Man of The Year: George Weah… A torchbearer of democracy, sportsmanship amid political turmoil
Leadership deficits and loss of democratic credentials resonate loudest across the African political landscape in 2023. Citizens’ pushback on parlous governance structures gave currency to coup attempts, coups, and counter coups in more francophone States. In others, surviving democracies became flawed down to the ballot papers to worsen tension. But in the middle of the muddle, and with the future of good governance at the crossroads, Africa saw a beacon of hope in selfless leadership, a moral compass for the new generation of Nigerian and African would-be leaders. To George Oppong Weah of Liberia belongs the fairytale of human highs and lows in personal and political accomplishments, but without compromise in dignity and grace.
It was not an auspicious time for politicians to test popularity on the streets. While rich economies in the global north got richer, their poor and developing counterparts in Africa got poorer in 2023.
Made worse by crises and overheating war economy, global economic realities bite harder. The perfect storm of woes threatened to capsize feeble economies in the global south.
Across African cities, governance literally tanked. Already high inflation headwinds got more turbulent. Debt burden and fiscal crisis got worse. The mass of famished citizens became despondent as millions crossed the poverty line overnight. The backlash is on hapless leaders in democracies, and even in countries that do not have the luxury.
Notably, the sweeping whirlwind of military incursions in the Central and West African regions gained more grounds in 2023. Coups in Gabon and Niger Republic brought the tally of despotic regimes to nine in three years. More countries had episodes of failed coup attempts in 12 months.
For those holding on to democracy but by the thread, elections – the nemesis of underperformers – had dire consequences for sitting leaders. The easy strategy became ‘sit-tight, manipulate the rule books to make only yourself eligible in the pseudo-democracy, terrorise your opponents, and conduct sham elections to sanction your stay’.
In other pliant democracies, including Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, free and fair elections became a rarity and no assurance even for the most qualified candidate. The cleverest in the manipulation carries the day!
Such was the general mood in the race to the general election in Liberia, just after Nigeria and Sierra Leone had their rowdy polls. The ex-soccer-star-turned-president, George Weah, and his ruling party had their work cut in the run-up to the October presidential election. Clearly, his government has failed to deliver ‘Christmas’ on the streets of Monrovia and beyond. And for a people most amenable to new gambles, only a slanted electoral process is guaranteed to edge a second term in Mr Weah’s favour.
But Weah chose a different path. Superintending a sham election for another six-year tenure was not on his mind. He told his partymen and supporters he was never scared of being substituted in the middle of the game.
And in a manner that shocked many, President Weah did not wait for the umpire’s final call of the votes in the November 17 run-off election before he called to congratulate the leader of the opposition – a 78-year-old Joseph Boakai.
Weah lost with a narrow margin of 49.36 to 50.64 per cent – which a crooked sitting president could have upturned or rally first-11 Senior Advocates to dribble his way through a purchasable court process. Not for Weah.
“A few moments ago, I spoke with president-elect Joseph Boakai to congratulate him on his victory,” Weah announced on national radio, and to the shock of Liberians.
Turning to his supporters, “I urge you to follow my example and accept the results of the elections. The Liberian people have spoken, and we have heard their voice,” Weah said to a rousing global applause.
His concession stood out as a dampener to the wave of political instability that has significantly eroded faith in democratic elections in West and Central Africa. Weah’s was another departure from a series of riotous elections that are often laced with accusations of frauds, orchestrated violence, and eventual victories by court orders.
And in a year where finding such exemplarity in governance and public life is rare, George Weah runs a solo in democratic sportsmanship to emerge the Most Valuable Player on the continental political scene.
Not so much for his political success though: conceding defeat does not solve Liberia’s deep, underlying problems and he is not the first to call time on a political career after defeat at the polls. But for his legendary can-do spirit to aspire for public office against all odds, building a credible electoral system, laying the groundwork for a good country that will outlive his tenure, and letting democracy win even at the risk of personal peril. For those exemplary selflessness and revolutionary spirit of sportsmanship that are highly sought in Nigeria and beyond, President George Weah merits The Guardian 2023 Man of the Year award.
Born on October 1, 1966, George Manneh Oppong Weah, had in football a stellar career that began in his native Liberia. Starting from the dusty streets of Monrovia, he transited to a sterling professional career in neighbouring Cameroon, France, Italy, and England, becoming the first African footballer to win both FIFA’s World Player of the Year trophy and the Ballon d’Or in 1995.
The top striker had 75 caps for Liberia, captained, coached, and personally funded the national team in his prolific 18-year run of form that ended in 2003. In 1989 and 1995, he was named the African Footballer of the Year, winning the official award twice, and in 1996, he was rewarded with the African Player of the Century. He is regarded as one of the best world players and greatest African players never to have played at the FIFA World Cup, “hamstrung by hailing from a global minnow”, according to Scott Murray.
