Cyclone in Africa: What our leaders should do

IN 1984, when we all stood in awe of Decree Four, to differ from officialdom as represented by Nigeria’s military junta headed by Muhammadu Buhari was a perilous path to perdition. The soldiers brooked no dissent as they waved the draconian law before all, notably newsmen. The law, the most outrageous and pernicious by any military dictator in Nigeria, forbade reporters from publishing or broadcasting what the authorities “calculated to bring the Federal Military Government or the Government of a State or a public officer to ridicule or disrepute.’’ Then this scary one: the martial ruler was given the power to prohibit the circulation of an “offending” newspaper for one year. He was also at liberty to revoke the licence granted any broadcast medium or order its closure or forfeiture to the government if he was satisfied that its untrammelled existence was “detrimental to the interest of the Federation” or any part of the country.

One of the two journalists of The Guardian newspaper jailed under Decree 4, Tunde Thompson, would later write in his book, Power and the Press: that “…those charged under the decree were first to be regarded as guilty and to prove they were not, whatever the odds against them.” Thereafter journalists were shy to write on local issues. It was an elastic contraption that took in everyone, fat, skinny, tall or short, or averagely formed.

So, Nigerian journalists, columnists especially, would opt for far-flung foreign events. And the Soviet and US proxy war in Afghanistan was the talk of the day. The writers suddenly became experts in global conflict resolution, leaving the larger domestic challenges unattended to. Their own home was on fire; but what sweet relief they got on flights away from hell. If you wrote on such issues in order to dodge the radar of the military, you were said to have gone Afghanistan.

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I also want to go Afghanistan today. Not because home issues are too hot to handle. No. I think running from them would keep them hot and make them hotter. But then we need to discuss something close home: the visit of a devastating cyclone to Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi last week. It’s a week after Cyclone Idai struck Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, all in Southern Africa, leaving hundreds confirmed dead and levelling communities and sending hundreds of thousands into refugee camps. A Mozambican government spokesman declared that human casualties could go up with the records indicating that 15,000 persons are missing.

The United Nations World Food Programme coordinating food flights says it needs to sustain supplies over the next three months to stabilise the situation in Zimbabwe. In Mozambique where Idai began its march of death, the director of a Christian charity has warned Africans to prepare for a long recovery. “This is a catastrophe,” Edgar Jone of Tearfund laments.

We should not be consoled by the flood of aid stuff and messages from African leaders commiserating with their counterparts in Southern Africa. Nor should we be unduly stirred by the presence of US military teams joining the cyclone rescue effort in Mozambique.

We should be more elated to see African nations and the African Union with the other regional bodies on the continent rise to the occasion to supply the needed succour to our brothers and sisters in the afflicted areas. Agreed this is an international humanitarian crisis brought about by nature, requiring all humanity to come together to battle. But our leaders go to sleep, and expect the outside world to seize the initiative from them.

That is what we are saddled with in Africa. Our governments are not anchored on vision that looks into the next century. They live to exhaust the perks of office of the moment. Our town planning strategies are for urban centres that don’t see beyond five years or so. We are compromised such that we approve buildings put together that wouldn’t withstand sharply inclement conditions.

Years ago while shooting a documentary in Delta State, I was stupefied at the shapely sight of the General Hospital, Ugheli. There were no cracks. Our guide told me it had been in that pristine state over the decades. The plaque corroborated him: it was built in the days of Obafemi Awolowo, first premier of the old sprawling Western Nigeria that stretched from Ikeja to the banks of the Niger. The hospital block and wards with the steel beds were as though they were commissioned yesterday by Awolowo.

Only leaders with an agenda set for the next century and beyond deliver a citizenry and monuments that stand against the treacherous elements of mis-governance and nature.

Ojewale lives in Lagos.

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