When I heard that the Mo Ibrahim Foundation has again not found an eligible candidate to be awarded its Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership for 2012, I was disappointed. I was not disappointed in the Foundation for refusing to give out its prize (and the dollars) nor was I disappointed that the Foundation might have set its standards too high to achieve. I am disappointed that the dissatisfaction with the current and recent leadership in Africa is not something you hear only from “the Opposition who are bad losers from the last elections” but also the sad conclusion that experts like those you find on the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s Prize Committee have repeatedly arrived at.
The decision of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation not to award its prize to anyone in 2012 is instructive; it is the year that the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize. You may already be aware that news of the EU’s Nobel Prize was received with mixed but mostly critical reaction while the decision of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation not to award its prize was accepted as the right one [at least, in my circles]. Perhaps withholding the prize when there is no convincing winner is something that Nobel could learn from Mo. But also the Mo Ibrahim Foundation should consider scrapping the leadership prize and awarding it to the most improved countries as argued by some.
Over the years, the Mo Ibrahim prize has been awarded to President Pedro Verona Pires of Cape Verde (2011), Festus Mogae of Botswana (2008) and President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique (2007) while Madiba Nelson Mandela was awarded the honorary inaugural Laureate in 2006. Since 2006 therefore, 2009, 2010 and 2012 are the ‘Dark Years’ in which the Prize Committee did not find deserving winners.
But does it really matter that no one is awarded the Ibrahim Prize this year when the world is full of prizes to be won, bought and sold? I think it does: in the withheld Ibrahim Prize, we find an indictment for all of the dubious prizes that have been awarded. We find an organization that looks into the face of retired leaders and says to them “you should have done better but you did not”. It says to the serving leaders “we are keeping an eye and will make our verdict known when you leave office”. It is very clear to me that the Ibrahim Prize (along with the annual ‘Ibrahim Index of African Governance’) is leagues ahead of the other awards that our presidents and their predecessors win daily. But I do not claim that the fellows at the Mo Ibrahim Foundation are the only ones who know how to make evaluations and complete checklists.
For now, Mandela and co stand alone as the proud Ibrahim Laureates while other ex-presidents look on. Yet in spite of the absence of a 2012 laureate, I think a lot has been gained. We now know for example that our decision as citizens to observe our polity and to discuss the achievements of our leaders is a very important contribution to the development process. But for our careful scrutiny and readiness to expose scams and white-elephant projects, we might have had someone citing non-existent projects and achievements to win the Ibrahim Prize. Obviously, a common thread of achievements could be found in the work of the 4 laureates and even before the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s Prize Committee; we would know when our leaders have achieved a similar benchmark.
We also have a very detailed report in the Ibrahim Index with which to engage our leaders in conversations. Since our presidents are quick to take praise and bask in the euphoria of every roadside award they have won, let us then challenge them to explain where they and our countries fall in the Ibrahim Index. For example, we could casually ask the leaders of Libya to explain why the country scored only 44 points this year when Ghadaffi in the years before had scored between 50 and 53 points. We could also ask the revolutionaries in Libya to comment on the fortunes of their country too. Similar questions could be asked for many leaders and I think we need to ask them daily. Who knows, we might come to discover tremendous successes in our countries that the Ibrahim Index had failed to record, or we might find something really wrong in Mo’s methodology. But until then, the next time you hear that an African leader has won an ‘All-time Legends’ Merit Award’ (or something that sounds like that), you should run to the Mo Index of the country under his/her tenure and compare. I am not saying Mo’s verdict is the Gospel; rather I am saying there is something to learn if the two reports are opposed to each other.
Keep this in mind: if our leaders blow their own trumpets and we blow our whistles, Mo is likely to keep back his money.
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Daniel Nengak
Nengak Daniel Gondyi presently studies International Migration and Ethnic Relations (Masters) at Malmö Högskola in Sweden. Before this, he was a Senior Programme Officer at the Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD in Abuja. He holds a Bachelors’ in International Studies from the Ahmadu Bello University. At CDD, he worked on a number of projects including the West Africa Insight which seeks to collect and analyse futures information in West Africa.
He thinks citizenship is not a status represented by a passport but a bunch of rights and privileges enjoyed by the holder. Therefore, the quality of citizenship is directly proportional to the rights being enjoyed by the holder and the right [and possibility] to vote is on top of the rights of citizenship. He says you would fail to convince him if you claim to be a citizen but could not vote in the elections of the country whose citizenship you think you hold.
He reads and writes about human rights and democracy in West Africa. He loves cycling, asking questions and reading. Nengak can be reached via email on nengak.daniel@gmail.com
