Absurd things happen in Africa. Leaders deploy impunity in politics. They dream up impunity and stop at nothing to invoke it to have their way. That is why they kill, main, blackmail, slander and defame to get their heart’s desire: political office.
Forget African leaders who pretend to be different. Across the length and breadth of the continent, the situation is the same.
I had thought that the era of impunity had gone with the return of democratic rule, but Olusegun Obasanjo, being a soldier, proved everybody wrong as soon as he was elected Nigeria’s president by reintroducing impunity into the body polity of the continent using Nigeria as a plateform.
During his eight years in office as civilian president, he used impunity as a political weapon in most of the things he did. He removed his Deputy, Atiku Abubakar, until the court came to Atiku’s rescue to serve out his term under him.
With impunity, Obasanjo sent soldiers to a defenseless community called Odi in Bayelsa State and the khaki boys levelled it with a relish compared with full military engagement between two countries. The list is endless.
Before Nigeria’s return to civilian administration in 1999, past leaders like former military President Ibrahim Babangida dished out their own impunity. The high point was when Babangida single-handedly annulled an election adjudged the freest and fairest in the political history of the country.
We are just four days away from the June 12, 1993 anniversary when that devilish decision was taken.Nigeria is yet to recover from that singular act, 21 years after.
The situation degenerated during the regime of the late Sani Abacha, whose whims and caprices and pronouncements were law. But that was the experience during military dictatorship.
What happened recently, May 20 during the election in Malawi has once more brought to the fore the character of the political leaders in Africa. It also serves as a sad reminder of the infamous days of military dictatorship in Nigeria which negative effect still reverberates across Africa.
Malawian President Joyce Banda raised the alarm that the election was marred by irregularities and so moved to annul the exercise until the court stopped her.
Banda alleged that electoral officers colluded with politicians to rig; some people voted up to three times; some candidates won more than the number of registered voters in some polling units and ballots were tampered with.
The Malawian Electoral Commission (MEC) ordered a recount in the areas where fraud was discovered in line with the understanding of all political parties.
There was nothing wrong in Banda complaining that some contestants for the office of president wanted to manipulate the election, but everything was wrong with her attempt to quash it.
If the high court had not over-ruled her on May 24, that election would have stood cancelled, although she pledged not to contest in the poll if it was rescheduled within 90 days.
Banda was among 11 candidates who ran for president, in an election conducted electronically, and in which the younger brother of Banda’s predecessor, Peter wa Mutharika, her Foreign Minister, led in unofficial exit polls.
That was the situation in which Banda, who came to power two years ago after the sudden death of Bingu wa Mutharika, sought to annul the poll and conduct another one soon.
It took the meeting of all the political parties and the MEC on May 25 to decide that a recount be done, otherwise Banda would have set the country on fire literally, as Babangida did in Nigeria in 1993.
Banda prides herself as the reformer of Malawi and gloats that she is the only one capable of fighting the monumental corruption in the country, which she claims got worse during the tenure of Mutharika.
Based on her claims of fighting corruption, Banda became popular and got support from many countries in Africa. But as the saying goes, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
It beats the imagination, whatever makes her think she is the only honest person in Malawi, which she thought gave her the licence to cancel the election without considering the huge resources the country committed to it.
Of course nothing so fundamental could have informed her decision if not that she saw that she was losing the election.
Banda had initially appealed “to all Malawians to continue with their commitment to peaceful co-existence and remain calm until the [MEC] determines the outcome of the poll results.” But what lay behind the appeal?
Now that all the doubts in the election have been cleared, Banda, in the spirit of sportsmanship, has no choice than to congratulate the in-coming President, Peter Mutharika, who has been declared winner.
She has to, if she is still truely committed to the growth of Malawi and if the fight against poverty, corruption, diseases, among others, must continue.
Imagine what would have happened if Banda had muzzled her way through by cancelling the election, as Babangida did in Nigeria 21 years ago, and what would have been the effect on the social, economic and political life of the poor Malawian nation.
African leaders, be wise.
