In Ghana, for instance, there is a proverb: If the party must begin, it must be kindled from the morning. (Agoro besor a, efiri anopa)
That aside: Certain neoliberal species of bird has since the 1960s appeared in Africa from the west: The Afro-Saxons. At home in Ntoaboma, these species of bird – homeless, aimless, and everywhere – is popularly known as the Mis-Educated Than His Ancestors (the Metha).
One thing we know, for sure: He cannot run his own home. His home is in utter chaos – at best his spouse is disgruntled and ready to jump ship and his children are a bag of English-speaking Afrosaxons ready to fly to the west in search of chaff, once they have become of age.
For sure, the Metha cannot run a Home, yet he believes full well that he is capable of running a Nation!
Everywhere one looks, the Metha species defies all accumulated African wisdom on leadership. There is no evidence – by any means, by any calculation – of a fractal progression of his leadership skills, from his own home, to his village, to his town, to his region and then to the nation he so desires to lead.
Yet, as defiant as the Metha has been born and raised, he believes he is chosen to lead our African nations at any cost. And you ask why? Because, and this is his claim, he has been formed, especially prepared as a new species in the west, to fly down to Africa and teach the rest of us here, his newly acquired western bare-bird-ism (ie. bar-bar-ism by education and experience).
The proverb: A bad leader at home, meaning a person who cannot build his own home early in his own life, makes for an incompetent village leader when he becomes of age. Period. An incompetent village leader now certainly ruins a nation later. (In Twi, it is popularly recalled: Agoro besor a, efiri anopa! In other words, discipline begins early, very early!)
The Metha as President is a colonial imposition.He is by all intents and purposes undisciplined. He could not run his own home! The Metha as President is Africa’s most visible colonial shackle. In this there’s no freedom or self-determination.