The Hippo Generation vs Cheetah Generation; The Next Battle for Africa

                        The Hippo Generation vs Cheetah Generation; The Next Battle for Africa

                                                       21/08/2017 Chibu Ndubuisi

Peace be to you

The choice of this topic was extracted from the 2011 TED talk of George Ayittey where he x-rayed the past and the way forward for Africa.

In the classic novel “Animal Farm”, George Orwell brought to the fore the intrigues of power play and the truthfull assertion that “all animals are equal but some are more equal than others’ particularly as leadership in Africa exemplifies.

Lately in Nigeria,the continued absence of President  Buhari as a result of ill health, motivated Senator Shehu Sani who brought to the fore the power play at the seat of power by using examples of lion king to explain his case he said “ “Prayer for the absent Lion King has waned; Until he’s back then they will fall over each other to be on the front row of the palace temple. Now the hyenas and the jackals are scheming and talking to each other in whispers; still doubting whether the Lion King will be back or not. Now the Lion king is asleep and no other dare to confirm if he will wake up or not. It’s the wish of the Hyenas that the Lion King never wakes or come back so that they can be kings. “It’s the Prayers of the weaker animals that the Lion King comes back to save the Kingdom from the Hyenas, the wolves and other predators.”

The first lady Aisha Buhari concurred with by giving her narrative that “God has answered the prayers of the weaker Animals, The Hyena’s and the Jackals will soon be sent out of the kingdom. We strongly believe in the prayers and support of the weaker animals. Long live the weaker animals, Long live Nigeria.” The president returned to the country on the 19/08/2017 after about over100 days away.

Nnamdi Kanu of the “Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)” equally calls Nigeria a Zoo republic and as a result of his position on the National Question of our forced marriage he was jailed by the Zoo keepers. We can equally remember how President Buhari called people to bloodshed with his “Baboon Mandate” to his fanatic followers and I quote” If what happened in 2011 (alleged rigging) should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood.’’ 

Former President Obasanjo who attempted to perpetuate himself in power for a third term like Abacha and Mugabe later authored a book titled “This Animal called Man”.

The Cheetah analogy here is that, a set of Africans are rising that brooks no nonsense from her leaders and are not dependent on their backward policies to succeed and are prepared to take Africa to the next level of development and have led the way in Nollywood that succeeded without government intervention in Nigeria is a testimony to the speed of their ingenuity. The Africa Leadership Academy is trying on its own path to groom leaders that will hold the ace to face the next battle. We have movements that have succeeded in holding those in leadership accountable like “#thebringbackourgirls campaign, #feesmusfall campaign in South Africa and the #nottooyoungtorun campaign, #ourmumudondo campaign in Nigeria and many more

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The Hippo generation on the other hand are the generation that have become so heavy with corruption that they are over bloated and cannot move their people in to the new age with the speed required. According to George Ayitteh, they are the “Vampire elites who continually makes sure that the economic vitality of their countries are sucked dry through acts of banditry using instruments of state power to favour their cronies and tribesmen excluding everyone and usually the chief bandit is the head of state”. 

The National Bureau of statistics recently confirmed this assertion when it released the 2017 National Corruption Survey tagged ‘Corruption in Nigeria - Bribery as Experienced by the Population’ revealed that

 “Custom officers, judges, magistrates and prosecutors were the public officials who received the largest average cash bribes. The NBS estimated the average bribe paid to Custom officers as N88, 587, Judges/magistrates as N18, 576 while Prosecutors received an average of N10, 072 as bribes from Nigerians. The survey also listed police officers and tax/revenue officers as public officers to whom the highest number of bribes were paid. It said 29.7 per cent of all bribes are paid to police officers upon a direct request before the service is provided.

In the private sector, employees of insurance companies, teachers in private schools and doctors in private hospitals have highest bribe prevalence in Nigeria, the survey revealed. The survey showed that 6.0 per cent of Nigerians have come in contact with bribe-seeking employees of insurance companies, 5.9 per cent with teachers in private schools and 3.7 per cent with doctors. The survey said men pay higher bribes to public officials (37.1 per cent) than women (26.6 per cent).The NBS also found that young Nigerians have the highest prevalence of bribery in the country as 36.4 per cent Nigerian population aged 25 to 34 years are the people with highest bribery prevalence.

Further analysis of the report showed that 37.7 per cent of people with highest prevalence of bribery have attained tertiary education with people earning N100, 000 and above as those with highest prevalence of bribery.

The highest and lowest prevalence of bribery by geographical location and sex showed that 39.5 per cent of the people are urban males while 24.9 per cent are rural women.

The UNODC equally released their own report titled titled “Corruption in Nigeria, Bribery: Public Experience and Response, July 2017” They described the study as the largest corruption survey ever conducted in Africa. Totaling over 400 billion Naria in bribery. In the report  ranking of bribe-takers, the report lists the Police (46.4 percent), prosecutors (33.0 percent), judges/magistrates (31.5 percent), tax/revenue officers (27.3 percent), custom officers (26.5 percent), and public utilities (22.4 percent) as the highest.

The Hippo generation have a way of sustaining itself by ensuring that a skewed and outdated colonial structures are maintained that promotes masters and servants relationships, skewed education curriculum is maintained In an age of STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.  We are still fighting over Christain Religious Knowledge (CRK) and Islamic Religious Knowledge (IRK) in our educational curriculum, the different cut off mark for school admission for different sections of the country in Nigeria is another sour point of stifling growth. We can remember that in the 30 years history of Nigeria NITEL it was able to provide only 4500 land lines to people as explained by Ngozi Okonjo Iweala in her 2007 TED talk. But with the coming of GSM, in a decade over 80 million lines were enabled.

Siyanda Mohutsiwa of Botswana talks about Social Pan Africanism were Africans can connect socially without restrictions of borders and see beyond limitations and make a point with technology.

What we have before us is greater than the distractions of the Hippo generation. It is an idea of hope in the future which we must enable at this critical intersection of the Information, communication technology revolution era. We must not allow borders to suffocate our dreams of building a strong and virile Africa on the values of “Ubuntu” that is African Traditional Humanism to help us stand on our feet, take charge of our destinies and properly manage our resources for good, were a greater percentage of wealth made in Africa are invested in Africa and not frittered away through capital flight, medical tourism, food imports and brain drain.

A poem by Ruyard Kipling goes thus

Something hidden. Go and find it.

Go and look behind the mountain.

      Something lost behind the mountain.

Lost and waiting for you. Go

This story of the Rising Africa will not be told by the Hippo generation on the narrative of colonialism, neo colonialism or imperialism but will be told by the Cheetah generation on the principles of Africapitalism and the philosophy of “Nwanne mara nwanne ya” ( brothers love each other). Towards building "the Africa we want"

Peace be with you.

Chibu Ndubuisi is a Peace Building Agent. A Rising Africa Believer: contact. getwithchibu@hotmail.com   blog chibundubuisi@blogspot.com