Bad leaders made Africa poor – Lumumba

Renowned Kenyan Law Professor and Pan Africanist, Professor P.L.O. Lumumba, has attributed Africa’s endless challenges to the poor quality of political leadership on the continent.

According to him, leaders on the continent have failed to harness the opportunities that abound on the continent to liberate their people economically.

Speaking at a lecture dubbed Africa Must Arise” at the University of Cape Coast, Prof. Lumumba admonished leaders on the continent to sit up. “…We agree unanimously that the problem of Africa is simply and squarely one of leadership. We can ask ourselves what has been the impact of poor leadership in Africa and we determine for ourselves that indeed African economies continue to punch below their weight because our politics is wrong.” “We agree with Liberia’s Johnson Sirleaf that Africa is poor because it is poorly governed. Today we pose the question, what is it that has undermined African unity? And before we begin to talk about contemporary Africa we must ask ourselves where did the rain start beating us?”

Nkrumah will be shocked by state of Africa now Lumumba is convinced that Ghana’s first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, and other past leaders will be shocked by the state of the African continent now.

He believes the state of Africa is a far cry from what Nkrumah left it to be. “I have said it before and I think they will be shocked. I think it is Nkrumah who gets it right.

He recognizes as early as 1958 that the new colonial project came alive immediately the colonial project was terminated; so that the imperialists were ahead of the game always.

When they came to Ghana here, there was a sense in which they did not like Nkrumah because he had a completely different agenda.”