Union Govt – Options Left for African Leaders
This Day (Lagos)
9 July 2007
Posted to the web 9 July 2007
By Gboyega Akinsanmi
African Union (AU) leaders convened last week in Ghana to discuss modalities for establishing the United States of Africa, a regional government being designed to redefine the continent’s roles in the international community. But opinions and views differ on this agenda. While some leaders advocate for gradualism, others support immediate action. Gboyega Akinsanmi writes.
Just a fortnight ago, members of the European Union (EU) gathered in Brussels to deliberate on the union’s mandate, which analysts describe as a constitutive mechanism of regional governance. It was a moment of restating and defending national interests. Even when the agenda for better integration was tabled for crucial redefinition, each member state was conscious of not just what its nationals stand to gain if “a fuller continental governance framework is agreed upon, but what becomes its internal institutions, structures and values the moment EU Mandate is passed.” This has pushed countries like the United Kingdom (UK) to declare that it would not support of any mandate that contravenes her governance ideals. Turkey, for reasons not limited to defending its sovereign entity, did not endorse the mandate, but this did not stop the process.
In Asia too, member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are becoming wearied of regional economic communities (RECs), thus meeting at different summits and fora discussing how better continental government could be constituted. While the United States (US) too is left with the option of joining EU, African Union (AU) just concluded its 9th Ordinary Session where its 53 member states from Cairo to Cape re-examined the possibility of establishing the United States of Africa, an idea which and Ghana’s maiden President, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah first introduced more than fifty years ago. Unlike what gave rise to this idea in the day of Nkrumah, African leaders perceived the importance of coming together with a view to redefining the continent’s roles in the global community, where according to realists might and strength determine what a nation-state state stands to gain in the process of inter-state relations.
As Akin Oyebode, a professor of International Law, recently argued at a roundtable which Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), the regional government is becoming a new order in the world of 21st century not because of the expansionist drive that shaped the world from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries. He termed its rationale for the need for better cooperation and integration among nation-states aimed at ensuring sustainable peace and security. This gives credence to the emerging trend of regional governance, which some analysts argue it is essential for global development and peaceful co-existence. This development must have informed Martin Khor, an eminent Asian economist when sometimes in June, stated that “one can no longer doubt the fact that globalisation is shaping the world of 21st Century more rapidly than ever imagined.
From what experts have said, the benefits of regional governance are unlimited and uncountable. But African states are lame ducks, most of which depend on foreign aid and assistance in order to meet the public needs. At the summit, this seemed not to have rung bell in their minds as the AU Government agenda was reduced to academic debate. The agenda polarised the continent’s Heads of State. At last, there was no consensus on what seems to have set the pace another EU administration in Africa. According to most commentators, the union government has potential to set pace for the birth of regional good governance on the continent. However nationalists flawed this position, stating that regionalism “does not transform to sound democratic governance automatically. It is argued that some level of people-oriented governance, peaceful co-existence and sustainable development must first be achieved at the national level. These qualities, as donor agencies and foreign partners have observed in various reports and studies, are present in African states. Rather African countries are plagued with bad governance, corruption and large-scale corruption. This kind of environment, as evidences shown in all parts of the world, is not good enough for this model of governance, which could have been tagged the United States of Africa.
Like EU whose creation was traceable to the European Economic Community, AU has a long historical antecedent. The spirit of African cooperation and integration, some historians have opined, is as old as the origin of mankind on the continent. According to them, the continent was characterised with social harmony and peace prior to the advent of colonialism, the experience which further sealed off the cracks in the continent’s walls of brotherhood and united them as the same brothers and sisters in battle against the justice of the west. So, argued Oyebode, the integration of African states has been existing in mind and spirit before Nkrumah, the Father of African Union, proposed the idea just after Organisation of African Unity (OUA) was established almost fifty years ago.
He made two major proposals. First is the United States of Africa while second is African High Command. The former, he argued, “requires African independent states irrespective of their colour, language and race to come to together and form a common government strong enough to meet the meet their people who were just let loose from the manacle of colonial power.” But his first proposal was not supported among other African leaders because most states were ready to surrender their sovereign powers. The latter was meant to establish an African Armed Forces. As some experts said, this idea was borne out of the need to defend the territorial integrity of Africa. Nkrumah’s proposal of African High Command was informed by the continent’s decades of servitude under different colonial powers. But the fear of domination or what some scholars called internal colonialism, discouraged most African leaders like President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Sir Abubakr Tafawa Balewa to cast off his proposals in the waste bin of history.
The OUA existed for forty years with insignificant success and mixed reactions of poor performance. The institution could be likened to a monument of African independent, though as analysts observed, “this does not translate to desired governance, peaceful co-existence and sustainable development. Rather the history of African states is no better than the history of war, which has brought untold miseries to both extinct and existing generations of African people.” In this light, as the new institutionalists argued, it “will take decisive efforts of African leaders to set their loose from this jinx of decades.”
It was upon this impression that the leaders of Africa convened seven years ago to redefine the framework of intra-African relations. The idea of Nkrumah was invoked again to shape the continent that was then being consumed in the furnace of civil wars and armed conflicts. These form the challenges which development agencies and foreign partners would lead to the collapse of civil order in Africa. Ghanaian President John Agyekum Kufuor stressed this while addressing the summit that the need to end the continent’s nightmares culminated in the establishment of AU. Unlike when Nkrumah proposed it decades ago, the continent’s tune of cooperation and integration has now taken a new dimension. In the last summit, almost all African leaders agreed that there “is a need for regional government if the continent must be relevant in the new world and compete reasonably, but the speed to evolve this kind of government polarised the leaders into either the axis of gradualism and that immediate action championed by South African President Thabo Mbeki and his Libyan counterpart President Muammar Ghaddafi respectively.
