Ibrahim Traoré and his narrative of transformation in Burkina Faso is the best-sold lie in Africa for decades! While we are told he has transformed his country & is getting ready to unite Africa, he does not even control more than 50 per cent of Burkina Faso itself according to some estimates! However, he is not the first to play this game. Idi Amin played this game so well, that no matter how much Traoré tries, even with AI at his disposal, he won't beat Amin at his game - the bar is that high! Generali Ulimwengu once told me of an experience he witnessed in circa 1975 where a group of students at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria wanted to beat up a Ugandan for the crime of saying that Idi Amin was a dictator who abducted, tortured, & killed thousands, at a Pan-African symposium. By 1975, Amin’s crimes were pronounced & well-documented. However, the Pan-Africanists of the time were high on their lie that Amin was a transformative, God-sent leader to liberate Africa. It wasn't just Pan-Africanists in Africa, tens of them, & Members of the Nation of Islam flocked Kampala from the US to pay homage to Amin like a Prophet of sorts! The Ugandan who survived lynching at the Univeristy of Ibadan turned out to be Dan Nabudere - he’d run to exile from Uganda’s Amin, so he knew! For many Pan-Africanists in the ‘70s, an African leader who stood up to the white race, threatened to bomb Pretoria to end apartheid, & talked about a global battle against capitalism was the liberator they’d be waiting for! So, Amin was HIM: the African Messiah! While he talked of liberating black South Africans in South Africa, Namibia and Rhodesia, his jails and torture chambers in Uganda were filled with black Africans being tortured to death every day, for years! It's not even about Traoré or Amin: it is about the desperation for a saviour in Africa. Our leaders - all of them - have failed so much that millions of us are looking around for a saviour at every time. If we can't find one, we create him. So we created Troaré. Isn't it strange how, for all the transformation we are told Burkina Faso has achieved in a few years, we don't get real stories from Burkina Faso of the transformation by Burkinabè? It is always Kenyan, Nigerian, South African, Ugandan, Ghanaian Pan-Africanists reporting from their countries or on guided tours of Ouagadougou! I hope that someday we’ll get courageous leaders who’ll stand up to the oppressive tendencies of Washington, London, Paris, Beijing, Moscow and others. I hope that those leaders will truly put their African populations first. Clearly, Ibrahim Traoré isn't that leader. He is likely working for the some oppressive forces, actually, or running an oppressive machine himself.