[Music] it's a pleasure to have you on ask to unite studio professor Patrick Lumumba the privilege to have you here let's just go straight to this how did you come about the name Patrick Lumumba does he have anything ordinary fatwas vll Moomba which is patrick lodge or tno Lumumba okay but you'll remember that this immediately after the independence struggle in the early days in the 1960 61 62 parents who are politically aware would name their children in memory of some of the Freedom Fighters and I think but resembled Lumumba distinguished himself very early on you'll find people named Kwame no kuru my Julius compared again your heir and we see it even today with Nelson Hollis Asha Mandela so that is in the context in which my parents thought that Patrice Emery Lumumba deserves to be immortalized in my person great what do you think African people can do to fight against corrupt leadership I think Africans must recognize that bad governance is harmful to their very well-being not only for the current generation but generations yet to be born this is a continent that has always had potential these are a people that have always had potential but since we regained our independence from the karana lists African leaders in many countries have consistently demonstrated that they are not working in the interest of their people and that is sad because many of the individuals who occupied positions of leadership I still beholden to the colonial masters we see from a French colonized leaders who are beholden to Paree those who are colonized by Portugal beholden to Lisbon those who were colonized by a Belgium beholden to Brussels those colonized by the United Kingdom beholden to London and the single country that was colonized by Spain Equatorial Guinea a beholden to Madrid and this is tragic of course currently many African leaders are getting beholden to Beijing and progressively the United States of America in Washington the net effect is that the African agenda is being sacrificed to the detriment of the peoples and we have examples which are live as I speak the problems in the Cameroon the problems in Togo the problems in South Sudan the problem in Central African Republic in Mali in Mauritania and these are sad things and the tragic thing is that the African Union appears to be helpless in this situation Africa has been victimized by systems of government which we do not understand and which are not serving as well and the time is now to wake up and to begin to find African solutions to African problems is it doable yes it is but we must wake up from our slumber because those who are in positions of leadership are quite comfortable with the situation as it is we must some have something in the nature of an Arab Spring the Arab streets woke up and they told their leaders you are going to do that which is in our best interest unfortunately some of the gains made after the Arab Spring have been clawed back and that is a lesson for us that if you regain your independence you must remain eternally vigilant because this is because the forces of reaction are very persistent so you mentioned the African Union I mean as the African Union become a toothless Bulldog I mean in terms of I mean getting rid of corrupt and sit tight leaders like the Zimbabwean leader Maga being you know what is amazing about the African Union which is the immediate success of the over you is that is beginning to let African down I I was amazed about a month ago when Zimbabwe and president whom I respected in his holidays as a freedom fighter and as a man of vision and intellect when he went to the African Union and made a donation of 1 million dollars and the African Union accepted it in a situation where the people in the Zimbabwe are suffering where there is almost eighty to ninety percent unemployment and the reason why the African Union has become as you rightly say a toothless Bulldog is because there are no leaders who are true Crusaders for the agenda of the African Union in the manner that we had in the early days when we had no Karuma when we hardly Rarick when we had Haile Selassie when we had Gamal Abdel Nasser today in a very perverted concept of non-interference in the affairs of other nations and in a perverted understanding of the idea of sovereignty people are not their brothers and sisters keepers so that we know that there is a festering wound in South Sudan and we are doing nothing about it we know there is a festering wound in the Cameroon's and we are doing nothing about it a festering wound in Togo and we are doing nothing about it and even when the leaders congregate in Addis Ababa for their annual Jamboree they don't discuss these problems right now I would have thought that there should be an extraordinary session of the African Union to discuss a number of things to discuss the countries which are in trouble and are mentioning them ad nauseam to ask the question what is the problem in the Central African Republic how can it be resolved how what is the problem in in the table in Togo in Gambia in the Cameroon and in many other countries so that we have African solutions to African problems because what we'll see very shortly is that the UN will sit down and send a peacekeeping force and when there is no peace to be kept and they send peacekeeping forces when in a manner of speaking the horse will have bolted away so the African Union is very disappointed when a dr. Mohammed was appointed at the German of the Commission I thought that this was a new person that would come with new energy to replace Nicosia and lamina Zuma but what I see is liturgy what I see is lack of enthusiasm what I see is like of direction what I see is continued pain I was amazed about a month ago if I'm not wrong when the international community asked the African Union to nominate a country to sit in the Security Council and they nominated the Democratic Republic of Congo how can you possibly nominate the Democratic Republic of Congo whose president has refused to hold the election whose country is generating refugees whose government is controlling