By David Himbara
In one of its June 2017 issue, the National Geographic Magazine ranked history’s most notorious liars. The former United States president Richard Nixon took the number 1 position, with his famous utterance in 1974 that ”I am not crook.” But faced with almost certain impeachment, Nixon resigned from on August 9, 1974, due to his involvement in the Watergate scandal.
Unfortunately, the National Geographic Magazine’s list of the most notorious liars only covers the US.
If Africa were to be included in the National Geographic Magazine’s list of the most notorious liars, Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame would be on top. This man is a serial liar — and he can’t seem to help himself. The Rwandan dictator just makes up all sorts of things and his audience nods in agreement in fear of offending him.
Take for example what Kagame said at a conference in Kigali, Rwanda, on March 27, 2018. These are his words which he also tweeted:
”We will continue to invest our time, energy and politics in science. We would be losing if we didn’t support this for the benefit of our people.”
Kagame, let us fact-check your grandiose claims by looking at the statistics from Rwanda’s Ministry of Education.
If we omit international scholars working in Rwanda, we get the following picture of the University of Rwanda, the main scientific centre in the country:
- Rwandans males who hold PhD number 445;
- Rwandan female PhD holders are 55;
- Rwandan males with Masters are 1,267;
- Rwandan female Masters degree holders are 345;
- The number of Rwandans teaching at the University of Rwanda with only a Bachelor’s degree (465 males and 175 females totaling 640) is greater than PhD holders (445 males and 55 females totaling 500).
Meanwhile, the University of Rwanda is not only dead last among national universities in East Africa, but even worse off than provincial universities, such as University of Mbarara in Uganda and Mahimbili University in Tanzania.
The questions for Kagame are: if you have invested time, energy and politics in science, what do we see here? How are these pathetic realities benefiting Rwandan people?
Clearly, Kagame suffers from pathological lying (also called pseudologia fantastica and mythomania) — or in simpler terms, habitual or compulsive lying. He cannot spend a day without telling a bunch of lies. When eventual we get a global ranking of notorious politician/liars, as opposed to an American ranking, Kagame will be on top.