Africa: The Bail-Out Should Be NOW!
By Professor Joseph F. Ameh
Inculpatory leadership and sealed marriage to autocratism and nepotism as well as hatred for revolution anchored on the pillars of raw vision, accountability and transparency by majority of African leaders is the root cause of Africa’s systemic decay and despondency. Indeed, it is a major bane against the continent’s quest for rapid growth, steady development and sustainable progress.
It is the bulk of unrefined leaders that are causing internal tensions and crises in their countries. Their propensity for greed and power, and for stealing public wealth are the vicious venoms exterminating the seeds of peace, tolerance and harmonious co-existence of people from their diverse tribes. It is unfortunate to note that these low thinking leaders are working at cross purposes against the popular campaigns of the United Nations for the emergence of a better, safe and secured global society. It is sad to observe too that these categories of leaders are painting the image of our continent in black and dark colours while all progressive leaders and activists MUST rise in unison to condemn and stop these bare-faced iconoclasts.
Let me not bore you with many negative examples. Three set of evidence suffices: See what the former President of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, Mr. Umaro Mokhtar Sissoco Embalo did in his country whilst the results of the last Presidential polls were being collated. He sold democracy, a system of government, that lifted him on the platter of uncouth thirst for power and authority. It is abominable.
I mean that was a direct robbery of democracy. Embalo seeing the handwriting on the wall concerning his impending failure, silently invited the former Head of his Presidential Guards, General Horta Inta-Anaman to take over power, in the guise of a bloodless coup. To further paint the falsehood and give it some elements of truth, Embalo directed his stooge to announce the closure of all land borders and air space in Guinea-Bissau.
Embalo thought he had deceived the world, until a pan-Africanist and man of truth, a former Nigerian President, His Excellency, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR, the appointed Head of Election Observer Mission to Guinea-Bissau of the West African Elders’ Forum, African Union and ECOWAS, bursted the bubbles.
His words: ” lt is important for the world to know the truth. There is no coup in Guinea-Bissau, what happened is that when the sitting President, Embalo, who was also standing for re-election saw that the results trickling him was not in his favour, he invited his military aide to paint a false picture of coup and take over power.”
This dubious charade foisted Anaman on the people as he was sworn-in as the Transitional President of Guinea-Bissau on 27th November, 2025. Feelers show that the citizens are anxiously waiting for a gap of eighteen months to soak Embalo and Anaman in the shame of their lives by voting them out of power or through social disobedience for plotting coup against democracy.
Let’s move the train to Senegal. Former President Macky Sall of the Republic of Senegal, incriminated all politicians seeking to unseat him. He illegally hauled his stronger opponents into prison and caused hitches for their businesses or means of livelihood in order to economically frustrate them. Why this impunity?
When did the Presidency of the Senegalese people become the personal or inherited family property of Macky Sall? Angered by the charade, a grassroots politician and prominent opposition leader in the country, Hon. Ousmane Sonko campaigned against the excesses and poor performance of Sall.
Emboldened by his trust in the liberal, workable and implementable campaign manifesto of Mr. Diomaye Faye who was vying for the Senegalese top seat, Hon. Sonko backed the then, 44-year old Faye, a sound technocrat, “as his manifesto was capable of transforming Senegal to an economic hub of destination in Africa and promoting the sense of belonging of the people”, Sonko once declared.
Sall set all kinds of traps to pin down Faye and his unrepentant loyalist, Sonko, but, the popularity of the latter personalities in the hearts of the masses, instead, aided Faye’s landslide victory at the polls. Before then, both Hon. Ousmane Sonko and the legendary Diomaye Faye had been lawlessly arrested and incarcerated by Sall for posting serious threats to his re-election.
This act of impunity by Sall endeared the masses to Sonko and Faye. Public protests for their release increased and under the Amnesty Law pronounced by Sall, both Sonko and Faye were freed on 14th March, 2024.
The support-base of Faye-Sonko Solidarity Movement anchored underground by Hon. Ousmane Abdoulaye Barro blossomed by wide margins and became a mass movement and the personal national structure for Faye, which aided Faye to win the Senegalese Presidential election on 2nd April, 2024. He terminated the highhanded rule of the 4th President of Senegal, Sall, who ruled from 2nd April, 2012 to 2nd April, 2024.
President Diomaye Faye subsequently appointed Hon. Ousmane Sonko as the Prime Minister of Senegal, and Hon. Abdoulaye Barro as his Chief of Staff, and their people-oriented government is progressing smoothly. The resilient Senegalese people have shown how the citizens of Guinea-Bissau can oust Anaman and Embalo from shadow governance to prove that they are not the slaves they call them to be.
The incumbent President of Tanzania, Mrs. Samia Suluhu-Hassan won the opportunity to lead Tanzania due the sad passage of former Tanzanian legendary leader, Mr. John Magufuli. She served the former leader, Magufuli, as the Vice-President of Tanzania.
