Africans are pathologically backward, an undeniable fact which may be provocative. A major fall-out of this group debility is that we have no shame, especially at leadership level.

Only this sociological diagnosis can explain the rush into the bandwagon of acclaiming the election of Barrack Obama as the next president of the United States.
African leaders either as president, ex-president or state governors (in Nigeria) have been quickest and loudest in acclaiming Obama’s victory. The attraction here, should be less the first Afro-American to be elected president than the enviable political/electoral system which produced President Obama.
In fact, in the name of supporting Obama, did we not try to defraud the country of scores of millions of naira but for the disclaimer by the American embassy that foreign contributions are not allowed by their country’s electoral system?

African authoritarians and discredited election riggers commandeered the show in a futile attempt at political/diplomatic self-rehabilitation. Very annoyingly, they claimed to welcome the change in America. Who and who welcomed the change and which and what was that change they were embracing?
The very change these shameless fellows never allowed throughout the African continent for the past fifty years? Put succinctly, Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria) Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe) and President Kibaki (Kenya) would have unleashed violence on the person and campaign machinery of any budding Obama in their respective countries.

At least, the Kenya political leadership have maintained a guarded silence, quite aware of its record of electoral atrocities which crushed any hope or effort at change in that country.
In contrast, Nigeria’s Obasanjo, some state governors and Zimbabwe’s Mugabe have been (not so) amusing in their hypocrisy. Even if a dented image is to be repaired, must that betray complex and desperation? Lecturing Obama on what to do with the change he (Obama) effected in United States? And then releasing a picture taken with Obama? The message? The first African leader to be photographed with Obama and implied revelation of being very close to the new American president-elect.

Our gangsters, well entrenched against change comprise not only politicians. Their major collaborators are the political parties and security agencies, whether the army, police and secret police. Virtually, all election petitions against the rigged 2007 polls, documented the bias of security agencies. The then Inspector-General of Police, Sunday Ehindero, openly incited his officers to shoot to kill.
And in acclaiming the change in America, it is not as if African leaders have repented. In Nigeria for example, the embrace of Obama’s election came in the wake of their PDP’s arrogance/threat to rule for 60 years as publicly stated by Vincent Ogbulafor (national chairman) and later endorsed by President Umar Yar’Adua, whom his election is still being disputed in law courts.

Here is this joke. It took the United States over 200 years to effect the political change. What therefore is the big deal if PDP is to rule for the next 60 years? That is their mentality, and clearly why they are collecting ONLY 50 billion naira from public donations to erect a new headquarters for their party in Abuja.
What they pretend not to know is that throughout the over 250 years, America had always effected change from one ruling political party to another without rigging the elections.

Nigerian state governors have also tried to divert public attention from their misrule in their respective states. Just welcome Barrack Obama’s electoral victory and you steal a breather. Meanwhile, throughout the 36 states in the country, depending on which political party is in power, all elections: Local councils, state houses of assembly, House of Representatives and the Senate, are won by and for the state governors choice as candidates. Does the Republican or Democratic party do that in United States?

With most of Nigeria’s state governors, Obama could not have held hundreds of meeting to put his case across for eligibility to contest the elections. Security concern would have been cited to disallow or disband such meetings with armed secret police, which is the source of the bogus security reports in the first place.
With Senator Osunbor as governor, their PDP would have won elections to all local government councils in Edo State. Under the new legitimate governor Adams Oshiomhole, how many of such councils will be controlled by the PDP and Action Congress?
Away from Nigeria, even Mugabe of Zimbabwe (has) joined the Obama bandwagon. In Mugabe’s case, the established pattern is to draw away world attention from his (Mugabe’s) brutal suppression of political opponents and fraudulently (for political purposes) accuse his victims of being agents of foreign powers, a concoction which ironically is swallowed by freedom-loving supposed Nigerian intellectuals.

Here was a man ( Mugabe) who held election’s more than six months ago and he is still to accept the people’s verdicts. For over 35 days, he blocked release of the results which clearly decided for a change. Mugabe had been in power for 28 years.
Caught in a tight corner, the Zambian leader declared the election inconclusive and insisted on a second round. Meanwhile, with his security forces, he unleashed murder, arson, starvation, violence and detention without trial on his political opponents throughout Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwean security personnel led by the chief of army staff openly declared that any government not led by Mugabe would not be supported by the Zimbabwean armed forces.

Rather strangely, South Africa’s former leader Thabo Mbeki never saw anything wrong or questionable as he, acting out the insult of Britain and United States came up with the idea of power-sharing, first planted in Kenya earlier in the year.
Therefore, where is the moral for Mugabe, to be acclaiming Barrack Obama’s election as a change in American politics? If George Bush were in Mugabe’s shoes, would the verdict of American electorate have been upheld?
Both in Kenya and Zimbabwe, opposition leaders spoilt everything (as we say in Nigeria) by trading the people’s interests for their own (opposition leaders’) individual political largesse.

Like his dishonourable counterpart in Kenya, Mugabe of Zimbabwe has revenged on the terms of their so-called power sharing agreement with the opposition, which actually won the elections.
African hypocrisy is therefore apparent. Where and what is the change being hailed? Africa, rather than America needs political change.
Neither Britain and America entirely blameless. The price in blood might have been too expensive. So did United States and Britain pay with their blood. Instead of offering Africa the poison of power-sharing, Africa in Kenya and Zimbabwe should have been left alone to teach their leadership criminals the lesson passed on such names in history.

As a contempt for Africa, George Bush preserved American tradition and image by upholding the verdict of the electorate. Why then did the same Bush (and Britain’s Gordon Brown) undermine development of democracy in Africa with the political fraud dignified as power-sharing?
For ordinary Africans, it is a serious wound for beneficiaries of Bush’s stalling of democracy to now take the stage hailing change in another continent.
We should appreciate the agony of Nigerian editors in deciding to publish and expose the shamelessness/hypocrisy of African leaders acclaiming change in America. The alternative would have been to shred such comments. But then, history would have been cheated.