LEADERSHIP, GOVERNANCE AND THE QUEST FOR REVOLUTIONARY SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION; THE CALL OF HISTORY BY JAYE GASKIA

Let us begin with a poem by David Diop titled ‘The Vultures’. But first who was David Diop? He was a poet of the African independence movement era, born to a Senegalese father and a Cameroonian mother in France, the colonial master. He was educated in France and lived in France. He began writing poetry pretty early, and became one of the leading poets of the Negritude literary and political movement led by Leopold Sedar Senghor, who will go on to become Senegal’s first, and post independent president in 1960.

David Diop himself however did not live to see Senegal’s independence, nor did he live long, he had gone to Guinea in 1958 as part of the wave of influx of the African Diaspora into Guinea to support that country after that country gained independence from France in 1958 prompting the French to maliciously and precipitously withdraw all French expatriates and technocrats from Guinea in act of vengeful punishment for daring to vote for independence.