A man who combines and mirrors several important références. The initials to his name are not the abbreviation for Palestinian Liberation Organization.
His surname or family name Lumumba awakens reminiscence of a towering figure in Africa’s independence struggle between the 1950s and the 60s, and that hero was Patrice Emery Lumumba, the Congolese nationalist assassinated on 17 January 1961. His murder, believed to have been plotted by foreign elements opposed to his ideological beliefs, was executed by local proxies.
They bear no direct links to him. He was born in 1962, thus predated by both circumstances of history. He is Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba, a Kenyan professor of law and public interest activist. However as fate would design, he has come to encapsulate the throbbing heart that never ceases in upholding the principles which were at play and shaped the two epochs. He fights for the common people, a platform on which the vital libération campaigns for the people of Palestine and the Congolese anti-colonial struggle rests.
Interestingly he is a Pan-Africanist whose mantra fuels the notion that the African will never let go of the interests and possessions that nature magnanimously bestowed on her, and that the physical deprivations induced by factors born out of conspiratorial machinations, cannot conquer the African spirit which is nationalist in character.
His nativity is also fit for purpose as Kenya has been another colossus of Africa’s libération struggle for emancipation and self-actualization. Remember the mau mau movement. At best PLO Lumumba reflects a given reincarnation birthed by the celestial action that is above and immune to any human contending forces. In other words, he seems to represent the unbroken will of the African who sees beyond, common with those in the ilk of saints.
He is the easy-to-be-identified African orator of the 21st century whose lonely and unsolicited fight on behalf of socially-disadvantaged persons is shrill and conspicuous because his object of interest is the voiceless majority.
People began to ask, who is this man who has consistently remained on the moral high ground with exertions for the poor and the oppressed who though are in the majority, are so much deprived, broken and weakened by the hegemonic tendencies of the few leveraged on better education, riches and instruments of coercion?
In Ghana for a three-day visit, the former Chief Executive of the Kenya School of Law and Global Visiting Scholar was enskinned by the traditional authorities of Sankana in the Upper West region as the Warrior chief. Perhaps, it is to draw inspiration and express évangélism from this academic storehouse, in seeking assistance to the community and to further put a stamp on his much-admired craft.
A common thread which run through various phases of his visit to northern Ghana served to reawaken the African spirit but was dispatched with loads of different semantics.
A punchline was his “call that the African must exorcise the ghost of low self-esteem” and to cherish indigenous culture and traditions of great value to social cohesion and development. He said, in the midst of African societies are other creations which could be good or bad but citizens of Africa ought to be wits and discerning for the choice is theirs.
