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CHRIS EDACHE AGBITI, ESQ.*
 Published
December 2nd, 2008
November 4th, 2008 will undoubtedly
go down in world history as epoch making. It was a day that
signposted the final internment of the age long divisive
philosophy that held one race superior to another (apology
to the Legend, Bob Marley); it was a day the entire world
came together, irrespective of creed and religion, to recite
Dunc Dimitis (however, not with long faces) for the monster
of racial discrimination that had for long defined the
political climate of America but now chased away; it was the
day Barack Hussein Obama won with landslide, the U.S
Presidential election.
The U.S. Presidential Election has come and gone but the
echoes of it continue to reverberate in every nook and
cranny of Africa especially in Kenya where Obama traces his
patrilineal descent from. The euphoria of Obama’s victory
will for long continue its ripples in the Negroid race of
Africa.
However, the point is worth making that for the Americans,
the euphoria of joy sweeping through their entire nation is
understandable: that at last, someone who has a clear vision
and a good grasp of the issues that need to be addressed to
restore U.S. lost glory, consequent upon the lack-lustre
performance of the out-going President, was not held back
from realizing that ambition by prejudices. But for
Africans, what other reason beside the sentimental
consideration that a fellow brother African now becomes
President of U.S., can we adduce to bedrocks our own
euphoria on the election of Obama? If one may ask, what
business do African countries together with their stinking
leaders have in rejoicing over Obama’s victory at the U.S.
poll when we know in our hearts of hearts that we will never
allow the kind of system that has produced Obama in U.S.
election to be replicated in our own land? Or are we under a
delusion that with Obama’s presidency African countries
shall wake up one morning, like the fabled Alice in
wonderland and find all the good things of life in
sufficiency for all as obtain in the western world, even
while our leaders and people continue in their culture of
greed, corruption, ethnic hostilities and all such practices
antithetical to the dictate of modern civilization?
It bears repeating to state here that it borders on crass
hypocrisy for African countries such as Zambia, Ivory Coast,
Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria et al, to rejoice over
Obama’s victory even when they are all still involved in
various acts of prejudices, this time around, not even
against a coloured person but against their own black
brothers. We have witnessed instances as in Zambia where the
first post independent Kenneth Kaunda had his citizenship
withdrawn on the allegation that his ancestry is somewhere
in another African country! Similar acts have played out in
Ivory Coast and Nigeria (Shugaba’s case). The Xenophobic
hostilities in South Africa and Zimbabwe are all still fresh
in our memories.
Africans must be reminded not to expect too much from the
presidency of Obama any more than they expected from the
presidency of Bill Clinton. Our only obvious claim to Obama
is his blood ties to his Kenyan father. But we must call to
memory that for all the time the elder Obama lived, his
conduct in juxtaposition to what Obama Jr. is and stands for
today shows in very lucid details those sad commentaries of
a pure bred African man The elder Obama came to America and
deceitfully led Obama’s mother into marriage even while he
was already married to another Kenya woman back home. He was
to later abandon Obama’s mother and returned to Kenya,
leaving young Obama in the care of his maternal grand
parents in American. It was recorded that he died
drunk-driving. If Obama’s father were to be alive, one
imagines that he too may be rejoicing just like the other
African leaders are hypocritically doing.
We must stop deceiving ourselves. It is high time we told
ourselves a few home truths. What ever Obama is today or
stands for, he owes it all to the American society. If he
were to be brought up in Kenya, his fatherland, with all his
seeming immeasurable grace of intelligence, he would have
ended up, at best, as a very brilliant but frustrated
university don holed up somewhere in one of our glorified
secondary schools, called university, like many other
frustrated 'Obamas' in our African society today . The
American society that shaped Obama to become what he is to
day places a higher premium of kinship of ideas over and
above that of blood. That explains the acceptance of Oboma’s
candidature across racial divides.
If Obama were not of the rare breed of mankind (who
recreates themselves independent of genetic force) he would
not even be identifying his African root. It is only for
Obama’s high sense of humility and decency that he does so
and I commend him for it.
Africans must be reminded that as we cheer Obama’s victory,
we must cast away that extra baggage of hypocrisy and begin
to reflect on the need for us to home-grow a system similar
to what obtains in the U.S. that has made possible the Obama
phenomenon. The world today is ruled by ideas. It is not
enough for us bank on blood kinship to Obama and think that
that alone will be the open sesame to our El Dorado. In
today’s modern world, kinship of ideas, as aforesaid, rather
than of blood or ethnicity is one of the driving force of
attraction. In doing so, we must remind ourselves that until
we jettison that negative attitude that encourages
subjugation of fellow man rather than our environment which
is what the white man has effectively achieved, we shall
continue in our collective grope.
*CHRIS EDACHE AGBITI, ESQ. IS A PORT-HARCOURT BASED ATTORNEY
IN THE FIRM OF THE AMAZING GRACE PARTNERS, No 320, (IZZI
CORPORATE SUIT), ABA ROAD, PORT-HARCOURT
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