Guinea-Conakry was to Francophone Africa as Ghana was to Anglophone Africa. Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure held and sustained the torch of African liberation, pride and dignity for as long as they did not make a detour. Ghana dithered, slumped, groped and has recently become a strong institution-leadership reference point in Africa. Guinea, on the other hand, is going down the drain by the day.

Before Guinea-Conakry slipped into decadence, it was a safe harbour for African liberation fighters; a flashfire of African Unity, a Quartier Latin in Francophone Africa, a football power house and its prestigious assembly of men and women of letters and science was the pride of the African continent.
From Cameroon, Felix Roland Moumie and a generous number of UPC leaders sought refuge in Guinea-Conakry. The late Moumie was interred in Guinea.

From South Africa, Mama Africa, Myriam Makeba elected domicile there and was designated Guinea’s delegate to the UN. From the United States, Black Panther and Civil Rights Activist, Stokely Carmichael served as aid to Sekou Toure. From Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, the great revolutionary, Amilcar Cabral, and the PAIGC. From Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah and the remnants of the Ghanaian experiment in scientific socialism. Sekou Toure declared him co-president of Guinea. The list is long.

As a proponent of African unity, Guinea produced the first OAU Secretary-General, Diallo Telli who died in painful and obscure circumstances in one of Sekou Toure’s political dungeons. The handwriting was already on the wall.The glittering ensemble of Guinean men of letters like Camara Laye, Solomana Kante, Tierno Monenembo, Williams Sassine, Fodeba Keita, Djibril Tamsir Niane, Thierno Diawo and so on was proof of a vibrant intellectual class. Camara Laye’s novels, The African Child and The Radiance of a King, were a must read in schools in Cameroon.

On the football turf, Guinea-Conakry dominated African soccer at the club level in the 70s. Football magicians like Papa Camara, Bengally Sylla, Abdoulaye Keita, N’jo Lea, Cheriff Souleymane, Ibrahim ‘Petit Sory’ Keita, Amara Toure, Kerfalla Bangoura and so on were a delight to watch. When they donned the jerseys of Hafia FC or Horoya FC and took to the field they were the perfect embodiment of Henry Kissinger’s assertion that “soccer at its highest level is complexity masquerading as simplicity”. They impressed on generations of Cameroonians. Hence, it is common to hear X or Y called Toure after the dribbleur d’élite Amara Toure. Ngomba Endeley and Ivo Nanje know better.

Hafia Club of Conakry won the African Cup of Champions Club thrice (1972, 1975, and 1977) and were finalist in 1978. Horoya of Conakry won the Cup Winners’ Cup now African Confederation Cup in 1978.
Before Sekou Toure passed away in 1984, Guinea-Conakry was more of a police state than the harbinger of African liberation, pride, dignity and economic success in spite of its very rich subsoil (e.g. it has the largest bauxite deposit in the world). A cross-section of Guinean elite-intellectuals scampered abroad for fear of big brother Sekou Toure.

The immediate past President, Lansana Conte, did little to sanitize Guinea’s image abroad. When he died leaving behind a quasi-narcotics State, an obscure and pale copy of Thomas Sankara, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara took over in a bloodless coup and began a series of shows or showmanship dubbed DADIS SHOW that ended in a bloodbath on 28 September 2009, three days shy of Guinea’s Independence Day.

Troops loyal to Captain Dadis Camara mowed down over one hundred and fifty Guineans, raped women and ransacked the homes of opposition leaders because they dared organize a rally against Captain Dadis Camara’s alleged bid for the presidency. To be fair to the man, he apologized but did the usual thing; he fingered imaginary enemies, promised to set up a commission of inquiry and sought to distract attention by spoiling for a fight with France thereby throwing in the neo-colonial element.
“Guinea is not a subdivision of France”, he bellowed.

However, it did not receive the same response as Sekou Toure’s ‘NON’ to De Gaulle. Times have changed. The International Criminal Court that most African governments and the African Union loathe should press charges against Dadis Camara whose show is becoming ugly by the day. As it has become a routine in Africa, a no less sanguinary leader, Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso, a latter-day sage, passes for ECOWAS’s mediator in a crisis that recalls to mind the manner in which he acceded to power.