Dave,
May God continue to bless and guide you.

BMK

>From: Dave Manneh <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: A Fresh Start
>Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 09:03:47 +0000
>
>************************************************************************
>Culled from The Free Africa Foundation
>http://www.freeafrica.org/elites5.html
>
>Regards
>Manneh
>**************************************************************************
>
>
>NO TEARS FOR AFRICA’S INTELLECTUALS
>
>An FAF Publication in New African (October 1996).
>
>----------------------------------------------------
>
>The most painful and treacherous aspect of Africa's collapse was the wilful
>and
>active collaboration by Africa's own intellectuals, many of whom were
>highly "educated" with Ph. D.s, and who should have known better. Yet a
>multitude of them have prostituted themselves, selling off their principles
>and
>integrity to partake of the plunder, misrule and repression of the African
>people. In fact, according to Colonel. Yohanna A. Madaki (rtd), when
>General
>Gowon drew up plans to return Nigeria to civil rule in 1970, "academicians
>began to present well researched papers pointing to the fact that military
>rule
>was the better preferred since the civilians had not learned any lessons
>sufficient enough to be entrusted with the governance of the country" (Post
>Express, 12 November 1998, 5).
>
>The Prostitutes
>
>One such prostitute was Kokou Koffigoh who joined President Gnassingbe
>Eyadema
>as Togo's Prime Minister in 1992. New African (January 1993) wrote that
>"the
>opposition thinks Koffigoh has sold out the gains of the Togo National
>Conference by not carrying out its decisions and by allowing President
>Eyadema
>to return to power" (19).
>
>Another was Gwanda Chakuamba of Malawi, who was appointed the chairman of
>the "presidential council" by former Life-President Hastings Banda in 1993.
>As
>The Economist (20 November 1993) reported: "Chakuamba was an old Malawi
>Congress Party (MCP) and ex-minister, who was jailed in 1980 for sedition
>and
>released in July 1993. He then flirted briefly with the opposition United
>Democratic Front, but, while Dr. Banda was in hospital, suddenly emerged as
>secretary-general of ruling party and acting head of state" (47).
>Chakaumba's
>move was roundly denounced "as a betrayal to the opposition, who had
>tirelessly
>campaigned for his release following local and international pressure on
>the
>MCP government's poor human rights record. "Reliable sources reported that
>whilst he was in prison, Chakuamba was subjected to immersion in water and
>was
>chained hand-and-foot for months on end" (African Business, December 1993,
>29).
>How could an educated man, whose basic human rights were viciously violated
>in
>detention, suddenly decide to join his oppressor?
>
>When Captain Yahya Jammeh overthrew the democratically elected government
>of
>Sir Dawda Jawara on July 24, 1994, the only minister from the Jawara
>administration enticed to serve the military regime was the finance
>minister,
>Bakary Darbo, a very well respected economist -- even in international
>circles.
>He was instrumental in getting the World Bank to resume aid to The Gambia.
>On
>10 October 1994, he was fired by the military junta: He was no longer
>useful to
>them. Then on 15 November, he was accused of complicity in the 11 November
>abortive coup attempt. He fled to neighboring Senegal with his family.
>
>Next to assume the finance ministry portfolio was Ousman Koro Ceesay. When
>he
>became no longer useful to the military junta, "they smashed his head with
>a
>baseball bat," said Captain Ebou Jallow, the number-2 man in the ruling
>council
>who defected to the United States on 15 October (The Washington Times, 20
>October 1995, A15).
>
>Time and time again, despite repeated warnings, highly "educated" African
>intellectuals throw caution and common sense to the winds and fiercely
>jostle
>one another for the chance to hop into bed with military brutes. The allure
>of
>a luxury car, a diplomatic or ministerial post and a government mansion
>often
>proves too irresistible. Nigeria's Senator Arthur Nzeribe once declared
>that
>General Babangida was good enough to rule Nigeria. When pressed, he
>confessed: "I was promised prime ministerial appointment. There is no
>living
>politician as hungry for power as I was who would not be seduced in the
>manner
>I was to invest in the ABN, with the possibility and promise of being
>Executive
>Prime Minister to a military president" (The Guardian, 13 November 1998,
>3).