Weah’s global fame indeed dwarfed that of his home country. Liberia, the oldest African Republic created for the settlement of freed African and Caribbean slaves, is a small country of about five million people. It is also one of the poorest countries in the world. It has a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $4 billion, with high dependence on agricultural exports, and more than a fifth of the population living on less than $2.15 a day, according to the World Bank estimates.
Internecine crises have caused two civil wars (1989-1997 and 1999-2003) in the last three-and-a-half decades. In both, about 250,000 persons were killed and more than a million displaced in what have been referred to as Africa’s bloodiest conflicts. To compound her spell of misfortunes, the devastating 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic and COVID-19 pandemic further shattered the small African country.
Apparently concerned about the socio-political and economic situation of Liberia, Weah set aside his post-soccer life of comfort in New York to foray into the political space at home.
Leveraging his footballing popularity, he formed the Congress for Democratic Change party in order to have a chance at the country’s reset from the top. Local politics turned out to be a different breed of animal from global soccer stardom. His star power spell on youths proved inadequate for presidency in the 2005 election. He lost in the second round of voting to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – Africa’s first elected female head of state.
A major talking point in the electioneering campaign was Weah’s lack of credentials in politics. Years of adept management of games and transmission of touchline gameplan to ball-striking prowess rarely qualify one for leadership position of an ethnically-diverse, fragile country. Weah took the criticisms in good faith and returned to school. In the 2011 election, he still ran unsuccessfully for vice president alongside Winston Tubman. To get into the fray, Weah in 2014 contested and got elected to the Senate of Liberia for Montserrado County.
Year 2017 offered another opportunity to fire another volley for the highest office in Liberia. This time, he was on target, beating the incumbent vice president Joseph Boakai. President Weah was sworn in on January 22, 2018 – the first African former professional footballer to become a head of state.
At his inaugural address, Mr President said: “It is my belief that the most effective way to directly impact the poor and to narrow the gap between rich and poor is to ensure that public resources do not end up in the pockets of government officials,” giving an inkling on where his administration was headed.
Presidency: Not an epic joy ride
But six years down the line was a rematch with Boakai, whom he defeated by a wide margin at the 2017 poll. The stake has however become higher. The 2023 election was a referendum on Weah’s stewardship and his promise to lift the poorest out of their misery.
Of course, many Liberians have since grown disillusioned with the lack of progress in the last few years, including his failure to establish a war-crimes court for the country. The general complaints are the same: seething poverty, high unemployment, food insecurity, poor electricity supply and widespread despondency.
Apparently frustrated, the people wanted to try a new hand, and Boakai, 78, came in handy.
“President Weah’s was not actually a bad administration,” a Liberian public servant told The Guardian in Abuja recently. “He was just unlucky with the global economic realities that didn’t help him to meet the expectations of Liberians. The people are inpatient and wouldn’t give a damn whoever you are. At the last election, they wanted to try something new and that was it,” he said.
But grafts and drugs were also on the election ballot, with the opposition Unity Party rubbing them in on Weah’s administration. On graft, Weah first refused to publicly declare his assets despite doing so in 2005 when he first ran for office. This time, his officials followed suit, ignoring his mandate to declare theirs.
Just nine months into this presidency, the Liberian press was awash with alleged 15.5 billion Liberian dollars (US$96m at the time) banknote scandal – approximately five per cent of the country’s GDP. In another instance, three senior government officials, including Weah’s ally, Nathaniel McGill, were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury department for allegedly engaging in public corruption. Weah denied having any knowledge of the affair and suspended all the three after the sanctions were imposed. There was no prosecution. After four national auditors died in just over a week in 2020, public mistrust of the Weah’s government over corruption heightened.
A university professor told Al Jazeera that, “Corruption is an unending story and will influence votes, however the deciding factor will be issues around the economy, which affect Liberians directly.” The prediction came to pass.
Weah was also seen as an absentee president who spent too much time abroad instead of addressing pressing issues at home.
At a point last year, the president scored another career threatening own goal. He was away for almost 50 days on a trip that included stops in Qatar to watch his son Timothy play for the U.S. men’s national team during the World Cup, as well as summits in Morocco and Washington.
Those pitfalls, coupled with deep-seated ethnic fault lines that influence the voting pattern, Weah and his ruling party have their back against the wall in a free and fair electoral process.
