I guess nothing here should come as a shock, but the AU’s credibility and relevancy took another nose dive when the organization elected President Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea as the new chairman at the January 30 annual summit held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Nguema Mbasogo was nominated by the Central African region, and he assumes the AU mantle when myriads of recent crises in Egypt, Tunisia, and Ivory Coast require exemplary leadership from the continental mother body.
President Obiang, a dictator himself who took over in a bloody military coup in 1979, presided over several waves of political repression and corruption including, “unlawful killings by security forces; government-sanctioned kidnappings; systematic torture of prisoners and detainees by security forces; life threatening conditions in prisons and detention facilities; impunity; arbitrary arrest, detention, and incommunicado detention.”
Now, should it come as a surprise that the AU seems to be failing in resolving the stalemate in Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast and other “conflict hot spot” countries in Africa? They say that a pot cannot call a kettle black. Can a dictator tell another dictator to step down or point a finger at another dictator claiming “you rigged the election, so step down”? Clearly the AU’s overt embrace of dictators in its organizational structure as well as its double standard in dealing with dictators is undermining its efforts to resolve conflict on the continent.
