Popular Anti-corruption champion, Prof. Patrick Lumumba has asserted that Africa and African politicians must end money politics and embrace the politics of ideas to attain if it must attain its full potential.
The renowned legal practitioner was the former director of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC).
He made this assertion when he delivered a speech in Abuja on Monday at the 10th memorial lecture of Abubakar Saraki, Africa Today News, New York reports.
Lumumba stated that Africa will not grow as long as the leaders continue to throw money around.
The speaker said they had ‘perfected the art of appealing to the stomachs rather than the minds of the men and women’.
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Lumumba warned that Africa will not ‘realise her potential as long as we are dividing our people along ethnic lines’.
He accused those in positions of honour and privilege of “dividing our people on the basis of religion”.
The anti-corruption activist said that the ghost of ethnicity, ignorance, and poverty must be ostracised for the continent to prosper.
Lumumba urged African leaders to be open and transparent so people could hold them to account.
Lumumba specifically slammed the leaders for discussing what he called ‘trivial issues’ during the recent African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
According to him, the problems of leadership structure and institutional corruption were Africa’s greatest problems.
The erstwhile Kenyan anti-corruption chief maintained that Nigeria was a missing link to Africa’s greatness.
He said, ‘During the two-day summit, I like many Africans waited to hear our leaders talk about the conflict in Africa, especially Mali, Burkina Faso, about the insurgency in Nigeria, about the conflict in Central African Republic, Eastern Congo, Northern Mozambique, Southern Cameroon, Sudan and different part of Africa but I only listen to them talk about whether Israel should have observer status at the AU. Indeed they did not stop there, they constituted a team of African heads of states whether Israel will have observer status at AU. I was disappointed.’
Lumumba also noted that the proliferation of IDP camps in the region which should ordinarily serve as a temporary base but now permanent abode for many citizens was a result of a lack of empathy from the leaders.