The late Madiba, Nelson Mandela, had spent about 27 years in a Robben Islands prison under the apartheid era before gloriously returning to become the first black President of his Rainbow nation. Defeating apartheid was never an easy thing as Mandela testified in his book: “No Easy Walk To Freedom”. Today Mandela is remembered around the world for his grace, his fortitude, his patriotism and his sagacity. Facing the evil that was the White segregated minority rule, paying the price and galvanising the potent force that dismantled same gave credence to one of his speeches that alluded to the achievement of ultimate human glory by a stoic people under God. Madiba came, saw and conquered the apartheid evil machine that decimated thousands, exiled millions and imprisoned millions more. The story of a free South Africa will forever be incomplete without the mention of Mandela’s central role in the long walk to freedom. His prison to presidency tale is told and written in gold!
Goodluck Jonathan (Image: GovernmentZA)
The richest and the most populous black nation in the world has had her fair share of political turbulence at the centre. Nigeria is always associated with leadership failures but it has the uncanny capacity of maintaining her unity and forging ahead crisis after crisis! Two retired Generals have had the distinction of walking out of prison and becoming President. Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo spent sometime in prison during the late Sani Abacha’s martial regime. The paranoid Abacha had hatched a plot of a phantom coup and roped in notable Nigerians including OBJ. Obasanjo was consequently tried in a kangaroo military tribunal and jailed. Oladipo Diya, the then military second in command was said to have fallen on his knees crying profusely and pleading with the expired maximum ruler for clemency! Diya was dubbed the “weeping General” as stories emerged of his chicken-heartedness and unmilitary attitude. As a polygamist and lover of life Diya was mortally afraid of death as sentencing him to death by firing squad loomed ominously on the horizon! He survived the nightmare like Obasanjo who came out of the Abacha gulag to become President!
The retired General Muhammadu Buhari now President of Nigeria went through the hell of solitary confinement after the palace coup executed by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, his erstwhile Chief of Army Staff. IBB simply locked Buhari away in Benin Prison for years in order to kill his military support base and kill his spirit. Today after years in the wilderness of political opposition, contesting three rigged presidential elections, he stands tall as the elected President of the country with good reputation and solid unassailable credentials. It is a testament of the fortitude of the Katsina-born patriot and incorruptible strongman that after the ordeal of his fall from power and the manipulation of votes by the then ruling PDP in order to frustrate and rubbish his ambition of coming back to power he was able to resist and persist culminating in the celebrated democratic triumph at the zenith of federal power. Buhari rose from prison (though after many intervening years) to the presidency of the giant of Africa by dint of hardwork and strong belief in self and nation.
Jerry Rawlings was a dashing young air force officer in Ghana as the country went through hell economically especially in the early 80’s through 90’s. He wanted to sanitize the rotten system having seen that the feuding corrupt Generals in power then were holding the entire country hostage. Coup d’etat became fashionable (much like in Nigeria) and whoever was brave enough struck down the system and rose to replace same. Rawlings was incarcerated for his troubles and from there he was able to organize a military revolt that changed the fortune of Ghana forever. A putsch was mounted and it became successful while he was still languishing in prison. The boys that executed the coup got him out and handed him the mantle of leadership for the cleansing to begin in earnest. The ‘white blood’ born of Scottish father and Ghanaian mother wasted no time in bringing order by summarily executing the corrupt coup-plotting Generals. Today ‘Jenior Jesus’ is still celebrated across the country for his vision, courage and tenacity. Rawlings is a living testimony of one rising from prison to power. Today he walks freely on the streets of Accra without bodyguards!
Charles Taylor, former Liberian warlord, was alleged to have escaped from jail in the United States. He led the armed rebellion that toppled the Samuel Doe presidency in Monrovia even though he was not responsible for Doe’s capture and consequent horrid elimination. Taylor bore the character of a strong rebel leader in the mould of the late John Garang of Sudan and the late Jonas Savimbi of Angola. He was intrepid and spoke very eloquently. The Liberian civil war went on for years with Taylor maintaining the pressure militarily until Doe was caught and taken out paving the way for a change to occur. Taylor fought his way to power and later organized elections that he ‘won’. When the time came for him to quit he was forced to do so by the Americans. He came to live in exile in Calabar, Nigeria, from where he was arrested (as he tried to escape to Cameroun when an international arrest warrant was issued against him in connection with the Sierra Leonian war atrocities) and handed over to the Liberian authorities for onward journey to the Hague for his trial and subsequent sentencing. Today he is serrving a 50-year jail term somewhere in England.
Flashback early 80’s Ndjamena Chad. Hissene Habre was the only bad news in town, the ruler with a strong touch of ruthlessness and absolutism. As the Lord of the manor the archaic dictator bared all his fangs early enough signalling the arrival of a Locust. While deriving pleasure in persecuting whoever stood on his way he dug in whenever chaos erupted on the streets. He forced many to run for dear lives into exile, killed thousands and imprisoned thousands more. Acting god ignorantly Habre never imagined life without power; he never spared a thought about his evil reign coming to an end one fateful day. But that day of reckoning did come faster and sooner than his demented mind could have ever imagined. The current dictator, Idriss Deby Itno, had to overthrow him forcing him to flee into exile in Dakar Senegal. He has lived there for years maintaining a low profile and ruminating quietly on what would have been and what had happened in those years of yore.