>
>So hordes of politicians, lecturers, professionals, lawyers, and doctors
>sell
>themselves off into prostitution and voluntary bondage to serve the
>dictates of
>military vagabonds with half their intelligence. And time and time again,
>after
>being raped, abused, and defiled, they are tossed out like rubbish --- or
>worse. Yet more intellectual prostitutes stampede to take their places.
>
>African countries that have imploded in recent years were all ruined by the
>military: Algeria, Burundi, Ethiopia, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone,
>Somalia,
>Sudan, Uganda, and Zaire, among others. In country after country in Africa,
>where military rule was entrenched, educational institutions (of the
>tertiary
>level - universities, and colleges) have all decayed --- starved of funds
>by
>the military. Although the official excuse is always lack of funds, the
>military predators always find the money to purchase shiny new pieces of
>bazookas for their thugs. But the real reason? "It is not in the best
>interest
>of these military governments to educate their people," says Wale Deyemi, a
>doctoral student at the University of Lagos. "They do not want people to be
>able to challenge them" (The Washington Post, 6 October 1995, A30).
>
>In Nigeria, the sciences have been hardest hit. Science teachers have been
>vanishing with such alarming frequency that Professor Peter Okebukola, the
>president of the National Science Teachers Association of Nigeria, lamented
>at
>the association's thirty-sixth annual conference at Maiduguri that "good
>science teachers are increasingly becoming an endangered species" (African
>News
>Weekly, 13 October 1995, 17).
>
>In spite of all this evidence, some African intellectuals still
>vociferously
>defend military regimes while their own institutions --- the very places
>where
>they teach or obtained their education --- deteriorate right under their
>very
>noses. One would have thought that these professors and intellectuals would
>protect their own institutions, just as the soldiers jealously protect
>their
>barracks and keep them in top shape. But no! For small change, the
>intellectuals have been willing to help and supervise the destruction of
>their
>very own university system.
>
>Another expendable intellectual prostitute was Abass Bundu of Sierra Leone
>---
>the former secretary-general of ECOWAS --- though his fate was less
>horrible.
>When he was appointed by the 29-year-old illiterate Captain Valentine
>Strasser
>to be Sierra Leone's foreign minister in early 1995, he left home to grab
>the
>post in a cloud of dust. In August 1995 he was tossed into a garbage bin in
>a
>radio announcement. He claimed in a Voice of America radio interview that
>"he
>never applied to join the junta" (African News Weekly, 8 September 1995,
>12).
>
>"We just discovered that he's an opportunist and one cannot trust such
>people.
>So we kicked him out," said spokesman of the Strasser's National
>Provisional
>Ruling Council. "When we appointed Abass Bundu through a radio
>announcement, he
>didn't complain but when we fired him though another radio announcement, he
>wants to make noise" he added (The African Observer, 8-21 August 1995, 5).
>
>Another case was that of Sierra Leone's fearless human rights lawyer,
>Sulaiman
>Banja Tejan-Sie. He was a vociferous critic of the ruling NPRC over human
>rights abuses and was reported to have a personal dislike for the military.
>He
>was hailed on student campuses as a young radical barrister and was invited
>to
>student conventions, giving lectures on human rights and negative
>consequences
>of military rule. On several occasions he called for a national conference
>to
>prepare the way for civilian rule. Then suddenly in April 1995 he joined
>Sierra
>Leone's military-led government as secretary of state in the Department of
>Youth, Sport and Social Mobilization. His detractors never forgave him.
>
>Then there was Paul Kamara of Sierra Leone --- a fearless crusader for
>human
>rights and ardent advocate of democracy. He published and edited the widely
>respected For Di People, whose circulation exceeded 30,000 copies a week.
