Daily Independent (Lagos)
Sunny Igboanugo
10 October 2008
The peculiar circumstances of the African continent that has put it at the lowest rung of developmental ladder despite its enormous human and material resources, again, came into focus on Thursday.
Former Nigerian military Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, and Kenyan Prime Minister, Raila Odinga blamed failed leadership for the continent's parlous situation.
Nigerian-born literary icon and world-renowned author of Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe, however, could not be heard clearly due to a technical problem that abridged his recorded presentation, as he could not make it physically to the event.
Nonetheless, it was a quintessential Achebe that challenged the audience at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), with his keynote address titled, "What Nigeria Means To Me."
Odinga, was no less impressive in his speech.
These were the main features of Thursday's lecture to mark the 25th anniversary of The Guardian newspaper.
In his paper entitled "Democracy and the Challenges of Good Governance in Africa", Odinga, on whose behalf Kenyans trooped to the streets to protest the outcome of the 2007 presidential election, which he was believed to have won, and which led to the death of more than 1,500 people and an eventual truce that gave him his current position, told his audience that the problems of Africa could be traced to the ideas espoused by its founding fathers and how they handled governance after independence.
Arguing that the notion that democracy was alien to Africa was not factual, he said the phenomenon had a strong root in the continent. He said the problem lies in the attempt "to make a uniform to suit all the 53 countries in Africa."
Rather than doing that, Odinga said African democracy must be allowed to develop through the cultures and circumstances of individual countries, even while recognising the universal intrinsic values of democracy, which is the same all over the world.
Achebe, who described Nigeria as gifted, enormously talented, but incredibly wayward, however, still saw hope in the future.
"In 1960, a British housewife gave us our national anthem as parting gift and she called Nigeria a sovereign motherland. The current anthem, which changed that first one, was put together by a committee of Nigerian intellectuals and in my view, that one is worse than the first. This second one was given a father-image. Hence mother-image in the first one and father-image in the second. But it has occurred to me that Nigeria is neither my father nor my mother, Nigeria is a child. Nigeria needs help. We are the parents of Nigeria," he said.
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