THE TUNISIAN REVOLUTION, A NEW AFRICAN AWAKENING?

 Icheoku says congratulations to the proud and brave people of Tunisia for forcing out of power, their tyrant and despotic former president. They yearned for it. They worked for it. They prayed for it. And finally they sacrificed for it and today, they have restored dignity to the people of Tunisia by telling their former president who is really in charge. Today the proud Africans of Tunisia are free - free from despotism, emasculation, killing, economic strangulation, political stifling, expression, association and above all of a maniacal tyrant who has lorded it over them for over 23 nightmarish years.


As Tunisia's former despotic president for life, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, scurries into exile with his tail tucked in between his legs, to Saudi Arabi, the receptacle of African despots (Idi Amin died there in exile), Icheoku says bravo to the people whose resilience made it possible. They believed in a cause; they worked for a cause and they sacrificed severally to accomplish their mission which all the curfews and state brutality could not stop. Icheoku says what the people of Tunisia accomplished is not an easy feat for Africans whose despots are as tyrannical as they get; and spares no effort at visiting their terror on the people just to stay in power and maintain their stranglehold on the subjugated people.


Icheoku hopes that the fire which has been lit in Tunisia will turn into a raging inferno that will spread throughout the continent and scorch all those other despots doting the landscape, from Libya to Egypt to Lesotho to Gabon etc. What happened in Tunisia also sends warning shots across the bow of other Arab maximum rulers in the Arab world who are deeply entrenched over the many years without providing any meaningful economic and/or political opportunities and way-out for their people. It is about time the political revolution which swept across Europe in the nineties passed through Africa and the Arab world. It is indeed time all those other African despots, dictators, tyrants, maximum rulers and sit-tight leaders are held to account for their stewardship to the people and not the other way round, as usual. Leaders who hole themselves up in their high walled and gated palatial mansions, indulging themselves with the choicest of things money can buy, while their people languish in abject poverty and want, and in dire austere condition which they are oblivious of and appear clueless on the fix.

For over 23 years the African people of Tunisia have endured unimaginable torture and great human degradation in the hands of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his Jezebel wife; who deployed and employed maximum powers to stay in power. They continuously lied and deceived the Tunisian people, with tales of providing them with security and protection from the bad Al-Querida people; while the people looked, yearned and hoped for an improved standard of living which never came. But like everything under the sun, fortunately there is a time fixed for it and today, gladly enough, the tyrant has fled into exile. Icheoku regrets that he did not stick around long enough for the hands of the people of Tunisia to get hold of him and suffer him like similar dictators Romania Nikolai Ceausescu, Iraq's Saddam Hussein etc. But well he is gone and Tunisia is at last free!


Icheoku says the Prime Minister Ghannouchi is part of the problem and should also go for a total and complete clean break from the past 23 years from. A prime minister since 1999, Ghannouchi is rather too close to the deposed president to bring anything new or flesh to the table of Tunisians yearning for a new dawn. Tunisians should therefore demand his exit and exile if possible and swear in the chief judge or speaker of parliament who shall organize an election within the next six months to enthrone a peoples orientated new leadership. Like United States President Barack Obama, Icheoku applauds the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people who today have liberated themselves from the twenty-three year long tyranny of their former President Ben Ali. Congratulations! The forces of light again triumphed over that of darkness and a brutal force dictatorship of a despot had its final limits.


It once again showed that arbitrary arrests, brutal control of the print media, Internet access, physical attacks on journalists, emasculation of human rights and opposition activists are sometimes not enough to stop the will of the people. They always lasts for a moment - up until such a time that such a tyrant is swept away in the flood of peoples power protest, generated by and to protest against such despotism. It is equally impressive that new age social media helped accelerate the change which happened in Tunisia as it provided the people timely knowledge of development as they joined to bring about the change they desired and needed. Icheoku aligns itself with this new media and together with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the rest of other blogosphere hope to help spread the gospel of real democracy at work in Africa, especially in Nigeria. Our hope at Icheoku is that the people of Nigeria will listen and act as they learn who their rulers are likewise other Africans in Egypt, Libya, Gabon, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Lesotho etc. How can a person be in power for 23 years and expect to have new solutions to the problems of the country, solutions which he never invented these past two decades plus?

 It would be recalled that protests which culminated to the forced exit from power of former president Ben Ali erupted spontaneously on December 17, 2010 when a young unemployed, 26-year-old university student Mohammad Bouazizi was stopped by officials from hawking some fruits and vegetables on the roadside, drenched himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. His death following the burns he received provided the trigger for a people already neck deep in frustration and economic depredation and the rest as they say is now history. It was the needed catalyst which reminded Tunisians the level of corruption, unemployment, political and social exclusion and deteriorating of other social conditions in their country; made possible by an uncaring president and his wicked wife whose udders have no milk of human sympathy or kindness flowing in them. The authorities tried to quell the resulting protest with excessive use of force deploying soldiers and killer-squads on the streets with dusk to dawn curfew as well as intolerable media clamp-down; but unbeknownst to them, it was already too late as the genie could not be bottled anymore and the presidency of Ben Ali was consumed in the fire of freedom which went through Tunisia.

Like in Tunisia there is a lot of unemployment and lots of unemployed graduates in so many African countries including Nigeria, Libya, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Kenya, Ivory Coast etc. Icheoku wonders when similar movie as played itself out in Tunisia shall play in these countries' theaters; or is there something different about the wiring of Tunisians from these other Africans that they are too complacent and docile to stage such peoples revolt and using peoples power to upstage their inept leadership, as their brave Tunisian counterparts just did?  As other Africans await feverishly for the Tunisian inferno to touch-down in their territories, Icheoku says, we are very excited at such a prospect and pray for God's speed in bringing it about. Once again, congratulations to the good brave people of Tunisia for showing the way to other subjugated impoverished Africans on how it is done!