ABSTRACT
When African countries gained independence, politics was hailed as the instrument, par preference, to promote national development. Nkrumah’s wellknown paraphrasing of a biblical text, ‘Seek ye first the political kingdom, and everything else will be added unto ye.’ sums up the perception prevailing in the first decades of African independence. In the same vein, John Mukum Mbaku says: ‘Many Africans looked at independence as an opportunity to rid themselves of the despotic and exploitative colonial state and establish governance and economic structures that maximize their values, enhance the participation of popular forces in national development, and improve the peaceful coexistence of ethnic and other social groups’ (1999: 299). Many Africans had seen a bright future for themselves after independence: freedom from oppression and persecution, a higher standard of living, respect for human rights, and participation in the decision-making processes from which they had been kept out during the colonial rule. These hopes and aspirations vanished into the thin air, as democracy had a short span of life in Africa after independence, thanks to the self-seeking leaders who inherited power from the colonial masters. The situation went on deteriorating so much so that a stage came when the African people started feeling that the state had become irrelevant to them for all practical purposes. The post-independence rulers of Africa, both civilian and military, hijacked the state and used its structures and resources for self-aggrandizement, to fill their private coffers with ill-gotten money, and to entrench themselves in the seat of power. During the national liberation struggle, the African leaders had made tall promises and shown to the African people a rosy picture of the future but, once power was in their hands, they forgot all their promises and the lofty commitments that they had made to their people. Instead of having even a glimpse of what they had expected from their own rulers, what the African people faced was, in the words of Mbaku, ‘suffocation of civil society, poverty, corruption, political violence and destructive ethnic conflict, civil wars, famine, unmanageable external debts, public malfeasance, marginalisation of rural peasants and many other ills that have significantly impeded the ability of Africans to improve their living conditions during the last several decades’ (Mbaku 1999: 301).