Kinshasa only in real terms and where there is conflict everywhere and where the resources are being taken away where the Chinese the Malaysians and the Belgians and other rogue individuals from Europe and America and you nominate such a person you nominate Nena to sit in an assembly which is judging how God should be preserved it is a tragedy of gigantic proportion and we consistently do this in Africa and we think is normal Africa has now normalized the absurd and we think that sense is what we do yet it is nonsense and unfortunately many of us who are not in positions of influence our younger generation particularly think that this does not matter this matters if you look at the history of revolutions it was always the young people as early as 1980 and 1908 in Turkey it is the young people who came up to rise up against the dictatorial regime we remember even during the Bolshevik Revolution it was the young people we remember during the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King jr. and Ralph Abernathy among others it was young people in 1968 in France when there was a problem initially in 1958 and 1968 it was young people we remember in Tiananmen Square it was young people we remember in Korea in nineteen hundred and eighty-two the young people in South Africa in the Shopville massacre in 1969 it was the young people in Soweto in 1976 it was the young people in the Arab world is the young people but our young people in Africa today I am prisoned by Arsenal and Manchester United and Barcelona and Real Madrid and our young girls are imprisoned by ships and South American soap operas and Beyonce knows how can that be how can a continent be so a cost that I am people have no sense of her history no sense of our presence no sense of our future no wonder the Chinese are conquering us by the day and we are wandering John F Kennedy said in 1960 a society whose young men and women are in a constant state of slumber will never realize our potential our young people must wake up it is only the day that they wake up that they will be able to send a clear message to those in positions of leadership that you cannot continue to miss governess I look forward to those days let's get back to African leaders you appear to believe in the president of Tanzania that's a John McCauley our own president President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria has been considered I mean he's being perceived as a clean leader but you don't seem to be fond of him why is that I have mentioned president mahmoud Buhari fondly in a number of forums but remember that President Muhammadu Buhari came into office and has been unwell and therefore he is not performing at full throttle because of sickness and you must remember that when the captain is unwell even if there is another captain who replaces him the ship does not move with the steadiness that it deserves remember that the president of the United Republic of the Federal Republic of Nigeria inherited a system that was rotten to the core rotten because of corruption in fact he campaigned and won the elections on the promise that he would fight miss governance and corruption and I have no doubt in my mind that those who are corrupt when he is away and our world in the United Kingdom they celebrate say this is our tongue they fight back so that there is a sense in which he needs support and is not lost on me that his vice president of sin banjo has tried to support but when you are in an acting capacity there is the limit beyond which you cannot go lest your president think that you are beginning to undermine him I wish your president Godspeed in recovery and also that he institutionalizes and ensures that his agenda is bought by the others there must be a buying if you look at the whole concept of religion even if you want to give it a spiritual dimension in the Christian religion Christ had a message from heaven but he sold it to twelve others and there was a buy-in and that buy-in is what a seer Christianity spread over a period of two thousand years the Prophet Muhammad had an agenda he said he went to the mountains and he was told ikura read and reread and came back with the agenda and he sold it he tried to send it in Mac I didn't sell very well he went to Medina so that is for others and ultimately Islam spread in other words what I'm trying to say that throughout the ages no matter how good your idea is that idea must be sold to others they must buy into it and that is how you institutionalize the idea you cannot be a lone warrior in this matter because the children of Darkness hunt like a pack of wolves and they will devalue if you are alone a serious and this is quite unfortunate the last thought is that the members of the National Assembly Niger actually asked you I mean you gave a lecture and their own corruption and you gave some advice and just like I said now of corruption seem to be fighting back and Mahara doesn't seem to be getting the kind of support despite the lecture you gave what has not impacted at this leadership of the National Assembly I think if you are looking for instant office solutions you will be disappointed in the fight against corruption it has been demonstrated throughout the world and unless you sustained the war and it is a war remember that the individuals not only Nigeria but throughout the world who suckle from the breasts of garage and they are not just about to win themselves of the suckling they must be forced out of it and they'll fought right back because they individuals even in government in all sectors of government who now take their children to school on the basis of money corruptly acquired they live in houses that are corruptly acquired they do everything on the basis of things that are acquired through corruption so when you want to stop it they are going to kill you they're going to ensure that you are neutralized these are the people that you are fighting 'days because these are individuals whose conscience is dead and they are going to do anything on earth to prevent you in fact when one chooses to