- All the way from the Gulf of Guinea, the former President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, has once again come to exercise his “Peacemaker” passion by addressing the protests that have rocked Kenya since late June.
- Kenya’s current affairs have been likened to Tunisia’s 2010 heated anti-government protests that were fast-spreading across North Africa
All the way from the Gulf of Guinea, the former President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, has once again come to exercise his “Peacemaker” passion by addressing the protests that have rocked Kenya since late June.
Obasanjo has played his role as a brother’s keeper by urging the Kenyan Government to give Gen Zs a sincere listening ear before the ticking time bomb blows and hits Africa as a whole.
He has blamed the influence of Western liberal democracy on the ineffectiveness of African governments, terming it incompatible with our ideologies.
“My thought is we have to re-think the western liberal democracy because it doesn’t seem to be working for us. The system consists of a notion called Loyal Opposition. I have looked at many African languages, they consider opposition as the enemy and you can’t have a loyal enemy,” he said.
Nigeria’s ex-president has alluded to the reality that the Gen Z wave may certainly spread to the larger continent as youths across Africa face the same problems, saying, “All over Africa, we are all sitting on a keg of gunpowder because the youths are angry, unemployed, unempowered, and hopeless.”
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He has attributed the vexation to the opulence witnessed among leaders despite claims that the country is grappling with a debt burden and an unstable economic stature.
“If you have nothing to gain, you are jobless, you are not empowered, you are in poverty and then you see your leaders, some of them in obscene affluence, then what do you do?” he asked.
Kenya’s current affairs have been likened to Tunisia’s 2010 heated anti-government protests that were fast-spreading across North Africa when Obasanjo coined the phrase, ‘From the Arab Spring, there will be an African Winter.’
The renowned African peace ambassador has signaled a similar situation if the needs of the youth are not heeded, stating, “If no adequate attention is paid to the needs of the youth in Africa, the autumn will turn to winter, and it will be very ugly for all of us.”