>In
>January 1996, he joined the military government of Brigadier-General Maada
>Bio -
>-- a decision that by his own admission, "disappointed many people" (New
>African, May 1996, 14). On election night, Feberuary 26, five men dressed
>in
>military fatigues with guns waited for him at his newspaper offices. When
>he
>left his office and got into his official four-wheel-drive car, the
>soldiers
>chased him and opened fire. "We've got the bastard at last," one of them
>shouted. But luckily, the "bastard" escaped death and was flown to London
>for
>treatment. His troubles did not end there. On August 20, 1999, he was
>assaulted
>by three Revolutionary United Front (RUF) commanders following an article
>alleging laziness and corruption by RUF commanders based in Freetown. “An
>ECOMOG officer declined to intervene while the attack took place” (Index on
>Censorship, Nov/Dec 1999; p.249).
>
>In Burkina Faso, Clement Oumarou Ouedraogo was not so lucky. He was the
>number-
>two man in the barbarous military dictatorship of Blaise Compaore. He later
>resigned and launched his own Burkina Labor Party. On 9 December 1992, he
>was
>killed "when unidentified attackers threw a grenade into his car as he was
>returning from a meeting of the opposition Coalition of Democratic Forces"
>(West Africa, 16-22 December 1991, 2116).
>
>In neighboring Niger, when Lieutenant-Colonel Ibrahim Barre Mainassara
>seized
>power in the January 1996 coup, overthrowing the civilian regime of
>President
>Mahamane Ousmane, the first civilian to join the new military regime as
>prime
>minister was Boukary Adji, who was deputy governor at the Central Bank of
>West
>African States in Dakar (The Washington Times, 1 Feberuary 1996, A14). Do
>Africa's intellectuals learn?
>
>In Nigeria, Baba Gana Kingibe, a career diplomat, was the vice-presidential
>candidate of Moshood K. O. Abiola in the 12 June 1993 presidential
>elections .
>Abiola won the election fair and square, but the result was annulled by the
>military government of Geneneral Ibrahim Babangida. Baba Kingibe then
>accepted
>the post of foreign minister from that same military regime. Nor did he
>raise a
>whiff of protest or resign when his running mate, Abiola, was thrown into
>jail.
>Neither did Chief Tony Anenih, the chairman of the defunct Social
>Democratic
>Party, on whose ticket Abiola contested the 12 June election. In fact,
>Chief
>Anenih was part of a five-man delegation, sent by General Abacha to the
>United
>States in October 1995 to "educate and seek the support of Nigerians about
>the
>transition program." At an 22 October 1995 forum organized by the Schiller
>Institute in Washington, "Chief Anenih and Colonel (rtd) Emeka O. Ojukwu
>took
>turns ripping apart the reputation of Abiola. Anenih took pains to
>discredit
>Chief Abiola, whom he said was being presented by the Western media as the
>victimized President-elect. Some of the Nigerians in the audience denounced
>the
>delegation as `paid stooges' of Abacha" (African News Weekly, 3 November
>1995,
>3).
>
>More pathetic was the case of Alex Ibru, the publisher of The Guardian
>Group of
>newspapers in Lagos who became the internal affairs minister. On 14 August
>1994, his own newspaper was raided and shut down by the same military
>government under which he was serving. He did not protest or resign. After
>six
>months as interior minister, he too was tossed aside. In October 1995, his
>two
>newspapers, shut down by the military government for more than a year, were
>allowed to reopen after Ibru apologized to the authorities for any
>offensive
>reports they may have carried. Then on 2 February 1996, unidentified gunmen
>in
>a deep-blue Peugeot 504 trailed him and sprayed his car with machine-gun
>fire.
>The editor-in-chief, Femi Kusa, said that the car was bullet-ridden and
>Ibru
>was injured. He too was flown to Britain for treatment.
