Kofi Annan @ 80: Memories and Reflections

By Professor Kingsley Moghalu

To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to go there ­– Kofi A. Annan

The quotation above reflects my worldview. But these are not my words. They belong to someone much older and wiser, and whose mentorship and friendship has taught me many lessons in life. I salute Kofi Annan of Ghana, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations and my boss of many years, Nobel Laureate and renowned global elder statesman as he turns 80 on April 8, 2018. 

*Kofi Annan

On a recent visit to Mr. Annan at his Foundation’s offices in Geneva, Switzerland, I was pleasantly surprised to see him just as spritely, well-kept and un-aged as I had last seen him several years ago. In 2009 I had met him at his office in Geneva to let him know I had decided to resign from my UN system career and was going into the private sector as the founder of a global strategy and risk management consulting firm. As someone who always had the courage to launch out in new, versatile directions during his 35-year UN career before he became Secretary-General, he was very encouraging of my decision to seek new horizons. Later that year, he telephoned to congratulate me on my appointment as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Incidentally, the unplanned journey to that appointment began at a World Economic Forum dinner in Cape Town, South Africa at which Annan, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and I had been among the guest attendees. 

Nullification of Kenya’s Presidential Election: Implications for Nigerian Democracy

By Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo
The recent nullification by the Kenyan Supreme Court of the August 8, 2017 presidential election in Kenya has stolen the headlines in both local and international media and has dominated conversations among so many people and groups. While the courage and boldness of the Kenyan Supreme Court is emulative and instructive, one impression that the international media has tried to create is that this is not in the character of African politics- for the judiciary to affect the political process in the manner the Kenyan Supreme Court has done. I agree that this is the first time in Africa where the judiciary has stuck to its convictions and fended off executive pressure and blackmail to deliver what has reverberated across the globe as a historic feat.

In real terms, it is in the character of Africans to expose and distance themselves from evil and deceit. This character of justice and equity is woven into the African psyche and consciousness but was significantly eroded at the behest of alien values imposed on the continent by colonial experience; an experience that has elevated the warped and otiose idea of “political correctness” far and above moral conscience, truth, justice and equity. I am, indeed, overjoyed that in my life time, Kenya, through its Supreme Court has given me hope that African values of truth are still alive; it has pointed the way forward for other African countries; it has shown that our old values of speaking the truth at all times without really caring whose ox is gored can be reinvented; and that being politically correct at the expense of truth and justice is the perfect recipe for the death of nations.