THIS MY CRITICAL PEN

Obama now dinning with dictators? 
 

By Sylvanus Ezieh Acha’ana

One of the most piercing statements made by President Obama when he took over the reigns of power in the United States of America was his slur on leaders who choose to cling unto power even against the wishes of the people they govern.

While Africans looked up to him with hope, President Obama shockingly entered his shell. He diverted his attention to crisis in the Middle East; thereby inadvertently declaring a blackout on his African continent of origin.

Sons and daughters of Africa who had been looking up to the black American president as a path to bailment from dictatorial regimes grounded their milk teeth in vane to remind Obama of the promise he made during his campaign to the White House and after his inauguration as US president.

Few years to the end of his reign, the US president has not only invited to Washington DC the very dictators he frowned at, but is currently dinning with them on the same table. “Quel image?”

Who does not know that leaders like Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Paul Biya of Cameroon, Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso, Sassou Nguessou of Congo Brazzaville and many others who are taking part in the current US – Africa leaders’ summit are amongst some of the celebrated dictators in Africa?

In a continent infamous for repressive dictatorships, Equatorial Guinea is among the very worst. Its president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, has been president of Equatorial Guinea since 1979, making him Africa’s longest serving dictator. He ousted his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema, in an August 1979 military coup. He has on several occasions received bashings by rights organisations which tagged his regime as one with the worst human rights record. The country is enormously wealthy, thanks to its vast oil reserves, but that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite, made up mostly of his immediate family members.

Equatorial Guinea has emerged as one of Africa's largest oil producers, skyrocketing to its current position as the most wealthy per capita country in Africa. Despite these statistics, the World Bank estimates that some 78 percent of Equatorial Guineans live beneath the national poverty line.

Obiang has however had sleepless nights owing to the hard times given him by Tutu Alicante; an Equatorial Guinean willing to publicly oppose his government at all levels.

Denis Sassou-Nguesso for his part became Congolese president in 1979 to 1992 when he was booted out of power. But in 1997, Nguessou upstaged another infamous feat by springing up to power with the use of arms. He has since remained Congolese president till date. He is not safe from human rights violation accusations.

Blaise Campaore of Burkina Faso took over power in a coup after a hit squad gunned down his former military comrade predecessor, Thomas Sankara, in his office in 1987. He has won four mostly questionable elections since then and he has largely maintained power and public support by playing the "It's either me or chaos" card.

President Biya took over power in 1982 after his predecessor; Amadou Ahidjo resigned and handed over power to him. He has since then demonstrated his outright intention to serve as Cameroon’s president for life. He has on several occasions revised the constitution to enable him continuously extend his reign. He created a purported independent electoral body, Elections Cameroon – ELECAM which he appointed over 90% of his party militants to man it.

Late in December last year, the US State Department, through the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour released a 36-page document on human rights in Cameroon. The human rights report slammed Biya for several rights abuses including the imprisonment of potential political rivals.

Biya was same year assailed by Cameroonian Diasporas during a summit in France. The protesters tagged him a human rights violator and charged him to quit power with immediate effect. Early this year, Biya was saved from a similar situation in Belgium by Belgian police who cordoned-off a group of some Cameroonian protesters who had rounded-up at a hotel where Biya was lodging to demonstrate their anger against what they considered his tyrannical regime.

If Obama actually intended to do away with dictators and defaulters of human rights as he claimed in the cases of Zimbabwe’s Mugabe and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir who he banned from the summit under the guise that these leaders did not pass the human rights test, on what premise did Obiang, Biya, Nguessou and Compaore feature?