Mo’s humanitarian misadventure

Motors

By Timothy Makokha

Guys with megabucks have a million little ways to spend it. It doesn’t matter how they earned it, they can always use it to portray an image they want the public to see of them.

Take for instance Alfred Nobel, a man highly celebrated for the prestigious prizes endowed by his estate. Nobel is the same man who invented that deadly staple of modern armies, TNT. In modern speak; he redefined warfare on a scale never seen before.

Then there is the career imperialist and bigoted racist Cecil Rhodes who we would rather remember for his generosity through the famed Rhodes Scholarships rather than his ruinous craft in Africa’s diamond mines. And Bill Gates, a proven cutthroat capitalist has since transformed his image to an embellished humanitarian.

This far, the trio have had their massive fortunes work for them, unlike the Sudan-born British billionaire Ibrahim Mo, who despite staking the biggest individual award in the world, has yet to make an impact.

The Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership is the largest annual award in the world. The prize comprises $5 million over 10 years, $200,000 annually for life thereafter and up to $200,000 a year for 10 years towards the winner’s public interest activities and good causes.

With the best brains and fÍted global leaders on the prize committee, however, it should be surprising to Mo that his dream for a corrupt-free continent still rings hollow three years after he introduced the award.

And only after the former President of Botswana Festus Gontebanye Mogae was awarded last year, Mo has run out of good men and women to honour. He is stuck with his millions.

Not that the initiative carried any wings of promise. In fact, there has never been an idea so slow-witted, yet so well resourced. Mo’s vain sacrifice is premised on the simplistic if not wrong analysis of the African problem and the curse that is our leadership.

It has never been true for instance that our leaders are corrupt because they are less motivated financially. Rather, it is that they can salt away millions in Swiss banks and still get away with it. A man used to helping himself on the juiciest parts of the pie finds less pleasure waiting to be served by a patronising chef.

Secondly, the substance of this prize suffers fundamental flaws in its definition of good governance as a gift of benevolent leaders bequeathed unto a helpless people. On the contrary, good governance is a function of working systems largely driven by an informed and active citizenry.

Thirdly, the initiative invests so much in rewarding the well behaved leaders who are only so few but fails on sanctions that would tame the brimming appetites of a whole horde of leaders on the continent.

While the award purports to motivate leaders to demonstrate clean hands, its denial is inadequate as a penalty to corrupt leaders. I can bet there was not a single presidential soul who went to bed cursing because Mo kept his prize this year.

And by refusing to say why this year’s prize was withheld, Mo squandered an opportunity to candidly remind African leaders that they had miserably fallen short of the standards required to win the prize. Precisely, they are either failures or corrupt or both.

—The writer ([email protected]) is a Sub Editor with The Standard Group

Business
Premium Ruto's food security hopes facing storm amid fake fertiliser scam
Business
Premium Nairobi business community plans protest as over 700 containers held at port
Real Estate
Premium Affordable housing: Will State's data-backed action now pay off?
Real Estate
Premium Building to the skies, but at what cost?