Lesson From The Gabon Coup

The dust raised by the coup in Niger is yet to settle before another one took place in Gabon. The soldiers stated clearly their grouse for ousting their President, Ali Bongo. The story of Gabon is one of infamy and the shame of a continent. Bongo’s father, Omar Bongo, was vice president to the country’s pioneer president, Leon M’ba from 1960 to 1967 when he became the president after the death of M’ba. He had ruled the tiny country of 2.3 million people with an iron fist from then to 2009 when he died after a cardiac arrest and his son, the current president took over. During that time he had a record six terms of seven years in office and was only stopped by his sudden death. His son, the overthrown president had already done two terms of seven years each and had just won an election, which of course was seriously being contested by the opposition. He was on the verge of being sworn in before the coup took place.
If you add his 14 years to his father’s 42 years, both had grossed 56 years in power. And what particularly incensed the people of Gabon most about him, just as it had left external watchers of the country in total bafflement, was the level of Bongo’s ill health. He had a debilitating stroke which had left him barely clinging to life. Yet, rather than retire after two terms, he wanted to illegitimately cling to power for a third term, in a near vegetative state with greatly diminished faculties and motor functions. So, if there is anything to be drawn from this, in all the sabre rattlings of ECOWAS with regard to Niger Republic and its own regime change, the latest coup in Gabon has indeed shown that as long as African leaders make conditions inevitable for coups to happen, nothing would discourage ambitious putschists from having their way, with the people welcoming them with warm embrace.
This is also why it really would be difficult to convince the soldiers to restore Bongo to power. He epitomises the current disturbing levels of political rascality and leadership failures among the political class in the continent, with such repugnance that should worry every decent citizen. It is therefore not surprising the soldiers often justify their actions with the logic of the need to act against these aberrations in the interest of the people. And, ironically, it is at this time the people’s level of awareness is in ascendancy that the politicians are descending to their very lowest deep, in the desperate ways they seize or try to retain power. All done in the much abused name of democracy, through appalling processes that could best be described as civilian coups. For these are coups in their negation and flagrant violation of all decent conventions and the electoral processes and laws of their countries.
The situation in Nigeria is no less gulling. The people have increasingly witnessed a very fouled political space in ways that in the past, would have been purely unthinkable. It had been surreptitiously unfolded upon the people. First, they saw how a man who had come fourth in a gubernatorial election was later declared winner by the most superior court in the land, in a most bizarre wave of a judicial wand.  Then they witnessed on national television the “off the mic” session, in the national assembly, where a senator would also later, on another national live TV show of shame, publicly confess how his wife who was a judge had assisted his colleagues in their cases.  In the same senate, a man who did not contest his party’s primaries, a supposedly inviolable prequalification, is sitting pretty to represent those who did not elect him. Ditto others, especially the many former public office holders, with mountain-high cases of corruption involving trillions of Naira that nobody is asking any further questions about.
Then things got even more roiled-up with the last elections which were openly compromised at various levels, in ways that were truly most insulting to the people’s sense of justice and decency. Evidences put forward at the various tribunals have shown how state institutions have been extremely corrupted, cornered and converted solely for the purpose of aiding and abetting the political class to capture or retain power. And apart from rigged elections, many also came with such baggage like forgeries and other due process infractions that had been deliberately glossed over before being challenged in the tribunals. They are now seeking to hide behind a lean middle finger of technicalities, poked out by corrupt judicial officials in the system, to mock the people who were condescendingly told to “go to court!” Add these to the unbearable level of suffering Nigerians are enduring under leaders who themselves are ensconced in heavenly privileges, and you get a complete incendiary mix.
The Gabonese soldiers who ousted President Bongo said in their coup speech, “Today, the country is going through a serious institutional, political, economic and social crisis. We are therefore forced to admit that the organisation of the general elections of August 26, 2023, did not meet the conditions for a transparent, credible and inclusive ballot so much hoped for by the people of Gabon. Added to this is irresponsible and unpredictable governance, resulting in a continuing deterioration in social cohesion, with the risk of leading the country into chaos…” Anyone could have mistaken the above identified malaise as being made in reference to Nigeria. Only that ours are truly worse. Like a joke, we saw how our politicians started and are now trying to normalise a politician belonging to two different parties at once. Maybe our constitution has been changed to harbour one party system
The direct effects are in the  diminished value of our statecraft and the total erosion of virtues in the Nigerian statesmanship. Nigeria has become a country where everything good has been in steady decline, getting to this all time low. This scary tipping point is from where our leaders must delicately rally all to pull the country back from, if at all what is happening around us is making any raw sense to any of them. And as we do this, Nigerians look upon the Judiciary for the first real heave, to create that space upon which everyone can stand for the national recovery efforts.

By:  Wordshot Amaechi Ugwele
Ugwele wrote in from Port Harcourt.