Reconstructing Liberia: Agenda for Conciliation

(http://allafrica.com/stories/200312230378.html)

P.M. News (Lagos)

ANALYSIS

December 23, 2003

Posted to the web December 23, 2003

Tunde Oladunjoye
Lagos

Viewed from the eyes of the western press, crises, civil unrests and wars
in Africa are always prompted by intra and inter-ethnic rivalry, ethnic-
displeasure and competition for power among ethnic nationalities.

The fact, however, is that the gleefully reported ethnic reason is but at
the surface level, a tip of the iceberg, an excuse or catalyst that propels
disturbances from a boiling point. There is what is known in the insurance
industry as "proximate cause." For example, if a car hits a pole, and the
pole falls on a house, which collapses and kills a bystander, the driver of
the car is the proximate cause of the death of the bystander.


Before proceeding further, it is important to state that the multi-
dimensional and seemingly intractable hydra-headed civil crises and
conflicts in Africa are the outcome of the divisive foundation laid by the
colonialists and bequeathed to the African elitist inheritors who in many
or countless instances behaved or misbehaved like real undertakers.

Among real and deep-seated reasons which most European and American
journalists overlook due to laziness or deliberate mischief or both, is the
total collapse of the state and its infrastructure.

A situation where a state cannot guarantee basic necessities of life like
food, safe drinking water, electricity and sound health care delivery
system to the citizenry calls the legitimacy of such government into
question. The beleaguered citizens would capitalise on one excuse or the
other, ethnic, religion, politics or even sports,to vent their spleen on
the state, its agents or any semblance or perceived (real or imaginary)
representatives of the state. It is, therefore, not surprising to see many
African leaders supposedly serving the people shielding themselves heavily
from the same people they are "serving;" a paranoid security arrangement
that practically turns them to prisoners!

Corruption could be said to be, the root, problems in Africa and the
cornerstone of unending conflicts. The corruption that comes in different
sizes and shades manifest in nepotism, favouritism and unequal access to
economic opportunities, uneven development or location of social, economic
and political infrastructure and not the least, the misadventure on white
elephant socio-economic and political projects.

When Liberia hosted African leaders during the regime of President Tolbert,
the government spent over $200 million to construct a grand hotel and
opposite the hotel, 53 choice guest houses were constructed for each of the
53 African heads of state expected at the meeting. This was done at a
period when Liberia was groaning under debt burden and negative economic
indices.

The government also demonstrated lack of feeling for the masses when the
price of rice, Liberia's staple food, was increased in 1979. The mass
protests that ensued heralded the 1980 coup that brought Master Sergeant
Samuel Doe to power. People actually trooped to the streets to celebrate
the Doe coup, though as events later turned out, their hopes were misplaced
and their celebration cut short (similarities...).

Inflation, unemployment and brazen repression of the civil society, jailing
of activists, rapidly deteriorating economy, nepotism in private and public
employment are the other contributory factors to the violent scenario in
Liberia. While Doe repressed labour unions and students movements and
closed down newspapers, Charles Taylor (wanted now by the Interpol) hated
journalists with a passion.

Of course, the power elite unable, ill-equipped and lacking in focus and
commitment to improve the standard of living of the people, resorted to the
divide and rule antics of the departed colonialists by fanning the embers
of disunity, using ethnicity, religion and so on to play one segment of the
society against another. Where such divisive strategies failed, again like
the colonialists, utter brute force was employed.

The poverty-stricken masses, preoccupied with the struggle for food and
survival, are unable or unwilling to dissect the machinations of the
leaders' devilish plans let alone fighting against them. The situation has
always been typically everybody for himself and God for us all, divided we
fall.

The active and subversive collaboration of the international community and
its agents as represented by international financial organisations such as
World Bank, International Finance Corporation, Paris and London clubs of
creditors, is too endemic to be overlooked.

These international organisations give out loans with impossible conditions
to African leaders, and make little or no supervision on the uses, to which
the loans are put. In fact, the hypocrisy of the talk about fight against
corruption and for transparency is underlined by the fact that these
financial institutions and so-called developed countries open the vaults of
their banks for looting African leaders to keep away stolen funds in coded
accounts. Doe was said to have kept about $250 million (Two Hundred and
Fifty US dollars) at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
The same groups are willing to give more loans even to be repaid decades
after the contracting spendthrift leaders would have left office.

The gullible, inelastic economic appendage and dependence facilitates the
manipulation of social and political events in the 'developing' countries
by the western nations.

The Way Forward The new transitional government headed by businessman,
Gyude Bryant, would only succeed if he is able to carry along all the
segments of the society (this is a yeoman's job). Honesty and transparency
are no doubt the watchwords that Bryant must hold on tightly to.

The civil society must seize the prevailing opportunity to push reformative
agenda as they affect their areas of specialisation such as education,
environment and gender, human rights and labour. It must be borne in mind
that when dictatorship reigns, it is the civil society that suffers most.

Another important prerequisite is the fashioning out of a workable
constitution. The problems with constitution making in Africa has always
been that the elite vaingloriously assume that they know the problems of
every section or interest of the society. If Nigeria is used as a
yardstick, what we have had is Obasanjo's Constitution, Babangida's
Constitution, Abacha's Constitution, and Abdulsalami's Constitution. We
have never had Nigerian People's Constitution. Though the preamble of the
1999 Constitution reads: "We the people of Nigeria," the legal iconoclast,
Chief FRA Williams (SAN) described the constitution as a forged
document. "From my early days, I have been taught to treat any document
that tells lies about itself as forged document (Keynote Address in Burning
Issues in the 1999 Constitution, NBA, Ikeja, 2000).

A lot of African writers and political scientists have espoused extensively
on constitutionalism in Africa (the problem is that African leaders do not
read books). Julius Ihonvbere (2002), in Constitutionalism and
Democratisation in Africa: Lessons for Nigeria, posited that for
constitution to be acceptable to the people, it has to be people-
oriented: "We must draw lessons from other nations on the centrality of the
people in the political process and how to build ownership and legitimacy
through the mobilisation, education of and involvement of the people and
their communities. We must learn how to use the constitution-making process
to promote dialogue, constructive restructuring of power and politics and
engaging the national question." Ihonvbere listed other steps for
acceptable constitution to include: "maximum involvement of the civil
society, representative, inclusive and autonomous commission or committee,
deadlock breaking mechanism, involvement of Nigerians in the diaspora,
involvement of women, involvement of the youth, and final legitimisation
through a referendum that would give the people a final say and the process
of constitution making the final stamp of legitimisation." Claude Ake
rightly stated in The Political Economy of Crisis and Underdevelopment:
Selected Works of Claude Ake in Africa (Julius Ihonvbere ed, Jad
Publishers, Lagos 1988), that the necessary stabilising factors that can
oust conflicts and wars in Africa are: political and economic empowerment
of the people, constitutional engineering - supremacy of the constitution
in law and practice; respect for the judiciary; respect for fundamental
human rights; workable and transparent multiparty system and equitable
sharing of power between central and local government.

In a layman's words: The provision of basic human needs like food, shelter,
clothing, gainful employment and efficient health care system, effective
and accessible justice delivery system founded on the sacredness of the
rule of law are the greatest and most enduring barricades against incessant
conflicts not only in Liberia but also anywhere on the surface of the
planet Earth.

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Tunde Oladunjoye is the Executive Director, Centre for Media Education and
Networking, Lagos.

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Copyright © 2003 P.M. News. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica
Global Media (allAfrica.com).

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