to do with the constitution of our collective survival, a bull-like will for decency, civility and an enabling environment, and a vision for our posterity.

Amstad illustrates this ideology well. Perhaps you have read the novel by Alexs Pate or watch the screenplay by David Franzoni about Amstad. Sengbe Pieh who later became Cinque and some other Africans circa fifty-three were taken against their will as slaves aboard the ship Amistad by Spanish slave traders in 1839. Cinque and company staged an unusual but a successful revolt against their captors. They had ironclad will and determination that stunned even the gods and got the ship ‘safely’ to the shores of America. In America, the rule of law prevailed, and Cinque and company became free people they were destined to be in the first place and returned home to Africa.

The justification of Cinque and company’s attack and massacre of their captors had been sufficiently thrashed out in the law courts in America and I am not going to reinvent the wheel here. The electorate, however, has a serious thinking to do. Why did Cinque and company succeed when millions perished on the trans-Atlantic slave trade route that devastated Africa? Will, determine to be and remain free. They had a ‘No’ for an answer to the captors. They had a sense of destiny and were ready to seize the moment in spite of limitations, difficulties, dangers, privation and misunderstanding.

Do you know what happens when you connive with evil or consent to injustice capable of undermining our collective survival? Poverty. Perpetual subjugation. Illiteracy. Backwardness. Underdevelopment. Hardship. Annihilation. We must be concerned about how we are governed. We cannot afford to be lethargy. “I don’t care” attitude will fast track us to total destruction!

Malcolm X knew this fast track and sounded an eternal warning in his speech It Shall Be the Ballot or the Bullet in Washington Heights in New York in 1964. He thundered, “Any philosophy that you have that can’t be implemented is no good. A “preaching” or a gospel is no better than its ability to be carried out in a manner that will make it beneficial to the people who accept it. When you have a philosophy or a gospel – I don’t care whether it’s a religious gospel, a political gospel, an economic gospel or a social gospel – if it’s not going to do something for you and me right here and right now – to hell with that gospel! In the past, most of the religious gospels that you and I have heard have benefited only those who preach it. Most of the political gospels that you and I have heard have benefited only the politicians. The social gospels have benefited only the sociologists. You and I need something right now that’s going to benefit all of us. That’s going to change the community in which we live, not try to take us somewhere else. If we can’t live here, we never will live somewhere else.”

The electorate is comprised of people with diverse cultural and diverse religious background. This is tolerable. We should have this diversity so that our electorate can become a caldron enriched with the wealth of experiences this diversity will bring to the community. We can only learn from the Roman Empire of yore and the United States of America today. Nobody should be persecuted for his opinion, cultural orientation or religious inclination. Everybody has something to contribute to the electorate, as long as it is positive and creative.

The point is that in spite of these differences and shades of opinion, cultural orientation and religious inclination; every member of the electorate has something in common. And, what is this? The conscience. We all have our conscience as the basic inner police that prompts us of the elementary knowledge of good and evil. The fact that we justify our action does not in any way silence the conscience if we collude with external forces to do what is capable of hurting ourselves or harming the electorate.

Let us listen to our conscience. It is the still small voice. Once within you, the issue at stake makes you feel uncomfortable, just open your mouth and say ‘No’. Did I hear say, “Oh, everybody has his price”? Dear people, the higher the stake, the louder your ‘No’. You can form the habit of saying ‘No’ to misadventure in governance by political leaders and persuasive appeal to hurt the electorate. If you have been saying ‘No’ to invitation to compromise the electorate and selling your vote to undesirable elements in leadership, when the stake is higher, you will have the strength to say, ‘No’.

When posterity will be endangered. Khalil Gibran in The Prophet surmised on posterity, “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the House of Tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children, as living arrows, are sent forth.” [Italics mine]

We should put self-pitying and regrets of trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonial devastation of black heritage and imbalance in globalization aside. We should live in the present and lay a solid foundation for posterity. We should say ‘No’ to any attempt, moves, calculations and offers from any quarters or leaders that threatens to destroy the electorate and mortgage the future of our children. We should begin now and not stop thinking about tomorrow. We are, that is the totality of the decisions we take now, the bows with which our posterity, the living arrows, is either blessed or damned. Your ‘No’ to injustice, corruption and irresponsible leadership will save our land and posterity. Let us begin today to say ‘No’ to misadventure in governance by political leaders in order to live a happy life today and lay a solid foundation for our posterity.

Robot  # 1 | 19.02.2008 20:08

We can right say that the question of why corrupt leaders in our land get away with their plunder...Read the full article.