In the first round of voting in October, Boakai emerged neck-and-neck with Weah, but below the 50 per cent needed to secure an outright victory, necessitating a run-off. Almost a month later, the 78-year-old Boakai – erstwhile maligned as a “Sleepy Joe” for dozing off at public events during his time as vice-president – pulled off a stunning comeback defeating 57-year-old Weah with a 20,567-vote margin.
Drawing a curtain on the keenly contested election, Weah said, “Ladies and gentlemen, tonight, the CDC (party) has lost the election, but Liberia has won. This is the time for graciousness in defeat, to put national interest above personal interest. The Liberian people have spoken, and we have heard their voice. However, the closeness of the results reveals a deep division within our country. Let us heal the divisions caused by the campaign and come together as one nation and one united people,” Weah said in his speech.
Weah’s concession paved the way for Liberia’s second democratic transfer of power in over seven decades – the first was when Weah swept to power six years ago.
A hard-fought win for democracy
Despite the foibles of his administration, the symbolism of the incumbent president showing exemplary sportsmanship at a time of waning democracy on the continent is significant.
Weah was faced with the tough choice at a time it was most unpopular for a sitting president to just cave in without a fight. Liberia’s neighbour, Sierra Leone, was boiling after an attempted coup that forced the government of President Julius Maada Bio to impose a nationwide curfew. Last June’s sham election was a suspected trigger, coupled with the bandwagon effects dotting the entire continent.
Since the beginning of the year, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Sao Tome and Principe have all witnessed failed coup attempts.
Similarly, and in the middle of electioneering campaigns in Liberia, a group of Gabonese military officers deposed President Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose family had ruled Gabon for nearly six decades. On August 30, the coup d’état occurred shortly after the announcement that Ondimba had won the general election held on August 26.
A month before, Niger Republic had outright said no to democracy. On July 26, the presidential guard in uranium-rich Niger overthrew democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum, with the choking post-colonial structures of France as their alibi.
Much earlier in 2022, Burkina Faso joined this pattern of collapsing governments with two military coups. In April, Chad’s army seized power after President Idriss Deby was killed on the battlefield while visiting troops fighting rebels in the north.
In September 2021, Guinea followed with a military coup against President Alpha Conde. Sudan’s civilian-military transitional government was overthrown in October 2021. It all began about three years ago with Mali, which also hosted a countercoup in May 2021.
Weah was certainly not lacking in roguish examples to kowtow. Guinea, Liberia’s northern neighbour, is under military rule, as are nearby Mali and Burkina Faso. Except for the late Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, who exited at 53, African statesmen hardly retire at 57 or even 75 for that matter. Just take a look at heads of state in Cameroon, Uganda and Equatorial Guinea!
The odd motivations notwithstanding, Weah took the path of honour, defused the tension, and salvaged a fragile nation from another round of devastating crisis.
A newspaper commentator had, in this regard, reckoned that all it would have required was for Weah to use the familiar playbook; denounce the election, alter the constitution, sack some people in high places as a warning, or just improvise any subterfuge to undermine the election.
“And he would be sitting pretty calling the shots and daring the world to remonstrate – knowing he was never the first and may not be the last. If he had chosen this path, there is little evidence that the African Union (AU) or even the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) would have lost sleep,” the opinion writer said.
An exemplar amidst flawed democracies
But Weah remains committed to democratic ideals. Liberia, courtesy of President Weah’s revolutionary spirit, is therefore the latest assurance that democracy can still work in African States despite the current pushbacks.
On one hand, there is very little for comparison between Nigeria of over 200 million people and Liberia’s 5.2 million that is not bigger than some local council areas in the most populous black country on earth. Nonetheless, the remarkable leadership of President Weah in surrendering personal ambitions for national interest, and fidelity to democratic values are lessons in leadership for flawed democracies like Nigeria and others.
Weah won another laurel of belonging to the elite class of continental peacemakers and true democrats that has the likes of Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan that also conceded defeat in 2015, coupled with other examples in Ghana, Somalia, Zambia, Benin Republic, Republic of Congo, Malawi, Senegal and Kenya. Weah and others are examples that it is not all doom and gloom for the future of governance in Africa. More important, they are testaments to the fact that Africans can govern themselves democratically without being whipped into line.
Those democrats have reiterated that violence or military takeover of power is not the best mode of transition. Rather, free and fair elections, the people’s ballots and government through the constitutional means remain the best – irrespective of who wins on Election Day. They have shown the current political class that political mandate belongs only to the electorates and not the godfathers, moneybags, tribunals, or courts. Therefore, elections should not be win or bust, or ‘either I win, or the process is flawed’.