Inside the Summit
A lot of questions were raised on how to evolve the union government. When started, African leaders were united on how to manage conflicts in Darfur and Somalia. In harmony, they called for another United Nations (UN) resolution to end the years of violence and armed conflict, the ripple effects of which some of them believe would hinder the flow of foreign direct investments (FDIs) to the continent because of the spread of terrorist attacks and activities therein. Besides, there was emphasis on how to end the regime of poverty, health crisis, bad governance, human trafficking and massive unemployment, which still constitute the major challenges of Africa.
Reacting to what one could term “major threat to human survival,” Kufuor took the position of Nkrumah when he said “we must not fail the people of Africa and its future by unexamined decisions during this grand debate”. This was the notice he served to other Heads of States and Governments at the opening of the Session. “We are at the crossroad, and at the same time at the threshold of a new era, with great opportunities but also many challenges and responsibilities for Africa. Whatever position any of us will espouse in the debate should be guided by tolerance and critical analysis, even when we disagree with each others’ positions. Given our high sense of responsibility to the course, I am confident that this Summit will rise to the occasion and the challenges ahead,” Kufuor said.
He was hopeful that since it was agreed that this all important issue of union government should be debated upon within the various countries by their respective citizenry, it is hoped that whatever the African leaders would put forward as their view points would reflect the views of their people. With this guiding principle, the leader of modern Ghana said, everything else should be secondary. He stressed “gender, religion, ideology and country should all be subsumed under the welfare of the peoples of Africa who empower us as their leaders to meet at this Summit, emphasising, “only our peoples’ ownership of this debate will give this conference its legitimacy and sustainability”.
Kufuor hammered on the need for individual African countries to merge their resources for the common interest of the continent in order to stand the howling tide of globalisation, which requires might and strength to prove African relevance in the new global order. Using the effusive words of Nkrumah, Kufuor said in resounding echo that “Africa must unite.” This, according to him would seek to accelerate Africa’s development, had been slowed down by a litany of factors including slavery, colonialism, imperialism, diverse cultures, language, geographical barriers, racism and bad governance.
Given the complexities and practical difficulties in the path of attaining the proposed Union Government, Kufuor charged the various Africa leaders to make mutual trust and respect their topmost priorities. We must, he said, acknowledge the necessity for shared values in terms of respect for human rights, principles of good governance and the rule of law. These values Kufuor described as the requirement of an effective Union Government that should constitute the fabric of the Union’s budding institutions like the Pan-African Parliament, the Union Court of Justice and Human Rights among others. Concluding with the words of encouragement, he said: “We should be able to arrive at a common understanding of the sort of continental government we want for ourselves and how to develop a roadmap with timelines towards its realization. This is our cross”.
Summit of Storms
When the summit started, there seemed to be harmony among African leaders. But the trouble kicked when the agenda of Union Government was tabled, and the leaders were divided on its pace. Ghaddafi, who led the radicals, advocated for immediate action. He was aflame about the idea indicating that this is an idea, which has for some time been consuming him. He ceased the opportunity to drum up the need for unity for Africa to overcome its myriad problems. He did not waste time in setting the agenda, calling on the continent to unite under a single government to compete effectively in a globalised world. But while he was supported by Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade, President Umaru Yar’Adua and his South African counterpart Thabo Mbeki opposed on the ground that the plan for union government should be implemented without rush.
But Foreign Minister Sheikh Tidiane Gadio said Senegal was ready to put its name to a new government, stating that a breaking down of barriers could only benefit the continent. We can even bypass the discussions, according to him, Africans are ready, but the question is: are the African governments ready to catch up with their people. Like Ghaddafi, he subscribed to a common foreign and defence policy in Africa as well as an easing of trade barriers, which according to him, are clogs in the wheel of African development.
In the view of Mbeki, the troubles experienced by the AU since it was launched at a summit he hosted in Durban half a decade ago should be addressed by strengthening arms such as the current executive, the AU commission. At the last summit in Ethiopia in January, Mbeki told one delegate there was no point in building the roof over a house without cementing the foundations. Speaking from the perspective of Mbeki, African Union commission President, Professor Alpha Oumar Konare acknowledged at the opening of the three-day meeting that the current executive had to be improved and its remit was ill-defined.
But Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe did not support the above position as he joined the radicals to advocate for immediate actions. He said: “To tell you the truth, until and unless we put our act together, organise and start pulling our resources together, we will never ever prosper from any aid and assistance from any source outside Africa.”
When the continent leaders could reach consensus, Ghaddafi called for referendum to determine what the masses support the idea or not. Even though referendum is conducted and majority of African people throw their weight at the constitution of Union Government, can a myriad of African crises and contradictions not bedevil it? Just as it is in Europe, both governance and security environments play key roles in building an effective regional government. Unlike the EU whose member states have good records of governance except in few countries that are just emerging from the ashes of armed conflict, Africa does not have enabling environment and basic infrastructures required to establish an effective continental government. This is what is required of African states to achieve before discussing a union government, which can only be facilitated by accountable governance, good standard of living, functional infrastructures and peaceful co-existence.