Obama’s win, Jammeh’s loss

 It would have been a great weekend for the quest to claim global acclaim that democracy is not alien either to the cosmogony or the cosmology of the black race. Readers should kindly ignore the insinuation of my editor, Mahmud Jega that the American presidency is not the most powerful on earth. Even if they […]

 It would have been a great weekend for the quest to claim global acclaim that democracy is not alien either to the cosmogony or the cosmology of the black race. Readers should kindly ignore the insinuation of my editor, Mahmud Jega that the American presidency is not the most powerful on earth. Even if they are captives of checks, balances, and the organised lobby, in the eye of common folks, America’s romance with democracy makes it a point of global reference. It makes the holder of the office of the President the most envious and most powerful in the world today. 

Just look at it, besides America, only Israel has the capacity to take care of business anywhere in the world without UN approval. When it does, it owes no explanation or apology as it recently showed with its ‘alleged’ bombing of parts of Syria. America would declare war and pull the entire world, not only to accept its reasons for declaring that war, but also raise a coalition of the cajoled to fight along. Check the so-called Allied Forces that fought in Iraq, help delete Libyan strongman, Muammar Gadaffi and went for regime change in Syria. With time, these American wars would be declared benign coalition efforts to make the world a better place, not the reality of doing America’s bidding.

This is not the purpose of this write-up, but it is necessary to puncture holes in Jega’s arguments, lest any power drunk ruler from any other part of the world, including the bloated toad from North Korea start doing the Agama nod on this earth so heavily policed by the USA. 

Now, to the matter at hand. It felt like the black race lost something significant last Friday when our own Barack Hussein Obama gingerly handed over the keys of American nuclear warheads to Don the Dumb. Handing power to a man who insulted you, your race and everyone else you cared about is not an easy job, but Obama had the audacity of duty to do it. 

Gangling Obama weighs just about the size of the thigh of WWE Superstar Mark Henry, but for the past eight years, he was Mr. Dynamite himself. One thing he did not do was ride roughshod on the powerless use the law of an eye for an eye. If he had insisted on standing shoulder-to-shoulder or toe-to-toe with Vladimir Putin, who among us would be complaining about the rising price of local rice? 

The Obama presidency was not without its own wars or flaws, its setbacks and unfulfilled promises, but that it came and ended peacefully confirmed that the problem is not within our genes. So, thank you Obama for that audacity of hope now expended. Let’s accept it, it may have been an act of providence for a black man to hold the keys to the most powerful position on earth, to every black person, this was Harley’s Comet. For those of us reading this, it would not happen again in our lifetime – the owners have reclaimed their White House with the promise to make America great again. Let’s hope that the black man would not be used again as charcoal to burn the bricks for that greatness as was generations ago when America was ‘great’. 

At the sub-regional level, we could have been telling the world that smooth transitions are not the exclusive reserve of the Americans. Yes, we have done it in Naija with President Jones becoming some people’s standard-bearer in democratic heroism. Then we showed the world that it was not a fluke when the opposition won in neighbouring Ghana. Before them, we had shooed dictators away in Senegal, forged an alliance for the respect of the people’s mandate in la Cote and literally removed the glue that bound Blaise Compaore from his seat in honour of people’s power in Burkina Faso.

However, when the train moved to The Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, smooth talker, half-swagger-stick-wielding despot, fake healer, faux islamist and phony traditionalist, packed more than his weight to call our bluff. He did not seem to mind standing before a moving train.

Jammeh has had need to see a shrink since he transformed from soldier to civilian, ran and won sham elections, where all opponents were either killed, forced into exile or hounded into prison. By conservative estimation, more than half of the country’s able-bodied men and women had abandoned their homestead for the arrogant despot. Some of them made perilous journeys that ended in the belly of sharks in the depths of the Mediterranean. Others crossed over to misery.

A coalition of ECOWAS and the AU were no PRN to prevent this suicidal fly that follows the corpse to the grave. With his deputy on the people’s side, his erstwhile loyal army chief dancing with the president – from-exile, and half his ministers out, and having failed to draft the judiciary to do his suicidal bidding, Jammeh’s last hope was the parliament where he found idiots of like passion to endorse his harakiri. This was why last week’s Obama retirement was one giant leap forward for the black race while Jammeh’s recalcitrance drew us two steps backwards.