CCAF Criticizes Africa’s Underdevelopment and Calls for an Africa Memorial Day Celebration

Seguin James

The Correct Connect Africa Foundation (CCAF), a non‑governmental organization, has urged African leaders to designate a day as Africa Memorial Day, a continental observance for remembrance, reflection, celebration, and renewal.

Fr. Aleakwe Odior, Executive Guardian and Chief Advocate of CCAF, made the appeal during the 2026 Africa Memorial Day (AMD) celebration organized by the NGO in Lagos.

With the theme “Political Leadership and Governance in Africa – What is the End Product?”, the call for AMD is intended to be observed in every African nation and in African diaspora communities worldwide. The event attracted traditional custodians, government officials, scholars, artists, activists, partners, and schoolchildren.

In his welcome address, Convener Fr. Odior said: “We are here for more than a ceremony. We gather because memory is a political act. People who cannot account for their past cannot govern their future. And the silence around our history has cost us dearly – in identity, in self‑determination, and in the quality of those we place in power.”

He added: “Five years ago, the CCAF lit a flame in Nigeria. Not because the timing was perfect or resources were abundant. We lit it because we believed, and still believe, that Africa deserves voices that will not grow silent, platforms that will not be bought, and one day each year when Africans everywhere are compelled to stop, to remember, and to ask the hard questions.”

“Today, that flame burns with greater purpose,” he said.

Odior continued: “Let us be honest. The evidence around us does not yet speak of triumph. Across our continent, lands of extraordinary wealth still produce extraordinary poverty. Nations whose soil holds the raw materials of global technology cannot guarantee electricity to their hospitals. Young men and women of uncommon brilliance still board dangerous boats in the dead of night – not because they lack ambition, but because their nations have failed to build conditions worthy of that ambition. This is the governance crisis of our time, and it did not arrive by accident.”

He explained that the crisis resulted from the systematic dismantling of African institutions over centuries of conquest, the creation of borders that divide people and unite enemies, and the actions of leaders in government, business, and religion who speak the language of liberation while practicing the logic of extraction. “We are not here to mourn this. We are here to name it – because you cannot cure what you will not diagnose.”

While citing genuine African leaders such as Nkrumah and Nyerere, he noted: “They each asked the right question: Governance for whom? That remains the only question that truly matters.”

According to him, “AMD was created to keep that question alive, to refuse the comfort of amnesia, and to insist that remembrance is not nostalgia but orientation.” He added: “We remember not to remain in the past, but to draw from it the strength, the wisdom, and the moral direction we need to build what has not yet been built.”

He concluded: “Our vision extends far beyond this hall. We call for AMD to be recognised as a continental day of remembrance, reflection, celebration, and renewal – observed in every African nation and every African diaspora community around the world. A day when our children are taught not simply that Africa has a history, but that history is a living inheritance with claims on the present. A day when our leaders are measured not against global opinion, but against the standards our own civilizations established. A day when Africa remembers – and in remembering, reclaims.”

Odior advised the youth: “Protect your intellectual formation. Study the history you were not taught in school. Build competence – real, rigorous, unglamorous competence – in something that genuinely serves your community. Learn to lead in the spaces you already occupy: the home, the classroom, the organization, the neighborhood. The character of a nation is not shaped in parliaments alone. It is shaped in every small decision made by ordinary people who choose not to be corrupted. Leadership is not an office. It is a practice. And it begins now.”

Human rights activist Mr. Femi Falana (SAN) also spoke at the event, lamenting the negative consequences of colonialism and neocolonialism on Africans.

He said: “It was in submission that Africa was deliberately exploited and underdeveloped by European colonial regimes. The same forces ensured that the independent struggle was manipulated to produce political parties and politicians that would retain the colonial system.” He referenced the Zikist movement, noting that its members were jailed for sedition after delivering a lecture in Lagos in 1948.

Falana lamented that, despite sedition being declared illegal in Nigeria in 1983, “what they now do is to talk of criminal libel.” He expressed satisfaction that criminal libel has been eliminated in Lagos, Ekiti, and Edo states, but questioned why it is still exploited as a form of oppression. He recounted an incident involving a colleague, Dele Farotimi, who was arrested in Lagos and charged in Ekiti for allegedly offending a powerful individual. Falana said the case was later withdrawn, highlighting that many Nigerians are languishing in custody not for committing an offense but for offending a single powerful person.

Falana maintained that these outcomes are some of the results of neocolonialism. He cited an example: “Foreign capital is used for exploitation rather than for the development of our people.”