Choose legacy or a lifetime of regret
On July 3, 2013, Egypt’s ex-president Mohammed Morsi was ousted by the army, following a turbulent year in office marked by widespread protests and human rights violations and jailed for 20 years in one of the poorest prisons in Cairo with labor and five years of probation.
But he did not live to complete 20 years in prison, Morsi died on 17 June 2019 after collapsing in a Cairo courthouse, where he faced an array of trumped-up accusations of espionage as some people might have put it but it was true because we all know who Africa leaders are and what they have always been. I cannot conclude that Morsi was a bad guy but this is what you get when you abuse power at the expense of the people.
He was 67 years old. The calls for a probe into his death come amid an absence of details regarding what exactly happened that day and the reluctance of authorities to share information.
This guy, Morsi was everything when he was in power. He could eat anything he want and lived in extreme luxury. He had many connections and he was worshipped like a second god. But when that time came, he was reduced to nothing, a nobody that is what he became. The money he had taken while in office was now powerless. His friends who have been in the same boat were not so lucky.
They were arrested and asked to face similar charges and some stabbed him in the back and joined the other government. This can also happen to anyone and this should tell us that not everyone who eat from you will always stand with you when your world turned dark. In fact, this is the time you will remember how powerless you were when in power. This experience of the late Morsi could and will always remain as a lesson to our African leaders that power is something temporary and should be used for the betterment of a common man.
Another example is one man who thought he was a god not until he was forcefully removed from the office by the sleeping citizens who just woke up from a deep slumber. When the Sudanese people took to the streets against him for a final time at the end of 2018, it was a battle too far for the then-75-year-old. Omar Al-Bashir was removed from power in April 2019 by the military after months of protests against his rule. That some of his closest confidants were among those who ousted him showed how his pillars of domestic and international support had collapsed from beneath him.
His legacy was one of bloodshed, extremism, international isolation and economic ruin. At the time of his downfall, he was the only leader of a nation wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of money laundering, war crimes against humanity and genocide.
In 2020, almost a year after his downfall, Sudanese anti-corruption committee confiscated assets valued at USD 4 billion from the ex-president and the money was returned to the rightful owners, the public. Al Bashir has just returned to nothing overnight after years of repressive regime, killing and endemic corruption.
God is really great; anyone can imagine how this man has played his cards. He was greatly feared because he used not to joke with people. He could kill and do anything he wants and gets away with it when he was in power but now, he is in the hands of men who are younger than him. He faces death sentence if convicted and he will surely go through because he was a kind of a man who ruled Sudan with iron-fists.
The story of these two men, Omar and Morsi happened at their different times and space but it points us to a similar destiny. When you kill the poor and force them to leave their homes just because you want to stay in power. When you amass public funds and stash this money in foreign banks. When you impoverish your own people and leave them to die in abject poverty, this is how you will end.
I am not attacking an individual here because I will never do that. When you see me wielding my pen here, I’m asking you to remember the two men and how they have ended up. If you are an African leader, you need to be exceptional in your own way. Africa is and has always been a land of the great, the blacks. We don’t want you to rob the same Africa for years; we don’t want to see you torturing the same Africa for generations. This is my humble request. I don’t want you to follow the same footsteps of Bashir and Morsi because nobody is above the law. There will come a day when law will win and it will always win.