Africa In Political Turmoil

In the morning of July 26, 2023 the world was shocked by soldiers who in Niger Republic, under the guise of the National Council for the Safety of the Homeland (CNSP), and loyal to General Abdiurahamane Tiani, detained the country’s President, Mohamad. Bazoum, citing security and governance concerns. Earlier in April, Mr Bazoum had dismissed Chief of Army Staff, General Salifou Mody and had also announced the plan to sack General Tiani.This was while the regional bloc, the Economic Commission for West African States (ECOWAS), was still grappling with the coup situation in Mali earlier in 2022. Following the coup in Mali and the detaining of 46 Ivorien soldiers in the country, West African leaders had met in Abuja to brainstorm on ways of restoring security and constitutional order in the region, by setting up a regional peace-keeping force to intervene in the event of instability in any member state.. Arising from the meeting with a communique, the bloc declared as follows, “The leaders of ECOWAS have decided to recalibrate our security architecture to ensure that we take care of our security in the region.” It went further to affirm that, “The leaders are determined to establish a regional force that will intervene in the event of needs, whether this is in the area of security, terrorism (or, to) … restore constitutional order in member countries.”
Though ECOWAS did not give details of the constitution of the regional force, it said defence chiefs of member states were to meet the following month to work out the modalities. However, ECOWAS financers, Nigeria and Ghana were (and still are) bogged-down with internal economic crises, while the former was in the eve of major elections as at the time of the declarations. So it happened that while ECOWAS was still in the doldrumds as a new government was about to settle down from major elections in one of its key partners, the Nigerien junta struck to complete an unbroken belt, now referred to as “The Coup Belt” of the world. This area, with conspicuous foothold in West Africa, spans from the  West African Atlantic coast, across the Sahel, to the Eastern African end that terminates at the Red Sea, representing a now notorious strip, where just within the last three years, military juntas have struck and successfully taken over some salarming and a bad dent for the west African region, and worrisome particularly for the regional bloc, ECOWAS. The bloc, and in deed the democratic world, now contemplate the future of democracy and civilian order in Africa. As early as 2017, all 15 member states of the ECOWAS were led by constitutional civilian governments. At the last count, six have been replaced by military juntas. Whereas the ECOWAS bloc pledges, among other benefits, to intervene in member states in the event of internal, destabilising crises to help restore and maintain constitutional order, the presence of these new crop of military leaders in its fold will make that complex task more unrealistic.
Already, the military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are at loggerheads with key ECOWAS international partners with the cancellations in those countres, of military agreements that allowed French troops to operate in their territories. Mali went further to remove French as its official language and called-off ties with the French financial system. While France was strategising to move troops displaced from Mali and Burkina Faso to Niger Republic as its new operational base, the coup in Niger and cancellation of ties with France have complicated the efforts. On a wider scene, apart from the Malian coup of 2012, the recent coups in Africa can be said to have kick-started in Sudan on April 11, 2019, with the ouster of President Omar al-Bashir by the Sudanese Armed Forces. The army under the command of Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf overthrew the government and National Legislature and proclaimed a three-month state of emergency in the north-east African nation, following mass demonstrations calling for President Omar al-Bashir’s ouster. On August 18, 2020, a splinter of the Malian Armed Forces, led by Assimi Gota, initiated a mutiny, followed by a coup d’état in which several government officials were detained with the president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keta. The president was forced to resign and dissolve the government. A new government came on-board with the coup mastermind and leader, Assimi Gota, playing the role of the Vice President. However, nine months later, in the evening of May 24, 2021, the Malian Army, under the command of Vice President Assimi Gota, seized his new boss, President Bah N’daw, the Prime Minister, Moctar Ouane, and Minister of Defence, Souleymane Doucouré, announcing the nation’s third coup d’état in 10 years since 2012, while transitting himself to the topmost position.
The Hichem Mechichi government of Tunisia was overthrown on July 25, 2021 by  Kais Saied, who also suspended the Assembly of Representatives of the People and removed the immunity of its members. The coup followed political unrests, caused by anti-Ennahda protests and the breakdown of Tunisia’s healthcare system following the COVID-19 pandemic that spread in early 2020.On September 5, 2021, Alpha Condé, the president of Guinea, was taken prisoner by the military. The leader of the special forces dissolved the government and the constitution in a broadcast on state television by Mamady Doumbouya. This was closely followed on October 25, 2021 by another Sudanese coup in which General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Sudanese military, while detaining some top government officials, forcefully took over the country’s government.  The ugly scene returned to West Africa on January 23, 2022 in Burkina Faso, where rumours of a coup d’état spread fast. By the following day, January 24, 2022, the military confirmed the removal from office, of the country’s constitutional head, President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré in a television announcement. That same year, in same Burkina Faso, precisely on September 30, 2022, just within eight months in office, another coup d’état removed Interim President Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba  from power, due to his apparent failure to handle the nation’s Islamist insurgency. Captain Ibrahim Traoré took over reigns in acting capacity. Islamist insurgency remains unsolved in the country.
