Don’t Be Flip, Uncle Atta!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Among the slew of things that I can’t stand are cant and sheer hypocrisy – and it was these twin-bane of politics that luridly reflected President John Evans Atta-Mills’ assay at a glowing tribute in the wake of the passing of Nigeria’s President Umaru Musah Yar’Adua on Wednesday night.
The passing itself was, to be sure, tragic, being that at 58 years old, Mr. Yar’Adua was still pretty much in the prime of his life, his widely remarked chain-smoking notwithstanding. And as well, the fact that he had a liver and kidney disease, a condition that may well have been both triggered and aggravated by his voluntary self-fumigation, scarcely lessened the tragic painfulness of his untimely passing.
Still, it is one thing to pay a pro-forma, or perfunctory, tribute to a deceased peer and another to pretend that in terms of achievements, both symbolic and practical, that the subject of such homage represented far more than glaringly met the eye. The fact of the matter is – and this is admittedly painful to register – that in seeming to callously drag along the fate of some 150 million countrymen and women with his ailment and grinding national affairs to a virtual standstill, the late Nigerian leader had not in any way, shape, form or manner endeared himself to either his fellow Nigerians or keen and avid students and advocates of a democratic African culture.
And so when he strangely opines that “Within [the functional ambit] of ECOWAS [i.e. the Economic Community of West African States], President Yar’Adua was a valued partner in our common struggle to institutionalize the principles and practices of democratic governance,” it is not clear precisely what the Ghanaian leader is referring to. For it bears not repeating that the very name of Mr. Yar’Adua became virtually synonymous with all that is inauthentic about post-military political culture in West Africa, in particular and, perhaps, also the continent at large.
It is also rather quaint when President Atta-Mills asserts that the Ghanaian leader and his Nigerian opposite number worked assiduously in “pursuit of regional integration as a strategic tool in the economic and social development of [the West African] sub-region” (See “Pres. Mills Declares Three Days of Mourning” Modernghana.com 5/7/10). To be certain, I read the foregoing within the eerie context of the most recent massacre of Nigerian Christians in the Jos-Plateau region of Africa’s most populous country by their largely Hausa-Fulani Muslim neighbors. In sum, I am constantly buffeted by this inescapably surreal state of affairs under which leaders who do not seem capable of “integrating’ the citizens of their own countries, somehow, facilely presume to be capable of integrating our entire West African sub-region within the temporal space of a generation!
Indeed. In the thick of Nigeria’s political dilemma last March, President Atta-Mills was widely quoted to be promising to assist Aso Rock in forging a constructive and credible democratic culture in the offing. The latter promise, it may be recalled, was directed at the newly-sworn President Goodluck Jonathan, a man whose name inescapably reminds one of Lesotho’s famous Chief Lebua Jonathan. At least that is what it does to me. Anyway, need I also recall that back then I couldn’t stop myself from toppling off my chair and, worst of all, actually breaking an ankle?
I mean, here was my Uncle Fiifi John, the man who spent two decades of his most productive years helping Dzelukope Avaklasu Jeremiah grow and entrench one of the most insidious strains - or is it breeds? – of military dictatorship, promising to induce a democratic culture in a country that has been “blessed” with far more consummate military dictators than Ghana.
Well, while I know for certain that every death or tragic loss of life deserves to be lamented for what it painfully is, still, the very idea of the “loss” of a leader who appears to have privileged his individual existence over and above the well-being of his countrymen and women being “a great loss not only to his family [the primary beneficiaries of his megalomania] and the people of Nigeria [at large], but also to us all in the ECOWAS sub-region and Africa as a whole,” is almost definitely one that only President John Evans Atta-Mills can intelligently explain. Well, being the clinical dumbo that I have been widely and wisely alleged to be, I have yet to get it!
Needless to recall, another striking moment that comically brought home the tired expression of “cant and chicanery” occurred during the red-hot summer of 1998, when Togbui Avaklasu, returning from an African Union summit, made a mad flight dash for Abuja and cretinously slobbered some retching slime to the effect that Ghanaians were deeply traumatized by the death of Gen. Sani Abacha, the butcher-of-Kano!
Anyway, I direly look forward to the day when African leaders will learn to tell the truth about themselves and one another, in order to set the rest of us free.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI), the pro-democracy policy think tank, and the author of 21 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].
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