When, or may I say if, Senator Barrack Obama becomes the president of the world’s most powerful country in January next year, he might come to realize Africa as more than just a routine problem in his already complicated ancestry.

It is bad enough to have an African father and a dark skin colour in a (nevertheless multicultural) country whose prejudice might just have been encapsulated in the name of their seat of government in Washington: The White House; to have had to convince the overwhelming white countrymen that the colour of his skin is not a reflection of his prejudices and opinion much less his mental capability. In short, if Obama becomes president of the United States, even he might come to believe in miracles.

He is from a country that had spoken with votes a number of times before in favour of less desirable, and even less popular, candidates. His “African problem” referred to earlier however has to do with his inevitable umbilical cord connection with a continent whose history is marked with such saddening backwardness, stagnation and senseless brutality – slavery itself a case in point.

Obama’s very own father comes from a country whose own tribesmen have never been given up to a fair chance in the politics of their country. An Obama presidency will inspire hope and lift spirits, along with its own baggage of more than just statutory responsibility of the usual: the President of the United States has lent a strong voice in condemning the violence in the troubled East African country between the Luo and the Gikuyu in continuation of an agelong rivalry which in the year 2007 left more than a thousand people dead and thousands more homeless… Not just expected sympathy, nor empathy; but responsibility.

“I was not elected to serve one party, but to serve one nation.” Thus said outgoing President Bush in his very first speech as President-Elect in 2000. “The president of the United States is the president of every single American, of every race and every background.”

This might come to be more than applicable in this case for one whose roots lay in the cradle of civilization.