Barack Obama is brighter by far than a star and the spectacular manner in which he has shot his way from the outhouse to the White House constitutes an unprecedented landmark in World History.

He has made history as the first Blackman to become President of the United States. What makes the guy tick is a combination of character, charisma and composure. The prevailing socio-economic conditions in America have also been quite conducive.

In the early days of the presidential campaign, he once said, in response to remarks about his stature, "I may be thin, but, I am tough. I come from Chicago!" At that moment I thought he really was going to need all the audacity of a Chicago gangster to knife his way through the rough terrain of political campaigning.

That the son of an African (not African-American) father and an American mother had dared to consider running for the highest office in the United States required a driving force that is by far deeper and stronger than a mere belief in the American dream.

It is a driving force that is anchored in old time religion, profound compassion, and full-blooded empathy.

In his book published in 2006, "The Audacity of Hope" which can be considered as his political manifesto, Barack Obama explores the contours of his religious faith: "There are some things that I am absolutely sure about - the Golden Rule, the need to battle cruelty in all its forms, the value of love and charity, humility and grace."

He explains that "when I read the Bible, I do so with a belief that it is not a static text but the Living Word and that I must be continually open to new revelations..." While Obama keeps his mind open to new revelations, he says he is "not willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount."

In short, he believes that the Biblical injunction that "Love thy neighbour as thyself" and the lesson drawn from the parable of the good Samaritan form the core of the guiding principles for all humanity and do not lend themselves to any ambiguous interpretations.

Obama's bid for the American presidency did not emerge on the spur of some whimsical urge to undertake an adventure for the sake of adventure. His bid was rooted in a well calculated design to shatter the centuries-old myth of racism and racial stereotypes.

Obama's audacity is rooted in the ancient iconoclastic tradition of Prometheus, the anti-slavery advocacy of Graville Sharp, Clarkson, William Wilberforce - all whitemen who gave meaning to the religious assertion that all men are equal in the eyes of God.

They were encouraged in this by a little known black slave from Nigeria, Olaudah, Equiano aka Gustav Vassa, who bought his freedom and wrote an account in 1788 (the first novel by an African) of his experience of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

What Obama has done is to accomplish the centuries-old belief of the founding founders of the United States, the Thomas Jeffersons, Alexander Hamiltons, Benjamin Franklins, the architects of the American Constitution (the Federalist Papers) also unequivocally declared that "we hold this truth as self-evident that all men are created equal..."

What Obama has done is to accomplish the decades-old dream of the black civil rights leaders, the Martin Luther Kings, W.E.B. Du Bois; African leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela; Black Power activists like Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Malcom X who all swore by the principle of the equality of man.

Breaking away from the shackles of racism, man's most dangerous myth, has been the most difficult step Obama had to overcome to undertake his short, but daunting walk to the White House, the path to which had been partially cleared by an earlier pathfinder, the Reverend Jesse Jackson in 1984.

In his recollection of the funeral for Rosa Parks, the black seamstress who sparked off the civil rights movement by refusing to surrender her seat in a bus to a white boy in 1955, Obama had this to say: "The choir sang; the pastor said an opening prayer.

Former President Bill Clinton rose to speak and began to describe what it had been for him as a white southern boy to ride in segregated buses, how the civil rights movement that Rosa Parks helped spark had liberated him and his white neighbours from their own bigotry.

Clinton's ease with his black audience, their almost giddy affection for him, spoke of reconciliation, of forgiveness a partial mending of the past's grievous wounds."

The significance of the above event and the impact it had on Barack Obama who witnessed the event from the privileged position of a Senator cannot be overemphasised.

Obama's choice to enter politics was not accidental. It was deliberate.He first ran for political office at the age of 35, four years after graduating from the University of Harvard Law School where he headed the Harvard Law Review, a prestigious and authoritative publication which was an enviable passport to any lucrative white collar job in America.

On the contrary, Obama decided to engage in low-income civil rights activities among the underprivileged neighbourhoods of Chicago. When he decided to run for the legislature of Illinois State, he was faced with cynicism and scepticism from the grassroots communities who had lost faith in the failed promises of politicians, who saw politics as a dirty game and could not understand why a well accomplished academic like him should bother to go into politics.

Obama's response was that; "I understand the scepticism but that there was - and always had been - another tradition to politics, a tradition that stretched from the days of the country's founding, to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of the proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem but we can get something meaningful done."

The theory of what might be termed the least common political denominator seems to inform Obama's political ambition and he went about it, not by recruiting the Chicago mafia nor by resorting to the strategy of religious extremism. He has knifed his way to the White House not like Mac the knife, but by the sheer force of argument, crystal clear and articulated argument; the power of his tongue, his composure and infinite compassion.

Unlike in Cameroon where a self-seeking public servant was handed power on a silver platter 26 years ago by dint of a wishy-washy constitutional arrangement that absolved him of any allegiance to the citizenry he is supposed to be leading, Barack Obama has diligently worked every inch of the way to the White House by winning the admiration and genuine support of the electorate.

The overwhelming solidarity he enjoys from the whole of Africa and the rest of the world is based on the genuine feeling of pride and prestige his victory has instilled in the Blackman. It is not so much because Africa expects bigger handouts from the Obama administration. Far from it.

The most important impact expected of the Obama administration in Africa would be the isolation disapproval and castigation of perpetual, autocratic rulers and the political gangsterism that has hampered the progress of the African continent whose dictators were unfortunately comforted by the progress of the African continent whose dictators were unfortunately comforted by the indifference of outgoing president George W. Bush.