Dr. Bolaji Aluko offers a clarification:
May Sadiq Manzan's tribe increase, for I rise to support his two questions which are central to Ayittey's contribution, but choose to augment them by re-phrasing them from "Why" questions to "How" questions, as follows:
(1) How can African development policies and political processes / structures be re-connected to the traditional systems within which most of our people live, knowing fully well that many (or most) countries in Africa are multi-traditional and multi-ethnic ?
(2) How can we curb our leaders' penchant for seeking ONLY external solutions to our myriad problems, rather than seeking first to identify home-grown solutions, then using the abundant resources around us, and combining all of them beneficially with external ones?
If just a fraction of us - just 1%, since Toyin Falola stated that we are over 10,000 here REALLY devoted our efforts to answering these FOUR questions rather than trying to shoot Ayittey down, followed by seeking genuine electoral reforms to get bad leaders out, and leave/get good leaders in, Africa might just begin to be a better place. If we kept our eyes on our progression from analysis to synthesis to implementation, we might not just wallow in so much angst.
I rest my case for now.
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