fight corruption one must remember that he or she can't be eliminated at all times and what President Buhari and indeed any other president in the world must do is to recruit the population if the population has been wedded to the idea that corruption is a bad thing then that is the beginning of the success of that battle when I see for example your former Minister for petroleum being investigated in the United Kingdom without being a sadist I'm very happy because if you look at the world that she is the length of accumulated that is unexplained wealth even if he lived for a thousand she lived for a thousand years she would never make that kind of money Jim Seabury who was prosecuted convicted and sub sentence in the United Kingdom what lacks in Africa is punishment impunity is alive and well in Africa and we the electorate as I say times without number I in the business of celebrating themes we must stop yesterday barista Falana said it very well that we camouflage theft by giving them nice English names money laundering fraud embezzlement and all those veneers that met them look as if it is some kind of nice game let us called these men and women by the right name there are thieves stealing on an industrial scale they are murderers and once we begin to call them like that and there mark of cain upon their forehead and we shunned them has it been done in African countries yes it has been done and I keep on repeating in countries such as Tanzania they are being dealt with in Rwanda they are being dealt with in Mauritius they are being dealt with in botana they are being dealt with once you begin to deal with them then the others who may want to behave like them will begin to take the cue we must in the nature of things on what we earn through the sweat of our brow that is the only way in which Africa will realize their potential many of these individuals were in positions of leadership leadership in Africa don't want to leave because they are teams and they are scared they are scared that if they left office they would be persecuted and my view is that they should be prosecuted you know individual such a season Habra who we know what he did was it in chad a good example to the leadership that impunity will not thrive because have been talking to a friend of mine from the Cameroon's who tells me what is happening in their country right now and other African countries are blind to it he doesn't even occupy the headlines of the neighboring newspapers although the country's neighbor neighbors in his purpose yet the Cameroon now should be in the same position as we see the conflict in Catalan in Spain yet we are talking it in page 13 in newspapers in Nigeria in Liberia and other countries the time has come that Africa must learn and realize that the world is not bothered about Africa the world is only bothered about Africa when they won to take the resources of Africa then they bother they want oiled a border and I'm using the word Botha in a very deliberate fashion not in the traditional Orthodox fashion they bother when they want to take our team but they bother when they want to take our bauxite when they want to take our cocoa and they want to take away uranium but they don't bother about us there they come to a continent without disrespecting the elephant and they want to preserve the elephant so that they can come and what the elephant but they don't care if a hundred Africans die they want to preserve our monkeys they want to preserve our leopards and our other animals but they don't care about us to them Africa is a zoo of sorts and until the day that we Africans realized that we are on our own we are going nowhere and very soon they are going to shut us out if they have not shut us out already we will not go to the United States of America will not go to Europe and I'm happy that we are being forced to stay in Africa let us stay in Africa and build Africa I mean what does Africa lock in terms of resources what what do we lock if it is solar energy which continent is capable of producing solar energy to light this continent and the entire earth if it is hydroelectricity what can we not generate if it is minerals if we wanted to make bombs if we should where do they get their uranium from if it is timber what don't we have if it is human resources we are 2 billion of us and we are people who have intelligence and yet we are kept in a constant state of conflict the Europeans the French persuading their former colonies that they are more French than the Yoruba they are more French than they are Wolof Sandman dinkles the British persuading us that we are more British than VI VB or Aruba and of course when we find ourselves in that schizophrenic state then we engage in internal conflict and they sell their arms to us tell me which African country makes guns none that's that's really it's really revealing prof in the context of these analysis would you agree that corruption should be it's a crime against humanity without doubt I know I've always said and I think that this sometimes you've got to raise things to the level of the absurd because what does corruption do to to a country look look at the the thieving ways of Mobutu Sese Seko in the Democratic Republic of Congo Congo has never recovered from the Stephen of Maputo and his acolytes how many people did not have medicine in hospitals including a hostel named after his own mother mama llamo in Kinshasa how many died perhaps more than in the Holocaust how many people have died in the Cameroon's in the 30 years that poor beer has been the president through corruption and all that money's tucked away in Peru in France how many people died in our roads because of potholes because some government official took away money that ought to have been used to make good roads so this is a crime against humanity for which punishment should be the ultimate punishment and in China they do exactly that they come to this part of the world they corrupt our leaders but if you are corrupt in China they'll deal with you family safely and take away your life so that you are no