Posted: October 12, 2010 - 14:02
Posted by siteadmin - Sahara Reporters
By Akin Goldsmith

Way back in the 1980s as Mobutu Sese Seko the maximum ruler of Zaire held his vast country in an iron clad, Washington rolled out the red carpet for the old fox anytime he was in town.

Femi my friend, now a grey-bearded professor of political science, was sure that beyond the red carpet and the lavish bash often thrown for the African Big Man, Uncle Sam must be having a big ball behind his back to snigger at his folly. My friend was sure also that the guardians of Uncle Sam’s portals had a code for the ilk of Mobutu and the continent they traded for a bottle of rum; a code only known to the highest echelon in the White House.

I didn’t bother to ask why the ilk of Mobutu and the continent they plundered deserved such elaborate discretion from their principals. But then I have always thought my friend was right. A cold war was raging out there in the 1980s and here was another willing potentate from Africa so ready to trade under klieg lights, why would anyone distract him from trading in peace? Think of it, it would be the height of indiscretion to tell Mobutu Sese Seko he was actually a cad if you were an American President. Back then it didn’t hurt if you had an African Big Man on your side ready to pitch against his own kind if you were a Ronald Reagan fighting Andrei Gromyko or Margaret Thatcher preaching Constructive Engagement and pitching for Botha and Apartheid in South Africa.

I later watched a documentary on the Mobutu long after he eventually succumbed to Laurent Kabila and prostrate cancer. He caught a pitiable sight as held onto the shards of his crumbling regime. Mobutu easily came across in the footages like an emperor without an empire as he pensively paced the lawns of his lavish retreat in Gbadolite. Though devoid of the familiar swaggers in the footages, his trademark loomed large in the neck-muffler, walking-stick and all. The megalomania streak was also still apparent as he waxed audacious on messianic roles, ungrateful subject, and critics that knew nothing about the pains of governing a complex country like Zaire.

I came out of that documentary feeling sorry for Lumumba’s Congo the country Mobutu had serially raped, maimed and rechristened. But I also felt sorry for the greying man at the verge of losing his most favourite toy; the country handed him by the West while he was still scarcely an adolescent. Mobutu deliriously confused rape with favour and the despoliation of his country with an act of great kindness.

I felt a similar pity for our own IBB as I watched him rationalizing the monumental ruin wrought by his governance on Nigeria and the annulment of June 12 1993 elections. Watching the man talk about his so-called achievements you got the vibe that he was totally out of tune with the current realities. As the days go by in this new adventure for power Babangida sounds more like Marshall Mobutu and like one that has been living in a sound-proof silo since he cowardly stepped aside in 1993.

As strangely as Mobutu had followers and hangers on until he died miserably; so IBB too has his own string of strange fellows, depraved tribal lords and crumb pickers.
Nigeria deserves better.

I like this part the best. The man simply doesn't know his services are worthless to Nigeria.

IBB is a huge emperor WITHOUT any clothes on, dancing and prancing to palongo through the streets of Minna, Abuja, etc oblivious of his sorry record and state of being.

I felt a similar pity for our own IBB as I watched him rationalizing the monumental ruin wrought by his governance on Nigeria and the annulment of June 12 1993 elections. Watching the man talk about his so-called achievements you got the vibe that he was totally out of tune with the current realities. As the days go by in this new adventure for power Babangida sounds more like Marshall Mobutu and like one that has been living in a sound-proof silo since he cowardly stepped aside in 1993.