When it was time for a fresh Presidential race, Samia worked vehemently to kill democracy, the very instrumental process that first made her the Vice-President and altered her hitherto unknown status in the country. During the period of President John Magufuli’s reign, Samia was just a single lady seeking the hand of a better-half.
By the time of the last Presidential election, Samia had become power-drunk and ruthless in speech and actions. She started spotting dark glasses to complement her dictatorial schemes of crude wickedness. As campaign progresses, the iconoclastic elements in Samia had swollen strong and rough. She employed and deployed some inhuman strategies that could help her bottle all candidates of the other political parties eyeing the Office of the President of the Republic of Tanzania and those who were contesting against her. Samia’s spin doctors had wrongly advised her to incriminate all other flag-bearers for the race by hauling them into prison so that they are nowhere to be found during campaigns. She paid sycophants to whip the propaganda that the silent candidates (meanwhile, secretly held hostage by Samia) had squashed their interests to run for the epic office.
Using some manipulated officials of state security agencies and some rascal aides, she subjected Tanzanians to state capture and suffered the citizens through intimidation, suppression, human rights abuse, stagnation of their businesses and those of their identified supporters and admirers.
Owing to greed for power, Samia forgot that power is transient and worth careful execution. She also forgot that power is a mere product of vanity if not used to improve the living conditions of the people. She placed the entire system under tension, in a fashion that, it is either Samia wins re-election or the entity of Tanzania is perished.
Samia designed, promoted and cultivated hate for freedom of association and instrumented the framework for electoral dictation in order to crush franchise, which is the right to vote and be voted for. The global status of Tanzania has diminished badly as Samia sponsored psychological warfare so as to enslave the citizens and deprive them of their rights to speech, choice, association, and indeed, dignity and humanity. For her brutality, she won the people’s gift as “Tigress of the Forest.”
Have you seen how some untamed, uncultured and uncivilised leaders have denigrated and are destroying Africa while damaging its global reputation and respect?
I share the patriotic zeal, ideas and solutions to the discourses on Africa’s burning issues as analysed by prolific academics, Professor Patrick L.O. Mulumba of Kenya and Professor Barika D. Saro-Laka of Nigeria that “Africa needs bail-out now and that mass-oriented revolution should take place now in order to save our present and future generations. These vessels of knowledge and honour drum the slogan that evil thrives when good citizens do nothing.
Let’s not help bigots and tyrants serving as present or former leaders in blackmailing Africa as a backward, primitive or cursed territory. It is none of these denigrated status. Africa is decaying due to money politics, lack of leadership visions and because some leaders have stolen it dry. To reduce the evil of money politics, all Parliaments in Africa should ensure provision for Independent Candidates in the electoral process. See how William Shakespeare raised alarm about an hopeless state of leadership. “What a terrible era in which idiots govern the blind.”
Does anyone still need an oracle service to know that William Shakespeare was weeping for the situation of inept leadership in Africa? We have to rise NOW; our actions would prove that, even though, some idiots are ruling us, we are NOT BLIND!
Africa is the mother of all other six continents, but the likes of Umaro Embalo, Macky Sall, Samia Suluhu-Hassan, and other sit-tight leaders such as Yoweri Museveni of Uganda – 1986 to date; Paul Kagame of Rwanda – since 2000 to date ; Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea – 3rd August, 1979 to date; Paul Biya of Cameroon – 1982 to date; Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo – 1979 to date; Isaias Afwerki of the Republic of Eritrea – 1993 to date, have done damage to leadership in our continent. Some of these leaders have portrayed Africa in bad light and in the eyes of global leaders of conscience.
The case of Biya should shock humanity as he stayed in office as allegedly ‘Vegetable President’ for almost sixteen years whilst ruling Cameroon from an hospital in Switzerland. He recently contested a flawed election and won for the 8th term. Pundits say his only major achievement may be to die in office.
The worst and peculiar thing with these anti-democrats and sit-tight Presidents is that, outside Museveni and Kagame, others have left their countries heavily impoverished and their citizens in bitter and divided state. Too bad! What are these ignoble bunch of so-called leaders looking for? Death? Well, time will tell.
Must we, as members of the academics; members and activists of the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs); technocrats of the Organised Private Sector (OPS); respected traditional rulers/custodians of the people’s culture and customs; vibrant members of the Fourth Estate of the Realm; and the titans of faith/religious leaders, sit idle and watch less than 0.1% of our population destroy what Africa stands for? Must we mortgage Africa and perish the sacrifices of our founding fathers to satisfy the insatiable greed of these few elements? NO, we have to rise against them NOW! It is in the light of this revolution that l commend the current leadership of the African Union for slamming heavy sanctions on Tanzania until a thorn in the people’s fresh and lives, Mrs. Samia Suluhu-Hassan leaves office in shame.
She has shattered the opportunity to fly the women’s agenda in Tanzania. Having defecated on the altar of democratic governance and ambushed the Tanzanian Parliament, how would a woman ever emerge as President of Tanzania again, unless as a ‘President by Error’ as with her case?
Professor Ameh is a lecturer at the British American Open University of California, USA, and a democracy activist.