Habre has faced the AU-mandated Jury in Dakar specially constituted to try him for multiple despotic misdeeds (including murder, arson, rape, abduction and disappearances) while in power. Remarkably Habre has throughout the trial employed the dishonourable tactics of mutism refusing to utter any word and even refusing to appear before the panel of judges. On more than one occasion the security forces had to bring him forcibly to court. He had said repeatedly that he never recognised the jurisdiction of the Jury. Today, he is still awaiting the verdict of the Jury, his trial having been concluded few months ago. Hissene Habre left the presidential palace in Ndjamena for Dakar in exile but now he is definitely headed for prison!
Flashback 2010/11 Abidjan Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) A presidential poll was held in October of 2010. No outright winner emerged prompting the decisive second round balloting between the then President Laurent Gbagbo and the opposition leader now President Alassane Ouattara. The election, amid xenophobic rabble-rousing and ethno-religious tension in the land, went on well. A clear winner emerged but the incumbent doggedly refused to accept defeat deploying all sort of subterfuge to create social crisis in a country with high immigrant population. Gbagbo used the Constitutional Court at his behest to manipulate and annul some results from some districts in the north thus proclaiming himself the President-elect! That led to war which soon assumed a tribal and religious dimension. Thousands were massacred by militias (some imported from neighbouring Liberia) and security forces loyal to the usurper President. As the crisis escalated with mediation efforts all but failed foreign forces (led by France) had to intervene militarily to neutralize an explosive situation pregnant with genocide!
The UN combat helicopters with French military war planes went to work by bombing the presidential palace in downtown Cocody (where the embattled Gbagbo and his hawkish cabinet and family members were taking refuge inside a bunker underground). The palace was defaced and partially destroyed in a sustained aerial bombardment that obliterated tanks and took out the most resilient elements within. Within days a hungry-looking tired Gbagbo was captured alive with his wife, son and other relatives and government officials. One of his fiercely-loyal Ministers, Desire Tagro, was killed earlier by a hail of bullets as he made his way out of the state house in a last-ditch diplomatic effort towards capitulation!
Today, Laurent Gbagbo, the hitherto fearless opposition leader of repute who had the balls by daring the much-feared late President Felix Houphouet-Boigny and challenging him at the advent of multi-party democracy in the French-speaking country in the late 80’s, is standing trial in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, Holland. With Charles Ble Goude, his erstwhile Youth Minister and controversial leader of the so-called “Young Patriots” they are accused of masterminding the killing of over 3000 Ivorians and foreigners by militias and security forces they commanded during the 6-month long political crisis. Incriminating videos have been played for the judges to watch, witnesses have been called in to testify while victims were equally allowed to voice out their frustrations by recounting the genesis of the tragedy and how it affected them apportioning blame.
Gbagbo remains in permanent detention pending the final determination of the celebrated case. He may well end up like Charles Taylor in prison. Ordinarily, however, he was a good man loved by his people (despite his current travails). His major problem was that he gave too much freedom and too much power to his trusted aides and officials to operate leading to malfeasance and abuse of power. Again he innocuously allowed his politically-dominant wife too much room to operate thereby getting confused and killing himself politically. His wife, Simone, is serving a 25-year jail term for subverting state institutions and holding state security hostage. Gbagbo has lost his aged mother while still holed up in the Hague and the funeral was done in his absence. He had sought a permission from the ICC to attend the burial but the request was denied for security reasons!
With ‘Ekitigate’, ‘Dasukigate’, ‘Diezanigate’ and other ‘gates’ waiting to be discovered and investigated in a grotesque mind-boggling case of presidential malfeasance in an era of concomitant permissive impunity trailing his presidency ex-President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan is doomed and bound for prison in a saner clime. But in Nigeria he is currently junketing around the world collecting one dubious ‘award’ after another and justifying his failure and haughtily singing his own praise. Playing a democratic hero in a continent of the Mugabes, Biyas and Jammehs could be enticing given the contrasting context. But there is a certain snag here and there! GEJ ought to have been comparing himself with the best domocratically the continent has to offer other than the second eleven or even third eleven. His presidential scorecard bears memorable elements of moral burden and failure of responsibility at the summit of power. Yet more striking is that he has never shown any sign of remorse or recognition of his betrayal of trust.
For millions of Nigerians at home and abroad, however, GEJ obviously did the right thing expected of every democrat worth his honour by conceding a stunning defeat suffered in a free and fair electoral contest; he is, therefore, not a hero (as his supporters want to make us believe) but a villain! A president who oversaw the mindless looting of the national resources cannot be seen as a ‘hero’ unless we should give heroism another definition or meaning in Nigeria.
