By WALE AKINYEMI

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Africa’s super wealthy have one thing in common: They’re in government or have deep contacts in government

What will it take to build great nations in Africa? The Nigerian presidential election was held last week, giving us a president-elect — Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the king maker who is responsible for bringing a number of leaders to the limelight and whose deftness is credited for helping Muhammadu Buhari win eight years ago. He launched his campaign by saying it was his turn and, true to it, he was declared the winner.

Before the elections, an embargo on the naira saw the big boys in politics resort to spending dollars. TVs broadcast thugs at polling stations to disrupt the voting, especially in areas where the younger Labour Party candidate Peter Obi was expected to take the lead.

One video clip advised anyone who wanted to vote for Obi to leave the polling station. At yet another place, an electoral officer refused to upload the results, claiming he had orders from above not to. In many of the polling stations, election officials did not arrive on time; some arriving in the evening. Someone had either paid or threatened them to stay at home. One official claimed she was forced at gunpoint to enter doctored results into the system.

Prepared for everything

The fiasco afforded us a view of the beautiful spirit of voters prepared for everything. Where election officials did not show up, some voters volunteered to go and pick them up. Voters organised the crowds into orderly queues as they awaited arrival of election officials.

When the officials said they could not upload results because there was no network, voters switched on their hot-spots and presented a solution to the problem. When they cited a lack of power, voters brought in generators to power the polling station.

One thing was clear: People were ready to do anything not to be disenfranchised. The people were ready for change. The politicians, however, are cut from a different cloth altogether. A fact of life is that very often, those who have been empowered by the old will resist the new. As willing and eager as the people were to help bring about change, many were, however, shortly thereafter overcome with sadness and grief.

Disparities

In a number of places on the electoral commission’s website, posted results did not tally with those recorded at the polling stations. In fact, there were entries on the portal that were dated way before the elections. Other entries had the exact same figures for different states even though they had different numbers of registered voters.

So, it is true that a winner has been declared but it is now left to see what will happen. In an environment where the corrupt are bold and the honest are timid, the corrupt will continue to perpetuate themselves in power.

Sadly, their ways will become the benchmarks for a younger generation and so without a very radical intervention, it seems like we may just continue like this for some time to come.

Africa’s super wealthy have one thing in common; they are either in government or have deep contacts with people in government. Right there lies the problem. As long as access to government is seen as the highway to success and wealth, the hunger to go into government will always be tainted by the wrong motive. That is why the culture of servant leadership is absent in many African nations.

As I muse over the state of my country, the words of Prof Wole Soyinka, a Nobel literature laureate, come to mind: “Nigeria is the only country where professors rig elections for politicians but expel students for examination malpractices.”

Wale Akinyemi is the founder of The Street University. Email is [email protected]