What’s your president worth?

I was sitting calmly in my home listening to global gossip when the above headline caught my attention. I know that the Wizard of Ota emerged from prison with only his uniform and a run-down farm but is today a university proprietor, owner of a prestigious library, and worth billions according to the unofficial Forbes […]

I was sitting calmly in my home listening to global gossip when the above headline caught my attention. I know that the Wizard of Ota emerged from prison with only his uniform and a run-down farm but is today a university proprietor, owner of a prestigious library, and worth billions according to the unofficial Forbes list. President Jones is not worth much, but his wife, Lame Pat by EFCC estimates is worth quite a bunch; wealth legitimately amassed from her salary as Permanent Secretary Plenipotentiary in River’s State government. Mrs Yardy is broke! Even the cancer centre she founded on Accident Junction, Gwagwalada Road is littered with serviceable but abandoned vehicles. Let’s not talk about the wealth of Justice Fati Abubakar or her predecessor, Maryam Abacha. So I adjusted my stool and grabbed a glass of hot water and lemon because my babalawo says it is halal.

According to the BBC, a New York based centre is sniffing the wealth of Africa’s elected kings. Sai Mama recently revealed that hyenas and jackals would be shoved from the zoo. When Sai Baba returns from London and may the good Lord bring him back, we shall see. Unlike Femi Adeshina who goes around calling people descendants of Shimei, I will not call the throne harbouring jackals Nebuchadnezzar’s zoo.

But seriously, who will tell muzungus to leave Africa and Africans alone? The last country to subjugate colonialism and gain independence was South Sudan. It is a country thriving in war and pogrom, thanks to it’s two feuding foundation Kings, Salva Kirr and Riek Machar. Those ones are worth the bones and skeletons of all victims of their power-hungry war. 

Independent African nations have a locally, sorry, I meant Chinese made national flags fluttering on poles across their capitals. A figure head, unusually pronounced president or prime minister sits comfortably where colonial overlords once sat calling the shots. They are not sissies like the Polish president who recently recapitulated to the mob on the streets. They are real men like Venezuelan ruiner, Nicolas Maduro cemented on the throne by the blood of over 100 protesters and counting. Africa’s elected kings are like Rodrigo Duterte whose death squads mete out jungle justice without trial – ISIS-style. In Africa, an overpaid, grossly underperforming and highly egocentric parliament is in place either as rubber-stamp to the president’s wishes or playing possum opposition like in Naija. No matter what you say, by every Greek definition, these are democracies. 

But the muzungu would not let sleeping dogs lie. They arrogate to themselves the moral capacity to monitor compliance with so-called global best practices. They unleash their powerful media on our elected kings and their imperial family’s interests. When they’re not accusing our kings of corruption, they are haranguing their friends and family. They do not want our Kings to do business as if elected monarchies should survive only on bloated salaries, chunky emoluments, posh kickbacks, gratuitous gratifications and full control of the national economy – alone. 

Here is one good reason real African men shun politrics. The idea of being labelled a ruiner just because I marry, divorce or retire women at will is enough deterrence. Not all of us have the absorbent skin of Jacob Zuma but we all have traces of the inherited virility of King Mswati III; we relish our rights to our harem and it should neither be denied us nor compared with American serial monogamy or European Judeo-Christian concept of adultery.

It is shocking and insulting to start counting the wealth of a king as is being done of the president of mineral-rich Angola and his wealthy daughter. It should be sacrilegious to poke one’s nose into the presumed wealth of Joseph Kabila as it should be to guessimate the measure of the gold on the crown of the Asantehene. So over 80 companies have been traced to the Kabila royal house. So what? As long as the people remain poor, the presidency is working?

The concept of labelling Paul Biya corrupt or calling Teodoro Nguema and Teodorin sleazy should be a crime in all jurisdictions of the African Union. Since most culprits are likely to be men; whoever is found guilty should be punished with castration, their wives and daughters should be forfeited to the king irrespective be they black, white or somewhere in-between.

An African president’s wealth should be equal to the sum total of his country’s wealth for the length of his reign. After all, isn’t the Queen the head of the Commonwealth? It is apartheid to subject African ruiners to a different moral or financial gauge just because they are subjected to elections. Nobody should insinuate that a King is corrupt. As head of their state, all the mineral and material wealth belongs to them and their nuclear or extended families. Such wealth should be disbursed as they deem fit just as anyone would who owns the title to a deed. No citizen living at home or abroad should think or talk trash to elected royalty – the earth is the Kings’ and all the treasures and peoples therein. Henceforth nobody should ask the question – what’s your president worth!