Anything that has a beginning has an end. Such is the law of nature and so it is for President Barack Obama, the first African American President of the United State whose presidency the sun is slowly beginning to set on.
When he was swept into office as a Rock Star, I danced on the street. Now I don’t think I will miss him much. He is utilizing all ounce of power from his remaining time in office, battling gun control, nominating a Supreme Court justice, making a historic visit to Cuba and barging into Britain’s debate over whether to leave the European Union, he is also in the mix campaigning for his would be democratic successor , Mrs. Hilary Clinton.
Whatever catch-up Obama tries to do the inexorable ebbing of time and influence that overtake second term presidencies is becoming more noticeable with every week that passes by as some of his official duties begin to take on a poignant, valedictory tone.
“I still have a few more months,” Obama joked during a town hall meeting with British young people in London when asked how he viewed his legacy, he also added he would not have a good sense of his legacy for another 10 years.
In the most tangible sign yet of Obama’s long goodbye, The New York Times reported that presidential aides have begun the process that will transition the mammoth U.S. government into the hands of the 45th President next January.
The coast is now clear for a contest between Hillary Clinton who will be flying the flag of Obama’s continuity and Donald Trump the outsider who is determined to cause an upset. Whether the world is now safer or worse under Obama leadership is an issue for another day.
In this article my concern is not about Obama’s legacy to the world but about his legacy to Africa and perhaps to Nigeria. With his presidency nearing an end, Barack Hussein Obama in my view may find his legacy in Africa nothing to be proud of and for Africans nothing to cheer about.
As Bill White put it and I agree with him, ‘when it comes to the dark continent, Obama has done more to kill and impoverish black people than any American leader in recent memory, he has wrecked so much havoc that black people should be ashamed of his presidency.
Across the African continent, Obama and his advisors have targeted nearly every honest nationalist leader they can find, while consistently promoting despotic cronies, who pocket all they can while bleeding their people poor.
Take Libya’s assassinated leader, Muammar Qadaffi, for example. Despite its tiny population, Qadaffi turned Libya into a growth engine for Africa. The peoples welfare and standard of living were the best Africa can boast of.
In 37 of Africa’s 53 countries, Qadaffi set up joint development banks, which were profitably investing in African infrastructure— something the United States, Britain, Russia and China have all failed to do in a meaningful way.
Besides subsidizing food, gas, education and housing for his own people, Qadaffi was making a minimum annual investment of $6 billion in African countries—a huge amount given the tiny size of Africa’s economy.
More importantly, Qadaffi had set up a Libyan foreign exchange bank, which made a currency trading market in those 37 nations, allowing them to trade among each other. While Africa is not a nation, under Qadaffi’s influence it was acting like an autonomous economic entity.
This, of course, is why Obama, dancing at the end of strings held by international bankers, murdered Qadaffi and destroyed his banking system and today Libya is in turmoil. In killing Brother Qadaffi Obama acted like one of the old African chieftains, willing to sell his own people into slavery.
Today Libya is the home of Al Qaeda and radical Islamists. It will take decades before Libya will recover from the destruction and disruption of its stable system. No thanks to Obama. Or take Jean-Pierre Bemba, the Congolese leader currently facing trumped-up war crimes charges in The Hague.
Bemba was elected president of the Congo with 70 per cent of the vote. He and his staff held all-night meetings to brainstorm how to bring industry and information technology into their impoverished nation.
Independently wealthy, Bemba was incorruptible, and so he had to go. When Bemba intervened to stop members of the Central Africa Republic from butchering one another, some of his soldiers may have raped women. Bemba, a family man, had no involvement, but he wasn’t useful to the Western bankers, so he’s on trial in The Hague.
In his place has come a network of Rwandan Tutsis plundering and pillaging the resources of Congo. Many Tutsis consider themselves Jewish. Israel does not concede this status to them, but the Mossad has been bankrolling Tutsi expansion in Central and Eastern Africa.
It is no surprise but Rwandan President Paul Kagame has recently taken up a cry more familiar to America’s manipulated and ignorant black masses—the cry of blame for the white man.
Like in every “liberated” African nation, from Libya to South Sudan to Nigeria, South Africa is also facing economic collapse and extreme violence; it is likely only years away from joining the other three in civil war. White people are being blamed for the problems there, and their property is being seized. Remember Darfur? The Western powers would prefer that you forget it.
It’s currently in the midst of a brutal civil war fuelled by the West. Nigeria? Obama sent David Axelrod there to “change” the government on the pretense that the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan was corrupt and too weak to fight Boko Haram, but Boko Haram isn’t going anywhere despite his aiding President Muhammadu Buhari to power.
He never made it public to the world that his hostility towards the Jonathan administration was the latter’s signing of the Anti-Gay Bill and of course the implementation of the Local Content Act in the oil sector which removed substantial amount of business from the multinationals and diversification of the economy. Nigeria.
Today, the once robust and prospering Nigeria economy has collapsed completely and all the gains of democracy including human rights and rule of law reversed by nearly 80 degrees to the delight of Obama.
Extra judicial killings by state actors and detention of opposition leaders without trial are back like in the days of old which of course are good jobs for the administration. Obama has no time to weigh in to the mass killings of pro Biafra agitators and at-least ask for the respect of the right of the people to demonstrate in a civilized manner.
Everywhere you look in Africa, Obama has impoverished his father’s own peoples. And everywhere you look; global bankers are getting rich off black poverty and destruction of Africa.
America’s worse mistake by November 2016 will be electing Mrs. Clinton as President as that will be handing over a third term mandate to Obama, thereby prolonging the reign of ISIS, Boko-Haram and Al-Queda in Africa.
Except may be for Obama himself, no one who witnessed how he and Hillary promoted and enabled Boko Haram will be interested in the continuation of his anti-African legacy. For me Obama should just go and bid us his long goodbye.
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