February 16, (THEWILL) – Former Director of the Kenyan Anti-Corruption Agency, Prof Patrick Lumumba, has identified leadership structure and institutional corruption as major challenges to Africa’s greatness.
Lumumba made the observation on Wednesday in Abuja during the 20th anniversary of Stefanos Foundation, a Jos-based human rights organisation.
Delivering his lecture titled: “Census 2022: Concerns for internally displaced persons and implications on the 2023 General Elections”, Lumumba, who decried the growing insecurity and economic crisis in the continent, said African leaders have failed the masses.
Accusing them of discussing trivialities during the recent African Union (AU) summit in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia, Lumumba said, “During the two-day summit, I, like many Africans waited to hear our leaders talk about the conflict in Africa, especially Mali, Burkina Faso, about the insurgency in Nigeria, about the conflict in Central African Republic, Eastern Congo, Northern Mozambique, Southern Cameroon, Sudan and different part of Africa, but I only listen to them talk about whether Israel should have observer status at the AU. Indeed they did not stop there, they constituted a team of African Heads of States, where Israel will have observer status at AU. I was disappointed.”
He said the proliferation of IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps in the region, which should ordinarily serve as a temporary base, but now permanent abode for many citizens, was a result of a lack of empathy from the leaders.
He said the time had come for Africans to ask themselves painful and uncomfortable questions.
“We Africans have been nice to each other for too long. Now the time has come, when we must speak the truth in all its nakedness that it will prick our conscience”, he said.
While making reference to one of the works of late foremost writer and author, Chinua Achebe, Lumumba wondered how Africans at every election cycle foster on themselves dictators and yet they celebrate them.
“How is it that a continent that is so endowed continues to be demeaning in this manner. How is it that Nigeria which has the largest population of Africans, a country which has the most educated men and women on earth, a country that has produced good and great men, with great scholars and evangelists continues to converse?
“How is it that Nigeria, the land of great evangelists and Ulamas, can allow conflict to take root? These are questions we must pose because the day Nigeria gets it right is the day Africa gets it right.
“It goes as much as saying that if Nigeria realises economic development, Africa will realise economic development and we pray on a daily basis that Nigeria will realise its economic potential”, the Professor of Law, added.
The Programme Coordinator of Stefanos Foundation, Mark Lidpo said terrorists’ activities in Nigeria encouraged high level of crime with impunity and has now given room for political exploitations affecting the rule of law and good governance.
He said that bias, intolerance, marginalisation, and sectional scheming have further deepened the fault lines, noting there are no signs of “these ills abating any time soon.”
Lidpo said the Stefanos Foundation had been working to intervene in the agony, pain, and suffering that this violence has caused thousands of people in the country.
