So America's Barack Obama is in Africa, but he has snubbed Kenya? The US President is in Ghana at the time of your reading this piece. His spokespersons say his visit to the former Gold Coast is a reward for Ghana's alleged democratic credentials. Kenya has been asked to style up before Obama can favour us with a visit. How so strange?

Nigerians are up in arms. They, too, have been sidestepped. They have been asked to style up before the political wonder boy of our age can favour them with a visit. A Nigerian official was heard lamenting on the BBC this week to the effect that if Obama truly wants them to style up, he should visit with them and show them how and where to style up.

But all this American talk about democratic styling up is a lot of fudge. I have personally never been enthralled by the Obama phenomenon. I do not even believe that Obama is such an extra-ordinary human being. What was he recently doing in Egypt the other day? Egypt is the headquarters of dictatorship and emergency laws in Africa. But Americans thrive on contradictions and double speak, from Guatemala and Honduras and from Chile and Nicaragua, all the way to Zaire. They have been associated with some of the worst regimes in history and will remain so for a long time to come. Obama is only the latest custodian of American doublespeak.

Obama is an ordinary human being who is gifted with above average abilities. He only happens to be in the right place at the right time, in a place where people appreciate such abilities as he possesses. I have written before that we do not have a paucity of individuals in Kenya today with the same abilities as Obama boasts of – perhaps even better. The only difference is that this country cannot recognise such people, or give them space. The same is true of Nigeria and of every African nation. African eyes cannot recognise gifted persons in their midst. They therefore crave offshore heroes – in sport, music, dance and drama and in politics.

That is how we get to be led by coteries of people who are concerned with political advantage rather than with the construction of functional States. You have in Kenya a President and Prime Minister who look on as our water towers are wasted away because they seek political advantage from the Rift Valley community. Rift Valley leaders have themselves put the noose around everybody's neck, yet nobody dares tell them, because of pursuit for political advantage.

From Lamu to Busia and from Kisii to Mandera, leaders and citizens alike are mesmerised by ethnic and regional identities where the national good should be what counts.

If it were not so, we would not crave a visit by some foreigner whose existence we did not even know of ten years ago.

We have no shame to claim him as ‘our own American'. But what do you expect when the entire nation delights in tribal nothing?

Stolen glory

Africans delight in illegitimate and corrupt leadership, so long as the man in charge is from ‘my community'. People like Mobutu were brazenly illegitimate and corrupt. They did not pretend about gentrifying themselves with fake elections.

But what is the difference between Mobutu and a gentleman who hurriedly gets sworn in, in hiding, after a counterfeit election? And there will be enough people out there arguing for his legitimacy. Deep down, in his heart of hearts, such a man should know that he fraudulently sits on the throne, be he in Harare or elsewhere in Africa. He is spurious and that is why his people deflect their admiration to strangers from America.

But a populace that celebrates the thrift of spurious and superfluous political parties, provided they have a tribal owner, cannot be let off the hook for the miasma that is life in Africa. It is in these spurious vehicles that bankrupt leaders travel to power. If you should be from their tribe, you speak a different language to your doom. When such characters ascend to the throne, without exception in Africa, they make the State their personal property.

They institute personalised rule in which their spouses are more powerful than people's elected leaders. A First Lady can hire and fire key staff in State offices. Political order is maintained by fiat, through sadistic State apparatus.

Societies that condemn themselves with this kind of comatose leadership have no business admiring strangers from offshore and yearning for a visit from people like Obama. In the final analysis, Obama is an American president like all others before him. He is in Ghana to ingratiate himself with the present generation of American African slaves of yesteryear, through visiting their ancestral lands. He already came to Kenya to sanitise his own ancestry ahead of his successful presidential bid. He did not want this to be an election issue. He has been to dictatorial Egypt to pacify the Islamic world. There is nothing to bring him to Kenya, and I doubt that it is important for him to come to Kenya – to bring what? Ultimately, our destiny is in our own hands.

We can make this country anything we want it to be. Yes, we can, and we do not need Barack Hussein Obama to show us how.