In the last tally in West Africa, on July 26, 2023, in the counts of the number of coups that have painted the ECOWAS bloc in a new notoriety, forner President Mohamed Bazoum and his family have been left in captivity and begging the regional bloc to at least secure their safety.  After the initial grand-standing between the new leaders in Niger, backed by fellow West-African comrades-in-arm on one hand; and the ECOWAS bloc led by President Ahmed Bola Tinubu of Nigeria, backed  especially by Niger’s colonial masters, France, the European Union and other Western powers, on the other hand, it is obvious that forceful intervention in Niger would be costly, in the face of more complex underlying factors.  Mr Bazoum, who has been under intense pressure to formerly resign, is faced with the hard choice of considering his family’s safety and the increasingly elluding presidency and may likely handover to his former presidential guard commander, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, already in control of the new military junta as well as affairs in the county, even though France insists the government is illegal. These successful coups go without mentioning the unsuccessful attempts in Guinea Bisau in 2022, The Gambia in 2022 and Sierra Leone this year, with so many other unannounced rumblings. As if the rumbling storms, ominously hovering across the African continent, is seeking a new belt within the Francophone fronts, another coup, the 10th in Africa since 2017, was announced yet again on August 30, 2023 from relatively stable Gabon in Central Africa.
This time, another junta, disgruntled by results announcement by the election body, of general elections that held five days earlier, in which the ousted president, Mr Ali Bongo Ondimba, was declared winner as a sitting president seeking a third term in office, to extend his family’s 56-year hold to power in the Francophone, oil rich country of 2.3 million people.It has become noteworthy that over 78percent of coups in Africa since 1990 have occurred in Francophone countries making many to contemplate the nature of France’s influence in the governance politics, as well as in the economy and security of its former colonies, as a stabilising partner, being former colonial masters. Apart from the nature of agreements entered into with France by post-colonial, Francophone governments with respect to the exclusive economic, financial and political relations with France prior to the granting of independence, a situation most now resent, African leaders have repeatedly demonstrated excesses in power, leading to widespread discontents. Most nationals, especially in the former French colonies, see France as continuing to back governments in Africa despite their oppressive excesses. In Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and now, Gabon, there were obvious inducements to the frustrations that led to political change, however unjustified the coups may have been in the first place.
Mali’s former president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, had neglected the northern and central regions of his country, elections manipulated and repressed the consequential protests with brutal force. Guniea’s forner president, Alpha Conde, had reportedly rigged a constitutional referendum for his third term, while in Gabon, the greed for another third term, which would have assured a 56-year dinasty for the Ali Bongo family, was the anger. Burkina Faso’s Roch Marc Christian Kabore was accused, like every other leader within the Sahel, of poor handling of jihadist attacks which terrorise the entire region with heavy casualties on the armies of countries combating them. All juntas, point in the same direction of insecurity as part of reasons for seizing power, though they are yet to solve the problem. Accusing fingers have been directed particularly  towards France, who has assisted the region to co-ordinate the international fight against Islamist insurgents through the Operation Barkhane. The rapid appearances of the Russian flags in  capitals of African countries as coups take place, may be evidence of some other underpinnings. It not surpring that these new juntas while trying to edge-out France and its allies as their country’s former long-time partners, seek new alliances from either Russia or Turkey, in a fashion that paints some complex take over. It remains to be understood which way China, which has strong foot prints in Africa, stands in all these.
Take for instance, that Russian seemingly private mercenary security outfit, The Wagner Group, operates with deepening tentacles in these countries, in not clearly detailed missions.  Given Wagna’s interests in natural resources and Russia’s resource wars in Europe, one begins to ask if there is more to the recent storm hovering in Africa. Is there a neo-scramble for Africa riding on Francophone resentments to pose as uprisings? Which country would be the next? The accelerating trend of coups in Africa is evolving clearer into a more fundamental challenge to Africa’s ties with the West and its systems of civilian-led, constitutional, pluralist governments, helped by development and military partnerships. One may ask, has democracy failed us, or is it in the nature of Africans to mismanage their affairs? Resource-rich African countries and leaders who constitute themselves into visionless stooges, should have some deeper reflections. However, for the mutiniers, It the pawns on the Chess board who don not understand the games to which they are applied. France should reconsider its African policies to free-up bondings that have become strangulating, without which, playing into the hands of its adversaries, it may as well continue to expect L’Afrique En Marche! on the African continent.

By: Joseph Nwankwo