Shameful end of Gbagbo’s odyssey

WHEN next his name is mentioned, Laurent Koudou Gbagbo may be appearing before an international court, specially constituted to try his misuse of power and adjudicate the level of his involvement in gross human right abuses as well as wanton destruction of his countrymen and other foreign nationals living in Cote d’Ivoire. 

His story is reminiscent of Liberia’s Samuel Doe, Uganda’s Idi Amin and their ilk who bestrode Africa like colossal dinosaurs and used state resources to stifle life out of their countrymen. 

What happened to Laurent Gbagbo early last week is no longer novel, keen watchers of events in Cote d’Ivoire had, before Gbagbo’s arrest, predicted a thick doom for the 65-year-old Professor of History. He was captured and arrested in his bunker by a combination of French forces and forces loyal to his rival, Alassane Quattara.

In his book, The Guardian of the Word, Camara Laye, commented on African leaders and warned them of the dire consequences of their blind leadership. He used the book as a prophetic piece to foretell doom for them. According to him, “African politicians make politics a bloody massacre, and they make non-Africans to laugh at the immaturity of Africans.” 

Non-Africans have their bias about the continent and its people and always wonder why the continent’s socio-political structures have not stopped churning buffons from steering its affairs. Little wonder their estimation of Africans and their leaders, with exception to few of them, has often had racist colouration. In race discourse, the capability and potentiality of a given race is measured by what the members of that race do and exhibit.

Deconstructing African leaders as a ‘’race’’, though exceptions abound on the continent, they have helped reinforced Manichean theory that Africans are nitwits. Why wouldn’t they  have such a racist thought  when the continent  still churns out  the likes of  Gbagbo, Mugabe, Gadaffi and many more? They are simply Africa’s contributions to the global development and gospel of democracy!

Professor Gbagbo’s 10-year-old rule in Cote d’Ivoire was a mockery. He travestied justice and collapsed democratic institutions. He washed his country’s dirty linen in the open and made non-Africans, who are not better either, to laugh at the immaturity and stupidity of Africa and its people.

His odyssey in the West African country commenced when he opposed President Felix Houphouet-Boigny administration and was later imprisoned between 1971 and 1973. Between 1973 and 1989, the beleaguered historian participated in a number of rebellions against Boigny in order to put him to rout. 

In 1990, when Boigny introduced multiparty politics in the country, he contested against the incumbent and received only about 18 per cent of the vote cast.   He was later elected into the country’s National Assembly having won a seat from Ouragahio District on the platform of the Ivorian Popular Front (IFP).

Gbagbo also contested presidential election as an IFP’s candidate in 2000 and defeated a military dictator, Robert Guei, who had allowed only Gbagbo among other contestants to contest the election with him, thinking he was an insignificant contender. Gbagbo won the election and had to topple Guei, who refused to accept defeat in the election. Gbagbo used armed struggle to realise his mandate and Robert Guei had to flee the country for his dear life.

Cote d’Ivoire’s history has always been punctuated by armed struggles and cases of recalcitrant despots, who assume power through same means, but would not want to leave at the expiration of their tenure.

Gbagbo tampered with the Ivorian constitution severally to ensure his perpetuation in power. He, alongside his wife, Simeone, held the country captive and made the country trot upside down into the abyss of crisis and miasma of unimaginable depression.  He left thousands, in the words of John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo, “burning that had no say in the matter”, and continued to spurt out threats and vituperations against his enemies.

His forlorn look and the manner with which he dabbed a towel at his body could have evoked pity. Caught in his undies, with his wife and son in what could be best described as a ‘fortress of falling walls’, Gbagbo resembled a caged bird whose wings have been clinically clipped. 

He looked into the space as though he were regretting his clinical detachment from the suffering and killings of his countrymen for the first time. That expression similarly brought to the fore Saddam’s who was smoked out of a desert hole and begged his captors not to hurt him.

Despots have one thing in common, they are potential cowards. It is the power they wield that makes them appear super human. They are a bunch of  wankers who tread the tricky path of injustice to ‘bluetooth’ fear into the consciousness of their subjects, cow them into slavish obedience and bludgeon them  into supporting their despicable visions.

Laurent Gbagbo could have chosen to step down and allowed the internationally acclaimed winner of the last November 28 presidential election in Cote d’Ivoire, Alassane Quatarra, succed him  in a peaceful manner. 

No blood would have been split and the sanctity of democratic institutions in the world’s largest cocoa-producing country could have been preserved, but the demented academic chose a wrong path. 

As a historian, one expects him to have read Chung-ming Yao and Po-erh Chen’s piece, Comrade, You’ve taken  the Wrong Path. The title is instructive and the message the Chinese playwrights brilliantly crafted into the tour de force is enough for the wise, but Gbagbo disregarded the instructive lessons and trod the wrong path. Little wonder he now cries alone. 

All his admirers and those sycophants pumping wacko ideas into his head have deserted him, leaving him to bear his burden alone. When you cry, you cry alone, they seem to be telling him. Gbagbo was let alone to walk the path of shame and ignominy without his ministers, coterie of overzealous advisers and guards to, at least, console him and comfort him over his disgraceful exit.

Professor Gbagbo rubbished African intellectuals and dented the image of intellectualism on the continent. His outrageous sit-tight stance helped to possibly fuel the insinuation that African academics, with few exceptions, are merely paper theorists locked up in their cocoons of expositions and criticisms with little inkling for the praxis of their vaunted expositions. 

They are merely intellectual “cultists’’who regurgitate hackeneyed theories and gallivant about as heroes but fail to deliver when their jejune expertise is needed.

Gbagbo is a symbol of failure, an icon of Dark Age in the 21st century, a goon, who despite his education, lacks a good sense of judgment and remained insouciant until his disgraceful arrest. 

Who would have thought that a man, who threatened to punish his rival and vowed not to hand over, would look so dejected and confused when power superior to him captured him? At his downfall, the aura of importance around him vanished into the thin air, and a once respected Ivorian leader became an object of ridicule and pity.

He does not deserve any pity, judging from his singular effort to plunge his country into crisis. Already, Alassane Quattara, has implored the United Nations (UN) to try the 65-year-old Gagno-born politician for crimes committed against humanity during his inglorious regime in the country.

Reports also have it that he has been moved out of Abidjan, the Ivorian capital, to an unknown destination in the northern part of the country by Quattara’s forces. The unexpected has begun for Gbagbo, while the curtain has been brought down on his odyssey in the Ivorian history.

Gadaffi, Mugabe and Cameroonian leader, Paul Biya, should take a cue from Gbagborian odyssey and read the signs of their sordid end on their falling walls, before the stalking doom booms out their end. Their political trajectories have commenced plunging downward and when they finally hit the ground, the dust raised may take years to settle.

Note: This piece was written after the arrest of Gbagbo in April last year.