The gods of War by Oyinkan Medubi

   With Idi Amin, there was no way of knowing if he was appreciating the value of one’s verbal contribution or the succulence of one’s flesh, until you woke up one morning to find you did not wake up and you were the breakfast.

Dear reader, I’m sure you’re familiar with the book/film The Dogs of War by Frederic Forsyth, I think. Well, I’m not. I have rather heard of that other one, the gods of war. No, you haven’t? Surprising, considering the story is lived out daily in Africa, what with all these despotic rulers who sprout like mushrooms everyday everywhere on the continent. The gods of war are the despots who people the landscape of Africa as rulers or presidents and brutalise their own people and declare war on them just to remain in power.

       Let me remind you of a few. I remember… Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo who

was said to have clung to his presidential seat by the skin of his teeth for close to 40 years. He killed a few good men for that seat. Well, he eventually had to go I think, or was it that the seat left him? I don’t remember now.

      I do remember what’s his name again now? Oh yes, Idi Amin of Uganda he was. He ate a few good men for that seat. As the story went, he was not just a bad ruler, he was a cannibal of his people to boot! Imagine how creepy it must have been working with him. There was no way one could ever tell if he was appreciating the value of one’s verbal contribution or the succulence of one’s flesh, until you woke up one morning to find you did not wake up and you were the breakfast. Get that?  Huhh!

     I found the one I was looking for in Teodore Obiang Mbasogo who has been ruling Equatorial Guinea since 1979. He entered my book because he is said to be, and I quote, “the country’s god with all power over men and things…” Huh, god indeed, please!!! Even my dog sometimes thinks he’s a god, especially when I give him what he does not like. It’s said though that Mbasogo is said to have eaten a few good men and can “decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell.” What hell? Have I not many times desired one cone of ice cream and my wretched reasonable mind would tell me ‘no’ because it would go to my hips and I swing them hips worse than a rhinoceros? Now, that’s hell. But wait, there is more.

    We have all heard of Nigeria’s Sani Abacha, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Dos Santos of Angola; the last one there is said to have been warming his seat since 1979. Mugabe is definitely not done warming his seat, just as he’s also not done wrecking the economy. Well, we all know the stories of Abacha and Gaddafi; hardly deserves any mention, neither do they as a matter of fact.

     Now, why have I gone into so much story telling considering I am no historian? It’s because I read recently that another of our dictators is putting up another drama in his country. I read that Yayah Jammeh of The Gambia is even right now rejecting the free and fair elections his people held after he has been ruling them for 22 years. Worse, he himself was said to have earlier conceded defeat and declared the elections fair. Then he changed his mind; now, he wants more years on the throne, like Oliver Twist, except that Oliver twist was really hungry, underfed, poor, sad, afraid, an orphan and… This man, on the other hand, appears to be more into greed.

     That set me asking: just what virus attacks the black man’s brain that when he gets into power, he begins to make himself out as one great god whose sun should not set? Worse yet, he sets about doing anything to entrench himself but govern. He even goes to war to defend the throne against the people and against time. He refuses the results of polls and refuses to die.

     I am beginning to believe the theory that says that the African mind is still grappling with infantile delusions of grandeur. Sadly, this syndrome makes the rulers believe that they are some great ones and ‘possess some superior qualities such as genius… and the conviction of having some great but unrecognised talent or insight…’ Let’s stop the quotation there.

      So, back to our question on just what attacks the brain of the black man. I really don’t know but I can hazard a few guesses. First, I want to believe it’s something in the air of Africa. There is so much heat and dust around it’s no wonder some of both get into our brains. If the brains are not being fried by the sun, they’re being contaminated by the viruses in the air. Seriously. Ever heard of the sun effect theory? It is also called the greenhouse effect but the story is the same: the sun fries our brains and prevents us from thinking clearly. After all, the gasses produced in a greenhouse are more useful for growing plants. Grrr!

      My other theory is that there is something in the food in Africa that prevents us from seeing clearly. Have you checked our diets lately? When the times were good, someone said our plates consisted of carbohydrates garnished with a dot resembling meat which was well below the United Nations’ ration. Now, in these recession-ridden times, the meat has disappeared completely.

      Yes, I agree with you, these things should not be so. Any African should have access to a well-balanced diet where the plate of protein is garnished with a little carbohydrate. This would be so too if we had people to drive developments such as plenty of mechanised farms, animal and plant, energy to consume and work with, industries to produce end-products that can refine lives, imaginations to make people dream, etc. Then, you and I can have lots to eat and even despots will not need to eat their fellow human beings. That’s right, the people we need are called presidents who need to be self-denying to get the job done.

      Somewhere in my phone, I still have a post titled ‘Should we tell Africa?’ I wondered, tell Africa what? It turned out to be a discourse by a group of discussants in the West on the world’s economy. Accompanied by sniggers, laughter and guffaws, the panel concluded that there was no point telling Africa about the new direction the world economy was taking. Its god-presidents were too busy fighting wars of self-entrenchment and the people busy struggling to survive.

     Clearly, Africa’s new elites need to wake up and demand that their presidents do more than preen in new clothes in front of the mirror every morning, noon and night. Thankfully, that is something we cannot accuse Nigeria’s current president, President Buhari of doing. The man clearly is taking his job very seriously. This cannot be said of most of our undemocratic neighbour-presidents.

      These presidents do not only not have the solutions their countries require for development; they actually plunge their countries into chaos. Somalia’s Barre left after decades of playing god and there was a civil war; Gbagbo of Ivory Coast also reneged on elections. Now, Jammeh is playing the same game in The Gambia. What he is saying like the others is, ‘if I cannot be king then there’s no kingdom’.

       African presidents should realise two things. They do not have a monopoly of wisdom in their countries. Even if they did, there is so much any group can take of any brand of wisdom. They need to realise that power always seeps out of the throne, somehow. African presidents should therefore learn to respect tomorrow because it does come.


credit: thenationonlineng.net