It is sad that in this modern era, coups still take place in Africa. It is regrettable that the September 5 military coup in Guinea even elicited jubilation in the streets of Conakry, the country’s capital. The trend in the world today is against military putsch. It has become an aberration and everything possible must be done to stop the illegality from spreading further in Africa.
The head of Guinea’s elite army unit, Mamady Doumbouya, tried to justify the military action. He said his forces removed the country’s first democratically elected President, Alpha Conde, from office because of poverty and endemic corruption ravaging the country. Guinean government had increased funding for the office of the President and National Assembly. Ironically, it cut down spending on the police and the military. In August 2021, it announced hikes in taxes and petroleum prices. The development had angered the citizens.
Guinea had been under autocratic regimes from 1958 when it gained independence from France. In 2010, Mr. Conde emerged the first democratically elected President following the death of Lansana Conte in 2008. He promised to return Guinea to the path of democracy. When it was time to hand over to another President after completing his term in office in 2020, he engineered the change of the country’s constitution by referendum to allow him go for a third term in office. When his citizens protested against the trend of events, Conde cracked down on them.
When a leader refuses to follow the tenets of democracy, he makes what happened in Guinea and elsewhere inevitable. It is unfortunate that the type of democracy we run in Africa is prone to breeding coups, which was first introduced in West Africa in 1963 by Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo. Sudan has had 15 coups, the highest in Africa. Nigeria has had its fair share of this problem which first occurred in the country in 1966. Since 1999, the country has been transiting from one civilian government to another through democratic elections.
In recent times, coups appear to be resurfacing on the continent, especially in West Africa. In August last year, soldiers overthrew President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in Mali and suspended the country’s constitution. In May this year, there was another coup attempt in that country. Apart from Mali and Guinea, there was a coup attempt in Niger. In Chad, President Idriss Deby, who took office in 1990 after a coup, died in April this year while fighting with rebels in the battlefield. He was running his fifth term in office after he had won a referendum allowing him to stand for a third term in 2005. What appear to be in vogue now are ‘constitutional coups.’ Some African Presidents, such as Paul Biya of Cameroon, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda have been in power for more than 30 years each. They tweaked their countries’ constitution on term limits to allow them to continue in office. Last year, Ivorian President Alassane Outtara, joined the train when he won a third term in office after changing the country’s constitutional provision of two-term limit.
Some other African leaders who manipulated the constitution to elongate their stay in office include Ismail Omar Guelleh of Djibouti, the late Lansana Conte of Guinea, the late Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo and Paul Kagame of Rwanda.
The implication of manipulating the constitution for tenure elongation is that what happened in post-independence Africa, when coups were fashionable, may resurface and cause more political instability in the West African region. African leaders must find a way to ensure that the disturbing trend does not continue.
We commend the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for its efforts to outlaw coups in the region. In 2017, it intervened militarily to force Yahya Jammeh of Gambia out of office. It has also condemned what happened in Guinea, suspended the country’s membership of the regional group and demanded a return to constitutional order and immediate release of Conde.
Besides, the African Union (AU), the United Nations (UN) and some world leaders have condemned the coup in Guinea. The AU has also suspended Guinea. We condemn it too because it is not in line with the tempers of the time.
The AU should activate the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance which it ratified in 2012. The charter calls on member states to identify illegal means of taking over power or staying in office and sanction the culprits. Like it did to Mali in the wake of two recent coups, the AU should suspend any country that engages in violent overthrow of government. This should serve as a deterrent to other countries that may be contemplating a similar thing.
The constitutional duty of soldiers is to protect the country, not to dabble in its politics. Whatever is the reason for the Guinean putsch, the military junta must make plans to hand over power to a democratically elected government within the shortest possible time. While violent change of government in Africa is deplorable, it is worth pointing out that good governance remains the only panacea to incessant coups on the continent.