longer a danger to society I believe that corruption should be a crime against humanity because the impact of corruption in Africa in many areas how many people are maimed because we imported polio vaccination that were not important so that somebody could buy a mansion in Florida or some other Island in the United States of America in the Caribbean how many how many of the roads here in Nigeria how many have been involved in defense Contract corruption so that we have in a situation where we cannot have things that we ought to deserve I mean it has been more pernicious than any other said corruption has killed more people than the civil wars combined in Africa and yet we treated with velvet gloves we glamorize these individuals we continued to elect them in office they bribe us with 500 naira the 500 CDs 20 Kwanzaa and we continued to Alette them and then they claimed democracy look recently during the UN General Assembly New York New York what and how African leaders behaved they stayed in the most expensive hotels the world of Astoria except the Tanzanian delegation and yet in the homeless people don't have potable water to drink yet in their homes there is no medicine in hospitals you know sometimes in an interview setting such as this we appear to be intellectualizing about it the philosophizing about it but if we walked out 2 kilometers away from here here within levels the real thing there could be testimony of a woman who delivered on the roadside because there was no health facility there are real issues in Africa very real perhaps sometimes we should take these interviews there so that their testimonies right you've given passionate speeches about corruption across the African continent as have been repressing corrupt African leaders targeted at you of course there are times when I have made speeches and told where you as national of this country would have arrested you immediately but luckily so far they have not arrested but are very tainted many and I have no doubt in my mind that I have no shortage of enemies particularly in officialdom and I know particularly in my country have no shortage of enemies within and without government but this is the path that I have chosen when I could sit in my home and and simply on my salary or whatever I earn from whatever activities I'm engaged in and on drive big cars but there is a spirit that tells me that that is not good there is a spirit that tells me that there is a message to be sent out there and that that is the contribution that we can make to prick people's conscience to keep talking about this and when you do this you have no shortage of enemies but there is also a group of men and women who appreciate what you are doing and they embrace it and they do it even better by engaging in practical activities and this is what energizes us and I pray and hope that this will continue and I know there are many other people in Africa were doing better things than I am they may not enjoy the visibility that I'm beginning to enjoy in Africa but they are doing great things in their little corners of the world and I believe and pray and hope that the message that we continue to give energizes them in some way in a manner of speaking this is a crusade let me take you back home I mean does it bother you that people are beginning to think differently about you because of your support for president Uhuru Kenyatta who has been a charge to be corrected which I find that very stupid actually I'm non-aligned and positively neutral and anybody say and and those who are saying that is because as a lawyer I was instructed to appear for the Independent Electoral Commission what is the role of a lawyer the noron of an area is to urge a client's case and those who think like that are simply people who let me say stupid anybody who who think that a lawyer representing a body is supporting anybody is does not know what the role of a lawyer is is like saying that a doctor who is treating a patient with hiv/aids now supports AIDS that is our absurdities and one of the things that I've learned over the years is once my conscience is free and and and I think Winston Churchill said it very well that if you tend to throw stones at every dog that box that you never reach your destination I'm not just about the ton and throw stones at every dog that bucks and this assumption in Africa that somebody has an opinion and therefore he wants you to follow that opinion is misguided have my own views about things and of a professional duty to serve and that is what I'll continue to do because I believe I'm right and history by God's grace in the last 20 years that I've taken positions have been vindicated the position that I've taken by direct by some divine that it's after short time I'm vindicated let me ask this what's the implication of the Supreme Court ruling against the elections in Kenya as far as Jewish president is concerned I think number one I think that the majority judges got it from knows that they were wrong why when you are looking at an election and the expression of the will of the people you ask yourself where does the will of the people reside it isn't the vote and if you don't devote you count the votes you don't ask whether the transmission of the results failed to an electronic process when you have been presented with the actual documents this is the without precedent in the world and if you look at the minority ruling in that case in a few years the minority ruling which even if you listened was the more literally important so this discharges while the majority were completely wrong and they know it I think that they got the law wrong they got the facts wrong and is now even emerging that their decision was based on fake forms which must have been influential created by the petitioners it is tragic and this is one of the problems in Africa and and I see many people particularly in the social media which Africans are misusing very badly that somebody is quick to send Twitter somebody's good to send a message or Instagram or Facebook you ask them have you ever read