There is the saying that “money is the root of all evil” but within an African context this holds very little water. Just a little taste of power has been enough to cause the destruction of once very beautiful and peaceful countries.

Although there are a lot of Africans with genuine interest in helping to sustain democracy in Africa, the sad truth is that majority of those who got the chance to taste political power later became so drunk with it that they found it difficult to relinquish that power. Whilst there have been widespread news of post-election violence in most African countries, the root cause of such a problem is always down to the fact that certain leaders find it very difficult to relinquish power when they lose an election. This has always been the case when an incumbent government loses the general election. A lot of reasons have been given for the inability of certain African leaders to hand over power to another without any issues and chief among them is corruption. There have been various insightful articles written on how certain African leaders squandered millions of dollars of tax-payers money wastefully and later device ways to stay in power for as long as they can.

Power, in the African terrain is mostly abused by people in government through the constant display of arrogance and various uncouth behaviours. Moreover, various shady deals and contracts are also covered and defended by those in government. However, hell breaks loose when such leaders feel threatened that their rule is about to come to an end which will also bring to the fore all their shady deals. Various schemes are therefore orchestrated to make sure that the incumbent is always kept in power for as long as he or she can in order to satisfy his or her selfish desires and that of some few party faithful even to the detriment of majority of the entire population of that country.

The threat of having their secrets made public is one major thing that makes certain African leaders to develop an insatiable quest for political power. Some of these leaders always do have it at the back of their mind that they must acquire a lot of money for themselves right after being voted into office and as such employ various means to reach their goals. However, they always do forget that being in government is also part of public service.

It will take some time before a lot of these power-drunk leaders get it into their system that they are elected by their people to rather serve and not the other way round.