Coups and the spectre of military rule in West Africa, By Jibrin Ibrahim

In Guinea, the coup against Alpha Conde was organised by Lieutenant-Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, his kinsman, who he had appointed as head of the well-resourced and armed elite brigade, to ensure that no coup against him succeeds. The 83-year old president had been in the democratic opposition for decades, until he got to power at 72. After ten years and two terms, the expectation was that he would take a well-deserved rest.

Following the Mali coup, veteran African governance analyst, Eloho Otobo had lamented the lost expectation of military coups being deterred by Article 30 of the African Union Constitutive Act, on the unacceptability of unconstitutional changes of government. He reminded us that although coups have become less frequent in Africa: “There have been 18 coups in 13 African countries between 2002 and 2020. This translates to an average of one coup per year, since the Constitutive Act was adopted.

The tragedy is that Africa learnt an important lesson from the decades of military rule and authoritarian single-party regimes that started transiting into multi-party democracies in 1990. That liberal multi-party democracy is part of a set of variables that could be a veritable tool for conflict prevention and peace building in addition to its use value in the form of the freedoms, rights and citizenship it provides.

Over the past decade, commitment to these principles and above all practices have waned as a result of lack of respect for them by so many African Presidents. Our problem is sabotage by many African leaders with responsibility for implementing them. The result is that elections and democracy are being emptied of their essence and African citizens are beginning to question the meaning of elections without choice and democracy without dividends.

The military of yesteryears are coming back in full force. They seek for signs from the people – dissatisfaction against the bad governance of incumbent governments and popular protest, they ride on that to power with promises of quick return to a new regime of proper democratic governance and promptly institute another round of bad governance. The African people must crack this old, and now “new” code of recycling bad governance.

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