Unclassified: Queen Elizabeth II's Letter To Idi Amin

 

Below is Queen Elizabeth II of England's 1972 letter to President Idi Amin of Uganda

Why Are Dictators Not Able To See Facts

By Alexander Opicho

I have been following political decisions of Gambia’s Yahaya Jammeh for the past five years, it has been an interesting venture which have led and could still lead any other observer to the question that, why are dictators not able to see facts the way they are, or what goes on inside the mind of a dictator. For example, Jammeh has been using the political office to serve himself sensuously, without being touched by economic and social problems of his fellow countrymen in Gambai. 

*Jammeh and Buhari in Banjul

Poverty and despair in Gambia has never been a source of contrite to him, instead he feels good to be the only strongman among the desperate weaklings. Jammeh could not accept the fact that he has been voted out, he still clung on power, neither could he see the dignity of accepting defeat to hand over power until he is humiliated through a forceful ejection by the ECOWAS military.

This behaviour is not unique to Yahaya Jammeh as an individual, but it is the shared character of all social and political dictators. Failure to see the reality is their main behaviour, and then deriving pleasure from problems of others is their second behaviour. In fact closer examination of dictators like Jammeh leads to a premise that may be dictatorship is more of a medical problem that a political problem. This premise easily gets support from the sub-normal behaviour of Yahaya Jammeh during his last days as President of the Gambia.

The corporate world is not an exception, managers and corporate leaders that are tyrannical will never accept that they are failing the organization. They will never be sensitive to the fact that they are ones making customers to withdrawal and employees to resign. Instead they will cling to their positions until the organization is closed down. Some observers attribute this behaviour of the tyrannical managers to fear, anxiety, love of power and paranoia, but this is not enough.

APC’s Failure And The Blame Game Syndrome: Requiem For Nigeria

By Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo

One factor that has led to the collapse of many societies throughout history is internal decay brought about by inept and visionless leadership. The pages of history are littered with examples of societies whose final descent into perdition was preceded by unprecedented internal rot. This type of rot is usually sustained by a corps of lackadaisical and moronic leadership that made a vocation of blaming their predecessors for the rot of society without as much seeing in their own lethargy, ineptitude and lack of foresight as significant contributory factors for that collapse. This is the product of the nemesis called “blame game” syndrome in leadership.

*President Buhari and APC National Leader, Bola Tinubu

Blame game syndrome is as old as the history of creation. It has always been the stock-in-trade for those who fail. Those who fail in their assignments must always find an escape goat for their failures. Their failures must have been caused by someone else, and not necessarily by their own actions. The Bible records the earliest form of this blame game attitude in the Garden of Eden. God, we are told in the Bible, created a man and a woman and put them in the Garden with a very clear instruction never to eat of the tree of life. 

The consequences, God had warned them, would be dire and ultimate. But Adam and Eve failed. The serpent deceived them and they ate the forbidden fruit. Adam was the head of God’s mortal creations and therefore was in-charge and ultimately answerable to God. When God, therefore, confronted him to know why he had chosen to flout His orders by eating the forbidden fruit, Adam resorted to the blame game denial. The woman you gave to me, Adam stammered, gave me the fruit and I ate it. Adam’s failure was fatal and in laying the blame on the doorsteps of the woman God gave him, Adam was factually accusing God of making a mistake in giving him the woman. Adam’s failure would ultimately bring to ruination, the fate of man on earth.

Such blame game syndrome has always been the hallmark of inept leaders. Lacking in vision and the initiative to elevate their thinking to glorious levels, and also of what should be done to transform society; a typical scenario of a bad workman quarrelling with his tools, such leaders invariably lead their societies into destruction. The history of some of the world’s worst leaders is replete with this type of blame game. And in their naivety and dearth of focus, such leaders have always hit on the expedience of the most absurd and outlandish policies to superintend the affairs of the state. The product of this type of absurdity and lack of focus has always resulted in mass murder of citizens. Pol Pot of Cambodia, Idi Amin of Uganda, Torquemeda of Spain, Prince Vlad Dracula, the Impaler of the ancient Wallachia Empire and Josef Stalin of Russia are just some of the typical examples of this class of leaders. 

And in the 21st century, Nigeria’s version of Pol Pot has reincarnated in Muhammadu Buhari and the APC. And typical of his types in history Buhari, along with his APC has reinvented the blame game and elevated it to a principle of governance. Rather than initiate practical and pragmatic policies to drive their change agenda, Buhari and the APC has resorted to blaming the past government of former President Goodluck Jonathan as the reason for their headaches, bellyaches and heartaches. The Goodluck administration must be blamed for our economic recession, for the full blown process of Islamization of the country, for the plummeting of the naira, for the ethnic and religious cleansing sweeping through Nigeria, for the unprecedented resurgence of corruption; for the government’s inability to bring back the Chibok girls; for the ever scorching activities of Boko Haram and for the total collapse of our public institutions.