Africa : The Ideal Remedy against Boko haram and their Fellow Men

The ideal remedy against Boko Haram and the complex of born-to-rule that preys the Sahel-Muslim peoples of the northern Gulf of Guinea (Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Benin, Togo, Nigeria) and drives them crazy when presidential power slips off their hands democratically, is a psycho-political one. Far from meeting their power shifting cries or their regionalist impatience, the most rabid expression of which is Boko haram, the ideal remedy must rather consist in a cure of presidential abstinence. In the case of Nigeria, it will consist in giving the power over a period of fifteen to twenty years, to an enlightened despot profoundly anti-regionalist, and a native of Christian confession of the oil delta region that feeds the whole country. After all, in Nigeria the dark period of military rule consisted in power grabbing for over 20 years by northern military dictators. Notwithstanding, Southerners did not take offense for that. And when in 1993, a Southerner emerged in the first democratic election, his march towards the power has been abruptly halted by the same northern military dictators who imprisoned and murdered MKO Abiola, the winner.

As long as in the Gulf of Guinea region of our west coast of Africa, the Sahel-Muslim peoples of the north would not have been made to swallow a shock treatment and stay off power for a few good decades, they will never understand that one can prosper and live as a region, an ethnicity, or a religion without holding presidential power. Ghana has experienced this period of cure, this may explain why of all the countries of the Gulf of Guinea, the country of Rawlings and Nkrumah is the most peaceful in this respect. The Northerners of the other countries need this pedagogy of retention to heal their complex, which causes so much harm to our sub-region starting with themselves. Alidou BACHABI, trad. Binason Avèkes