'Sounds of Enya and Kenya' By Mike Awoyinfa

I want to wish you a happy new year, but deep down I am not happy. Events around the world have conspired to make me unhappy.

Look at how that pretty, brainy, charismatic, courageous and charming ‘Woman of Pakistan’ was cruelly and sadly dispatched to the great beyond by diabolic sharp shooters and suicide bombers who have been brainwashed to believe they are bound for paradise after senselessly shedding the blood of a woman.

Beatific Benazir Bhutto, the first woman to lead a Muslim nation, assassinated just like that by lunatic self-annihilators. This one tragic event ruined my Christmas and my New Year. It was the ultimate bizarre twist to an anticlimactic year, resurrecting memories of the atavistic and iconic list of the famous who were assassinated but live forever: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, Indira Gandhi, Anwar Sadat and Benazir Bhutto.

As I sit down to write this piece, I am listening to the music of Enya, a Celtic pop group whose sad, hauntingly beautiful melodies help me to cope with grief and tragedy.

As I listen to Enya’s sad music, my mind is on the sad East African country of Kenya. I love the sound of Enya and Kenya.Today, from Kenya comes the music of sadness and pictures of shock. From Kenya, comes a political scenario that is a typically African déjà vu. You will think that at least one African country has come of age and has crossed the threshold of civility, but it hasn’t. We are still where we are: locked in the Stone Age, lost in the barbaric Hobbesian jungle of African politics where the loser unashamedly turns himself into a winner and dares everybody to go to hell, if you don’t accept the result.

It was the English philosopher and political theorist Thomas Hobbes who wrote about us many centuries ago about living in the state of nature where there is “continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”Before now, Kenya used to be an African pastime paradise, a country famous for its tourism, a country living in a state of nature surrounded by parks where wild animals live in harmony with human beings, bringing in a flock of tourists from all over the world. But today, the Kenyan paradise is being threatened by the greed of one man who lost an election and is unwilling to concede defeat—as they all do in Africa.

Kenya used to be counted among the civilized nations of the world where law and order exist, where elections are comparatively free and fair.

Twice, I have visited Nairobi and each time Kenyans used to ask me questions about Nigeria. How come we have rulers who don’t respect democracy, who have demonized and given democracy a bad name? How come we can’t organize a simple election in Nigeria, such that we must rig elections and kill ourselves in an unending struggle for power?

The story of Kenya and its embattled President Kibaki is the story of a leader who failed many times to unseat the then Arap Moi, until Arap Moi’s constitutional tenure came to an end. It was then that Kibaki was able to come to power in 2002—thanks to a coalition of opposition parties called National Rainbow Coalition who gave him the support that brought him to power. Prior to the election, he had a car accident which forced him to campaign on a wheelchair and that did not stop him from winning. He defeated Uhuru Kenyatta, Arap Moi’s chosen successor.

But today, the story is different. Kibaki has tasted power and as they say power corrupts absolutely. Such was the extent of power drunkenness in Kenya that Kibaki’s wife went about media houses wreaking havoc there and slapping journalists for publishing unfavourable stories about her.

Today, old man Kibaki has lost an election but instead of quitting the stage, he wants to sit tight and watch the whole of Kenya go up in flames. Look at the scenes everywhere in Kenya: soldiers shooting at will, killing at will, houses destroyed, churches burnt with the congregation of children immolated in a fashion reminiscent of the biblical Nebuchadnezzar. And I am asking: When will a Daniel come to judgement in Kenya? This is the kind of stuff that makes people hail the military when they come in.

But I don’t pray for a coup, even for my worst enemy.As a Nigerian, I cannot in all honesty criticize Kenya much as I want to. How can a thief call another thief a thief? How can an election rigger call another election rigger an election rigger? What have former President Obasanjo and his protégé President Yar’Adua to say about events in Kenya other than keeping quiet? A kettle cannot call another kettle black, because our hands are all stained with the charcoal of electoral fraud.

I pity the people of Kenya. We, the wounded electorates of Nigeria, have passed through this ‘jagajaga’ and ‘wuruwuru’ path, when before our very eyes, election results were either magnified, falsified or even nullified outrightly, as in the case of June 12 when the people’s choice Chief MKO Abiola won an election but was stopped from becoming President of our beloved country, resulting in the rampage, the anarchy and the mass killings that is now unfolding in the forsaken paradise of Kenya.

CULLED FROM SATURDAY SUN, JANUARY 5, 2008