Talking Extortion
For a continent that has 57 countries and a population numbering hundreds of millions collectively. Africa deserves strong, honest men to stand and fight for the continent and her masses who are victims of poverty and other ills. Unfortunately, some of those whom our African people granted their trust, use their power to manipulate the rest of population. Politicians, policemen, and other public servants extort the citizenry instead of protecting them. Extortion is a variant of administrative corruption that is practiced by some public servants in all sectors.
-sity in hearts of their people and rather than forcing them.” It gets difficult when extortion attacks education - schools start closing their doors simply because they haven’t given any money to a particular political party, politician or other powerful public servants. Where will the school’s student go now? Shall we blame them if they decide to join terrorists’ troupes?
Several times, we have been dreaming for an Africa that has risen, but visibly our dreams have not changed a lot. We should stop dre-
Sometimes the victims have no option but to accept being extorted. This is due to the fact that extortionists might expose their victims to bodily harm, psychological torture or threaten to arrest, even when they know that the charges against them are false. Therefore people do accept to live under persistent extortion so as to make a sign of peace with their extortionists. Both bribery and extortion may be forbidden, but the difference between them is that a bribe is paid voluntarily, while extortion entails the threat of physical, psychological or moral harm.
The depressing thing is that even some governments commit extortion. You can never guess where the [large sums of] money obtained by governments through extortion goes. One thing for sure is that “If governments really need the financial support from their citizen, they should go ahead in creating the spirit of genero-
-aming and start doing; the image of Africa will depend upon us! The more we ignore extortionists' crimes, the more their power increases.
By Marie Louise Uwibambe
About The Author
Marie is from Rwanda, currently studying Computer Science Engineering. She is a patriot to the core and says about herself: "I have chosen to stand for my country through my field of study".