By Minabere Ibelema
On Tuesday, the French News Agency carried a news story with the online headline, “After coups in Mali and Burkina Faso, will Niger be next?” The writer apparently asked about the wrong country. That same afternoon news broke of an attempted coup in Guinea-Bissau.
As of Wednesday afternoon, it appeared that that coup had actually been crushed, as President Umaro Sissoco Embalo told the press. But then we were told the same about Burkina Faso only to realise that the putschists were stalled, not foiled.
In any case, the headline about Niger was not at all unjustified. For one thing, Niger is the one country that breaks what would otherwise be a transcontinental stretch of coups from Guinea in the North West to Sudan in the North East. For another, there has already been a coup attempt in Niger — in March 2021.
The pattern is a throwback to the post-independence era from the 1960s to through 1970s, when coups and military rule became the norm in Africa. The current outbreak is thus the ultimate case of history repeating itself. And the underlying causes are much the same, with jihadist insurgency being the distinguishing factor of the current outbreak.
“It represents a threat to peace, security and stability in West-Africa,” said Nana Akufo-Addo, Ghana’s president and chairman of the Economic Community of West African States. To which a cynic might ask, What peace, what security, and what stability? Even before the coups, the region has been convulsing under the pressure of Islamist insurgency, banditry and separatist movements.
But then, it is all relative. Experience from the 20th century outbreak clearly demonstrates that military coups compound problems more often than not. Yet, as in the past, most of the current coups have been greeted by jubilant crowds.
After Guinea’s coup in September, the AFP distributed a photo of a throng of youth jogging jubilantly behind a military convoy. They filled up a thoroughfare and stretched as far as the eyes could see. It was as though the convoy was leading them to a locale where the franc was raining down from the sky. One is tempted to go biblical: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”
When in distress, people hanker for change. Any change seems better than the status quo. But in the case of these military coups, sooner than later — when the dust kicked up by the military jeeps have settled — the jubilation will die off as reality sets in.
People celebrate military coups because the overthrown government let them down, or perhaps they never supported it in the first place. But the new governments too often offer less and the people’s plight too often worsens.
That was certainly the case with Mali’s military coup in August 2020. The putschist explained then that they had to overthrow the government because it was ineffective in overseeing the campaign against the insurgents. In effect, they said, they could wage war more effectively if they also ran the government.
But the logic goes against the principles of division of labour. Running a government is no little task. Adding it to the all-consuming task of strategising and executing battle plans can’t possibly make the latter easier. It would seem that the military would be better off focusing on the military tasks and leaving governing to civilians.
Despite the 2020 coup in Mali, the Islamist insurgency there remains intense. And that is despite the infusion of French troops and those from other NATO countries. The Malian government reportedly turned to Russian mercenaries. And that has caused a falling out with France.
In fact, the situation in Mali is so convoluted that the government recently asked soldiers from Denmark to leave the country, claiming they didn’t obtain permission to enter Mali. It is a claim that Denmark and France both denied. Whatever the case, it shows the diplomatic mess that the military has led Mali into.
In their defence, some of the conflict has arisen because of de facto loss of sovereignty, as the foreign troops have reportedly operated without consultation or coordination. “European and even American ground troops, helicopters, and drones crisscross the region, leaving Sahelian armies as supporting actors or bypassing them altogether,” writes Alexander John Thurston, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati who specialises in the politics of the Sahel.
Back to the coups, they have not always been a matter of the desire for power. The colonels who have led them have often been under pressure to do so. There is pressure from the masses as vocalised at mass protests. There is pressure from rank-and-file soldiers, whose units take regular casualties from insurgents. There are unending communal clashes over land and water.
“All of these dynamics leave colonels… caught between ineffective presidents, complacent generals, and their own disgruntled troops,” Thurston writes in The Conversation, a Melbourne-based online intellectual outfit.
But then coups can thus be justified anywhere. From Africa’s first contemporary coup in Egypt in July 1952 to Burkina Faso’s latest coup in late January, the explanations have been much alike. Whether the coup entails the overthrow of a monarchy or an elected government, the driving force is always dissatisfaction, if not distress.
Now that ECOWAS and the African Union have taken a firm stance against coups, what follows is usually a negotiation of how and when to return to electoral governance. And the typical response is much like that of Burkina Faso’s Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Damiba: “when the conditions are right.”
Problem is that that is unlikely to be next month or next year or even the one after. It could well be in perpetuity. Check Egypt.
Electoral government is by no means a panacea. But in diverse societies in particular, it provides the outlet for diverse political expression. At least that’s how it is supposed to work, where it is not subverted. By contrast, the military is unitary. To them, dissension is treason.
That’s why — despite its challenges and amidst the difficulties — democracy has to be seen as “the only game in town,” to quote the political scientist Larry Diamond.