AFRICA: Life will improve for Africans only when they develop faith in democracy, UN human rights official Matthew Kukah tells Judith Crosbie
During his time on the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission in Nigeria, which looked into the abuses of the last military dictatorship, Dr Matthew Hassan Kukah, witnessed something remarkable. Beaten down by years of corruption at the hands of successive dictatorships, Nigerians had initially been cynical of the commission, assuming, like everything else, it would amount to little and change nothing.
But when the commission's proceedings were televised live and people were able to watch soldiers, prison guards and police who committed abuses brought to account by their victims things changed. "People couldn't believe government officials could be made to account," says Dr Kukah.
Though people were initially given only a month to take their cases to the commission, the flood of cases was such that this had to be extended. "It was spectacular. Even on the last day of the commission, people were still lining up to hand in their petitions." While Dr Kukah was to serve for six months on the commission he stayed for over three years. In this lies the hope Dr Kukah has for Africa and which he will outline in his talk in Dublin tonight: that Africa will gradually be pulled out of its present vegetative state once people feel they can change things through democracy.
The Senior Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford believes the process of giving people the choice of candidate at elections is central to empowering them. "That is the process: If you don't do well we won't renew your mandate . . . If you don't tell us what your plans for our oil are, we are not going to vote for you," he says.
The process will never be easy in a continent which in the past was plundered by colonisation and is now being plundered by multi-national companies.
Sadly for Africa, says Dr Kukah, it will always have the attention of the West because of its immense resources. Zaire had the mineral resources to buy France but not the power to stand up to it, he says. Colonisation meant communities with different religions, cultures and languages were turned against each other, hence the seeming unending number of wars in Africa since Britain, France, Belgium and other European nations left. The relative homogeneity of Asian regions and states meant devastating power struggles and wars did not ensue when colonisers pulled out, Dr Kukah says.
In a similar way, many African citizens today feel powerless to multi-national companies. The execution in 1995 of Ken Saro-Wiwa and others for speaking out against the environmental damage to the Niger Delta was a signal to those who might consider confronting the manner in which things are run, he says.
Companies can also have an effect of perpetuating corruption in African states, says Dr Kukah. "Companies may see a country as corrupt and will bend the rules to get things done. People won't refuse bribes when they are offered and this is largely a function of people not being paid salaries," he says.
But things are changing, though slowly. "People are at last beginning to see the kind of power they didn't know they had." In this, Africans who leave have a responsibility to keep up pressure for change. "Ireland is a good metaphor: down the line Africa might also be responsible for producing a Kennedy."
Dr Kukah's talk at the African Solidarity Centre's annual lecture will take place in the Royal Dublin Hotel, O'Connell Street, Dublin, tonight at 6.30 p.m.