>
>After the annulment of Nigeria's 12 June elections, General Babangida was
>eased
>aside by the military top brass and Ernest Shonekan became the 89-day
>interim
>civilian president until he too was removed by the military despot, General
>Sani Abacha. On 19 September, Shonekan accompanied Nigeria's foreign
>minister,
>Tom Ikimi, to London to deliver a "confidential message" to British Prime
>Minister John Major. Nigeria's military junta told Westminster that it
>would
>pardon the 40 convicted coup plotters if British would help with the
>rescheduling Nigeria's $35 billion debt, and support its transition program
>to
>democratic rule, its bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council,
>and
>its attempt to gain U.S. recognition of its effort to fight drug
>trafficking.
>
>First of all, how could Ernest Shonekan act as an emissary for the same
>barbarous military regime that overthrew him? Not only that, he accepted an
>appointment from Abacha to a committee of experts to plan for "Vision
>2010."
>According to African News Weekly (7-13 October 1996), "Vision 2010 will
>focus
>on Nigeria's growth into the next century. Details of the plan are to be
>set
>out by a non-political committee which will sit for between 9 and 12
>months,
>targeting gross domestic product, inflation, agriculture,
>industrialization,
>literacy, health and employment" (2).
>
>Second, who thought that 35 years after "independence" from British
>colonial
>rule, Nigeria's government would be holding its own citizens as hostages,
>demanding ransom from the former colonial power? It did not occur to any of
>the "educated" emissaries that their mission sank the concept of
>"independence
>from colonial rule" to new depths of depravity. Mercifully, the British
>refused
>to capitulate to these terroristic demands.
>
>Dr. Tom Ikimi was the activist, who, in 1989, formed the Liberal Convention
>party to campaign for democracy in Nigeria. In June 1989 he launched a
>branch
>in the United Kingdom, where he made glorious speeches about participatory
>democracy and denouncing military regimes. In 1994 he became Nigeria's
>Foreign
>minister under the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. He even
>appeared on The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, on 3 August 1995, and strenuously
>defended Nigerian military government's record on democratization, calling
>General Abacha "humane."
>
>Then there was the case of Phillips David Sesay, with various academic
>degrees
>including a doctorate in philosophy. He was the head of Sierra Leone's
>chancery
>in Washington. For three years, he was not paid; yet he remained at the
>post.
>In 1996, he left his wife and son in Washington and returned to Sierra
>Leone in
>a hurry to accept promotion as Acting Chief Protocol at the Ministry of
>Foreign
>Affairs by the country's ruling military regime. That the former protocol
>at
>the ministry had worked with the junta for only 4 days and had fled the
>country
>did not bother Sesay, who took that post. Following a coup on 23 May 1997,
>Sesay fled the country. "When his plane landed in New York on 20 December
>1997,
>Sesay's diplomatic passport with a multiple-entry permit to the U.S. was
>found
>to be insufficient. His visa was canceled at the behest of the State
>Department
>and he was placed in detention by the Immigration and Naturalization
>Service"
>(The Washington Post, 2 January 1998, A30).
>
>Ghanaians would point to a swarm of intellectual prostitutes who sold out
>to
>join the military regime of Fte./Lte. Jerry Rawlings: Dr. Kwesi Botchwey,
>the
>former minister of finance; Totobi Kwakye, minister of communication, who
>as a
>student leader battled the former military head of state, Col. I.K.
>Acheampong;
>Dr. Tony Aidoo, a presidential adviser; Dr. Vincent Assisseh, a press
>secretary; and Kow Arkaah, the Vice-President who was beaten up by
>President
>Rawlings in December 1995.
>
>Vile opportunism, unflappable sycophancy, and trenchant collaboration on
>the
>part of Africa's intellectuals allowed tyranny to become entrenched in
>Africa.
>Doe, Mengistu, Mobutu, and other military dictators legitimized and
>perpetuated
>their rule by buying off and co-opting Africa's academics for a pittance.
>And
>when they fall out of favor, they are beaten up, tossed aside or worse. And
>yet
>more offer themselves up. The moon shines so brightly but it is still dark
>in
>some places.
>
>***************
>
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