The foregoing hinges on the imperative of a credible electoral system that President Weah supported, and that the people relied on to deliver a better country. These were manifestly expressed by former president Goodluck Jonathan, who led a mediation mission for the election in Liberia. Jonathan said he was “deeply pleased with the successful outcome of the democratic process”, apparently better than he had ever seen in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. That is to the credit of Liberian people that conducted themselves through the credible process; not circumventing it but used the system to have their say. Lead campaigner at the Centre for Accountability and Transparency in Liberia, a partner of Transparency International, Anderson Miamen, believes Liberians voted Weah out because of corruption. Clearly for Liberians, ‘enough is enough’.
Hard pressed Nigerians can emulate that by also insisting on a credible system, and free and fair elections to ouster mass of mediocrities and freeloaders in the all-important political space. It begins with the consciousness that the public office is a privilege for any holder and a credible electoral system is the main avenue to pay back bad politicians, and ouster civic incompetence.
Indeed, Election Day should be a day of reckoning for politicians that took the people for granted, as it was a referendum on Weah’s foibles in office. That is the beauty of democracy; if you don’t like it (a candidate or administration), change it at the polls. Elected public office holders that cannot deliver dividends of democracy or keep promises have no business surviving another election by hook or crook – if the voters are not accomplices to the crime against the State. A credible system and vigilant public should say no for the benefit of the entire country.
Not over until it is over
It may be the last throw of the dice for Weah’s political career. But just the beginning for Nigeria and Africa’s youthful population – drawing from Weah’s illimitable phenomenal run in personal and public life. Weah’s rollercoaster demonstrated the power of self-belief and participatory democracy in fixing a broken nation.
Recall that Weah had gone from a slum dweller in one of the poorest areas of one of the world’s poorest countries to become the only African winner of football’s most coveted prize, and to becoming Liberia’s president. During his heydays of footballing, his activism on behalf of his homeland is well documented.
Many Nigerian cities are not different from Liberia’s realities from where Weah emerged. Rather than abscond in the wave of ja-pa syndrome that is draining African cities of its best hands, Weah got involved in the process, apparently heeding the ancient lore that says ‘evil triumph when good men do nothing’ .
Though Weah himself left Liberia when the country was a hopeless desert for young people, he came back home to rebuild and contribute his own part. For those who are leaving, it is apt to keep looking back for opportunities to return to rebuild the ruins that they left behind.
That ‘evil’ is walking on all fours in Nigeria, in the mode of daylight robberies plundering the exceptionally resource-rich country. An estimate has it that a whopping $15 billion has gone down the sinkhole in recent years. The fall-out is infrastructural deficit, underdevelopment, general deprivation, poverty, and misery.
Tellingly, Nigeria is a living hell and it is only a miracle that anyone survives in it. How does one survive in an economy that sold a 50-kg bag of rice at N8,000 in 2015 and now sells the same for N70,000 or more? In a country where the unemployment rate is almost 40 per cent or NBS’ four per cent, food inflation is currently at 32.84 per cent, while headline inflation is 28.20 per cent according to official records.
Today, the leeway for most Nigerians, especially those who have the wherewithal, is to elope the country in search of better opportunity – abandoning the State to the mediocre and profligate political class. But it is not George Weah’s way to confront ‘Renewed Hope’, whatever it meant, with hopelessness. Rather, it is to face it squarely and surmount it.
As it is often said, “Great men are not born great, they grow great”. Weah’s example in resilience – to get to the peak of football and politics – is worth emulating for the hardworking youthful population of Africa aspiring for greatness.
Examples of the Nigerian exceptional spirit are conspicuous all over the world and in all walks of life. Really, there is nothing wrong with Nigerians but for the misfortune of warped leadership as well as followership that fails to hold leaders accountable. Instead of giving up on their current predicament, there is the need for Nigerians to trudge on. Shunning the life of criminality and other exercises in bad faith, they must first keep their noses to the grindstone in the process of self-development, and from the vantage position of knowledge and experience get actively involved in the task of rebuilding their country.
Nigerians, like Weah’s Liberians, must get involved because politics is too important to be left to politicians. Only an active citizenry could have turned the most famous citizen – dead or alive – to become so unpopular to the point of losing the presidential polls to a man he defeated six years ago. That is the power of the voters and Nigerians should not be an exception to such brute exercise of holding the political class accountable.
In January 2024, President Weah will step down as the 25th Liberian President. Not many will remember the below-par performance of this Africa’s illustrious son while in office. But legendary is his example in democratic sportsmanship that an incumbent will hand over power without a fight. For that, he has etched his name on the continental sand of time. Though he conceded presidential defeat, he scored an historic goal for democracy.
Drs Adekoya and Oyebade are members of The Guardian Editorial Board.