the judgement no have not read the judgment then what are you tweeting about what are you facebooking about Alexander Pope the English philosopher once said a little modernity is a dangerous thing drink deep the Western spin or taste not Africans one of the problem that we have particularly the African intelligence eeeh we have had given unto us a medium called the tweet nine out of ten Africans are misusing that medium we were given a medium called Facebook nine out of ten times we are misusing the Facebook we are given Instagram nine out of ten we are misusing Instagram Africans must begin to be responsible and before you send that send button in all these new media that we are using read it again and ask yourself whether ten days from the day you sent the cease you've pressed the send button you would be happy with what you said unfortunately in this part of the world we are miss you look at how it was used to good effect during the Arab Spring but when we are murdering each other we don't use it instead we recede into a primordial instincts into our ethnic cocoons and begin to speak in tongues that only destroy our people that and Africans do the right thing yes we have the capacity to do the right things but we must interrogate and ask ourselves where do we as a people want to go friend of mine from Cameroon once again was saying after you listen to my memorial at Fela Kuti and I talked about Africa gender 2063 say that is too long and I can't agree with him that even as we think about a gender 2063 we must break it into compartments and in his view we must spend ten years and now even disagree with him we must spend five years resolving the African dispute because as long as we have disputes and live Wars it will undermine our affairs and that is why I said at the memorial that we must even consider calling all these rebel groups at a meeting and asking them what do you want what do you want tell us what you want are you rebels with a cause or rebels without a cause let us call Boko Haram let us call all these fringe bodies that are active in different countries al-shabaab and asking ask them the fundamental primary question what do you want tell us once we know what you want then we can move in the next direction of resolving it for the best best interests of all the countries of Africa these are hard choices but history has demonstrated that that is the way to be done as a high school student I remember we used to hear about an urban guerilla movement in West Germany called the Red Brigades carry some of the problem through negotiation the Irish Republican Army in the United Kingdom through negotiation the Basque rebellion in Spain through negotiation the Sandinistas Sendero Luminoso in Latin America through negotiations that is what we must do we can no longer afford the larger you say that there are certain things that are not negotiable my own view is that everything must be negotiated in order to preserve our nation otherwise we'll be in a constant state of conflict and conflicts acquire life of their own until the combatants forget what it is that they are fighting about they're just engaged in combat what question people ask about strong advocates like yourself stays why did you run for office to give life to your ideals I I ran in 2007 for a parliamentary seat and and I I said before I ran I was asked the same question and I rein one of the most efficient campaigns in my view I held within a constituency 250 meetings town hall meetings where I was interrogating the people I gave nobody a single cent my friends raised for me three million shillings I spent 1.
5 donated the balance the charity but I told the people that the electorate does not respond to ideas the person who won in the constituency where I was never campaigned but the night before he was distributing money to everybody what stimulates the African electorate is instant solutions the 500 naira that he or she is going to use to buy dairy for to buy may smell in my country that is the problem African electorate on average does not respond to ideas that is what we must do after African electorate once we re-engineered our governance must ask themselves what do they want and have seen consistently in almost in every other country in Africa those who acquire power through the ballot are not our best men and women death our most corrupt men and women invariably even the leaders we now praise initially could never have been elected you Erica Goethe Museveni in Uganda when he contested in 1980 s failed he came back through a guerrilla movement succeeded now the Uganda and so this man is good Paul Kagame rescued the ruin DS now they think and know is good manners an away in Ethiopia the African electorate must liberate themselves vanessa inca who is in the nigerian how many times as he tried to run for office did he not run for the presidency at one time here in Nigeria if the Nigerians elect him the anti-corruption crusade a new robado did not run for office did the Nigerians elect him he's on Ping in Gabon he ran for election did they elect them Africans don't elect men and women who wish them well so how do we change this trajectory I mean how do it reorient age the electorate so they don't liberate themselves they're not even willing to liberate themselves what we are doing the messages we are beginning to send the beneficiaries will not be us we who are the foreigners we who are the harbingers we who are putting our next on the chopping board we who appear to be speaking in the wilderness we who appear to be waiting in the void we will appear to be irritating both officialdom and the people who we who appear to be to be too opinionated we who appear to be pontificating several years down the line it will be said of us holding all factors constant they made sense so it is not us who will be beneficiaries it is another generation who will benefit and they will benefit because we started this journey those who are now reaping the benefits of the activities of people like Martin Luther King jr. oh I know a different Martin Luther King jr.
