His corpse is yet to be exhumed and reburied in Democratic Republic of Congo—a land he ruled for over thirty-two years.
Democratic Republic of Congo has moved on without Mobutu where the mere mention of his name is now a taboo.
Gbadolite and Yamoussoukro got transformed by the power of the Presidency. Now the two towns are like ghost towns. What is happening to the two towns now is a clear example of the futility and vanity of this is our turn syndrome. It happens in some countries of the world especially in Africa where leaders personalise their offices.
Let us take a look at Iraq whose leader tried to impose his tribe on the other tribes in a united country. Such attempt is dangerous as it is only very short term. In this part of the world we call it nepotism and ethnicity. But nepotism itself is corruption. Nepotism refers to granting jobs to one’s relatives in various fields including business, politics, entertainment, sports, religion and other activities. The term originated with the assignment of nephews to important positions by Catholic popes and bishops. Trading parliamentary employment for favours is a modern-day example of nepotism. Criticism of nepotism, however, can be found in ancient Indian texts such as the Kural literature.
Nepotism refers to partiality to family whereas cronyism refers to partiality to a partner or friend. Favouritism, the broadest of the terms, refers to partiality based upon being part of a favoured group, rather than job performance.
The term Nepotism comes from the Italian word nepotismo, which is based on the Latin word nepos (nephew). Since the Middle Ages and until the late 17th century, some Catholic popes and bishops, who had taken vows of chastity and therefore usually had no legitimate offspring of their own, gave their nephews such positions of preference as were often accorded by fathers to sons.
Several popes according to the papal history elevated nephews and other relatives to the cardinalate. Often, such appointments were a means of continuing a papal “dynasty”. For instance, Pope Callixtus III, head of the Borgia family, made two of his nephews cardinals; one of them, Rodrigo, later used his position as a cardinal as a stepping stone to the papacy, becoming Pope Alexander VI. Alexander then elevated Alessandro Farnese, his mistress’s brother, to cardinal; Farnese would later go on to become Pope Paul III.
Paul III also engaged in nepotism, appointing, for instance, two nephews, aged 14 and 16, as cardinals, as well as making efforts to increase the territories of his illegitimate son Pier Luigi Farnese. The practice was finally limited when Pope Innocent XII issued the bull Romanum decet Pontificem, in 1692.The papal bull prohibited popes in all times from bestowing estates, offices, or revenues on any relative, with the exception that one qualified relative (at most) could be made a cardinal.
The ancient Indian philosopher Valluvar condemned nepotism and ethnicity as both evil and unwise. In a larger world, nepotism could be applied to where you favour your tribe more than other tribes. That is enlarging the word in its interpretation.
Iraq has a population of over 40 million people. The country also has over 150 tribes. Some of these tribes include Arabs, Kurds, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Turkmen, Shabakis, Yazidis, Armenians, Mandeans, Circassians and Kawliya.
According to Wikipedia, the Al-Bu Nasir is one of a number of Arab tribes in Iraq. It is a Sunni Arab tribe comprising some 30,000 people who primarily inhabit the town of Tikrit and the surrounding area of northern central Iraq, as well as many other areas in south and center of Iraq. Although not very numerous, the Al-Bu Nasir nonetheless obtained a reputation of being “a difficult lot of people, cunning and secretive, whose poverty drove most of them to pervert the Bedouins’ legendary qualities of being warlike and fearless. Like many Iraqi tribes, it follows the Hanafi fiqh and it traced its origins to the Arabian Peninsula and maintained cordial ties with other related clans and tribes.
The tribe rose to prominence in the 1960s, when one of its members, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, seized power in Iraq. Bakr’s successor, Saddam Hussein, was also a member of the Al-Bu Nasir and the tribe became a crucial element of his hold in power from 1979 to 2003. Saddam drew heavily on the tribe to fill the upper echelons of his government and in particular to manage his security apparatus, notably the Intelligence Service and the Special Republican Guard. Most of the key posts in the Iraqi government were held by members of the Beijat clan group and Majid extended family to which Saddam belonged; some elements of the regime’s security apparatus, such as Saddam’s bodyguards, were recruited exclusively from the al-Bu Nasir.
The relatively small size of the tribe was, however, an obstacle to Saddam’s ability to fully “tribalise” the institutions of the Iraqi government. He recruited tens of thousands of supporters, whom he placed in command positions in the Iraqi Army, from a number of other tribes allied to the al-Bu Nasir. The resulting network of tribal alliances, centred on the al-Bu Nasir and bound to them by payment and patronage, provided the backbone of Saddam’s regime.
Of all the accusations made against General Saddam Hussein none is greater than nepotism and tribalism. And it led to his downfall. When his trouble started his tribe Albu Nasri could not save him. When the western world led by the Americans waged a war on Iraq, Saddam Hussein was abandoned to his fate by other tribes because he excluded other tribes from his government. He lost out. Iraq lost out too. After Saddam Hussein Iraq has lost its momentum in the Arab world. Leaders must know that nepotism and ethnicity are no longer fashionable in the modern world. It strains growth. It is bad. Very bad.
One of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to promote unity. This does not mean that there is not disagreement or even periodic conflict on the team or within the organisation. To be a unifier, the leader brings people together around a vision, a mission, or a project. Team unity drives results. Babe Ruth said in his paper “the way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.”
The great calamity that has befallen most African leaders is that they are busy promoting their tribes instead of promoting unity within their countries. And that is why there is no development in African states. Instead of national leaders, all we have are sectional and tribal leaders who promote divisiveness. A leader’s behavior either promote unity or division.
Leaders who seek to divide, for whatever reason, may think they will succeed. After all, they are playing to their allies; but in reality, no one admires divisive behaviours and the leader will quickly lose much of their support.
Concluded
Teniola, a retired Director at the Presidency, wrote from Lagos.
