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Former Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo said democracy was taking root in Africa, while warning that rising political stars would be hard-pressed to overthrow former leaders unless they joined forces in the past. elections.
Obasanjo, a military leader for three years from 1976 and then civilian leader from 1999 to 2007, said that African countries were moving towards democracy, but that much remained to be done.
Addressing AFP after the launch Wednesday night in Johannesburg of a book he co-authored on democracy in Africa, Obasanjo said: "Yes, we are progressing" towards democracy. "Africa will arrive where it needs to be," he predicted.
"Thirty years ago, elections were an aberration in Africa, today no election is an aberration," he said in an interview. "Even those (leaders) who want to stay (in power) … they are always subject to some form of election".
That's "what someone called autocratic competitiveness.They are still autocratic, but they are trying to show that they are competitive through elections."
Hakainde Hichilema, leader of the Zambian opposition, said that despite democratic progress elsewhere on the continent, some countries in the southern African region were in decline.
"We have a reappearance of authoritarian regimes and regression in the democratic space of our region is in regression.We must reverse this trend very quickly," he told AFP, quoting for example, Zimbabwe and its country, Zambia.
Obasanjo, 82, has also urged African politicians, young and future, to take charge if they want to overthrow the old African leaders – many of them in the seventies and the eighties who hold power. for decades – through elections.
"If young people think that they will come to power with a voting platform, they are not succeeding properly," he said in an interview. "They will have to seize it, those (aging leaders) will not leave."
Obasanjo co-authored the book "Democracy Works – Recreate Politics for the Advantage of Africa" with Zimbabwe's former finance minister and opposition leader, Tendai Biti. , and two other authors.
Former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who also spoke at the event, said that Africa had "come a long way", but that there were still some progress to make because it lamented "the recycling of the same leaders".
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