Naija Political Blog

Fear has been defeated in Tunisia and Egypt. Once paralyzed by the fear of challenging the dictators that held a strangle hold on their nations, they can now breathe a sigh of relief after decades of living under totalitarian regimes. Fear has been defeated was the phrase aptly coined by CNN newsman Anderson Cooper in describing the recent revolution in Egypt. Like their counterpart in Tunisia, the people of Egypt are relishing their new found freedom. They woke up on February 12, 2011 to a new dawn, a dawn without Hosni Mubarak, the former strong man who for Egyptians under the age 30 years old was the only president they had ever known. How can one man rule a country for thirty years? Is he the only one with a brain in that country? May be he was the best thing that ever happened to mankind since sliced bread. This phenomenon is often described as the “sit-tight” syndrome, a syndrome that has plagued the African continent for decades. It is tragic that the African continent has continued to lag behind other continents in all areas of human development due largely to the poverty of leadership brought upon by sit-tight leaders who generally lack the vision to transform their respective countries. Many will stay in office well into old age rather than groom new leadership and transfer power to a new generation of leaders. Take Hosri Mubarak; at the age of 82, he was not yet ready to relinquish power. He was rumored to be grooming his son Gamal to take over from him. Well, his luck ran out and like they say, the rest is now history. Take the case of former President Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo who ruled that country from 1967 until his sudden death in February 2005 after 38 years in office. The military attempted to impose his son Faure Gnassingbe on the people of Togo until they protested. He was then forced by regional powers including Nigeria to organize elections which were a charade. He invariably won that election and has been president of that country since. With a reputation for having countries ruled largely by dictators, these leaders should wake up and smell the coffee! This is 2011. They should open up their respective countries to economic and political reforms. They should institute multi-party democracy and abolish one-party rule. We now live in a global world where even people who live in rural areas can access CNN, BCC and other international news media. They can see images of the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East through various media that were inaccessible to them in the past. Their aspirations are not dissimilar to those of the people engaged in these uprisings. The days of relying on state owned media for information is over. With social media and other internet platforms now available to citizens everywhere, people can instantaneously access information about what’s going on around the world. Groom newly leadership! Vacate office in dignity! You can be rest assured that fear will be defeated in your respective countries some day and you will be kicked out of office in humiliation like Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The citizens of your countries may be paralyzed by fear today, but will not be paralyzed by fear forever. It is important to acknowledge that the military in both Tunisia and Egypt deserve a lot of credit for the success of the peaceful revolutions that occurred in those countries. At least they did not crush the demonstrators like the government of Libya is currently done. That is what happens when the military sees the opposition and citizens clamoring for their voices to be heard
as enemies of the state. The military and law enforcement are often used to squash popular dissent and the democratic aspirations of their peoples.

The following is a brief sampling of countries on the continent with sit-tight leaders:

Cameroun – Paul Biya has been president of this country since 1982. He is 77years old.
Libya – Muammar Gaddafi has been the leader of this country since 1969. He is 68 years old. With the level of determined opposition against him by a segment of the Libyan population, some analysts have speculated it’s a matter of time before he is deposed.
Zimbabwe – Robert Mugabe has been the leader of this country since 1980 when the country gained independence. He was forced to share power with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in 2008. Mugabe is 86 years old.
Chad – Idriss Deby has been president since 1990. He is 59 years old.
Sudan – Omar al-Bashir has been president since 1989. He is 66 years old.
Burkina Faso – Formerly known as Upper Volta, Blaise Compaore has been president since 1987. He is 60 years old.
Equatorial Guinea – Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has been this country’s leader since 1979. He is 68 years old.
Angola – Jose Eduardo dos Santos has been president since 1979. He is 68 years old.
Ivory Coast – Has been ruled by Laurent Gbagbo since October 2000. An epitome of the sit-tight syndrome, he was defeated in the November 2010 presidential elections by former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara but refused to relinquish power to Ouattara who is the internationally recognized winner of that election. The United Nations, the European Union, the African Union and ECOWAS have been engaged in mediation efforts to get Gbagbo to leave office but have so far been unsuccessful. Military action to remove Gbagbo from office has being considered by ECOWAS. There are fears that this country could plunge into another civil war if this current impasse continues. He is 65 years old.
Uganda – Yoweri Museveni has been president of this country since January 1986 exactly 25 years ago. He is 66 years old. He recently won reelection for another five-year term. Talk about a sit-tight leader.

What is so tragic is that in spite of being in office for decades, some of these leaders have not delivered for their peoples. Some of these countries have remained desperately poor and often score very low on the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI). It is time for these sit-tight leaders to loosen their grips on power and allow for new leadership and new ideas in order to move their respective countries into the 21st century. They will suffer the faith of Mubarak and Ben Ali some day if they do no learn from those experiences.