Beyond the two historical incidences of slavery and colonialism that are generally blamed for the perpetual underdevelopment of the African continent, there are the factors of sit-tight leadership and military usurpation of power. It was against this background that Barrack Obama, the 44th President of the United States and the first African-American to hold that position, in his speech delivered to the African Union (AU) on July 28, 2015, dwelt extensively on the interrelated issues of unconstitutional tenure-elongation and military coups in Africa. In his words:
“I have to also say that Africa’s democratic progress is also at risk when leaders refuse to step aside when their terms end … When a leader tries to change the rules in the middle of the game just to stay in office, it risks instability and strife – as we’ve seen in Burundi …You look at Nelson Mandela – Madiba, like George Washington, forged a lasting legacy not only because of what they did in office, but because they were willing to leave office and transfer power peacefully … And just as the African Union has condemned coups and illegitimate transfers of power, the AU’s authority and strong voice can also help the people of Africa ensure that their leaders abide by term limits and their constitutions … Nobody should be president for life …”
Had President Pierre Nkurunzizaof Burundi been present at the occasion, he might have chuckled at the mention of his name, wondering why he was singled out by the American president over a phenomenon that is rampart among Africa’s leaders – young and old, conservative and radical, reactionary and revolutionary, etc. Truly, several African leadershave perpetuated themselves in power, thus sowing the seeds of instabilityand their own destruction. Believing that luck would see them through, they ignored the ugly fate that had befallen their predecessors in this aspect. Nkurunziza is a case in point as highlighted by President Obama.
In April 2014, as the end of his 2nd term was fast approaching, President Nkurunzizadecided to amendthe constitution in order to be eligible for a third term. The unconstitutional move precipitated a violent political crisis pitching his ethnic Hutu supporters against the Tutsi-based opposition. Through massive vote fraud, he won the third term election in July 2015, and buoyed by his success, he deemed it expedient to eliminate presidential term limit from the constitution, thus enabling him seek further terms upon the expiration of his controversial third term by August 2020. Amidst rising levels of violence he backpedaled, promising to hand over power at the end of his third term. “Man proposes, and God disposes,” goes the popular aphorism. Nkurunzizadied of a heart attack (some suspect Covid-19) on June 8, 2020, two months before he was scheduled to handover power.
The case of Guinea’s President Alpha Conde, who was overthrown in a military coup led by Colonel Mamady Doumbouya on September 5, 2021, is equally instructive. In March 2020, Conde,who was serving his second five-year term,stage-managed a referendum that purportedly backed his unconstitutional third term bid. Amidst violent protests, he won the third term election held in October 2020. As the protests intensified, his security agencies responded in equal measures of brutality. One of such agencies was the “Special Forces Group” commanded by Colonel Doumbouya, who subsequently turned around to overthrow him. Like most African sit-tight leaders, the 83-year old President Conde had forgotten that “the wise actor leaves the stage when the ovation is loudest.”
While Conde’s opponents are jubilating over his downfall, Colonel Doumbouya is rehashing the usual script of Africa’s coup plotters by adducing time-worn reasons for his coup: political instability in the country; mismanagement of the economy; rising levels of corruption in the country; manipulation of the electoral process by the president and his ruling party; etc. He has promised to form a “Union government” that will launch a transition-to-civil rule programme as quickly as possible, although he is yet to indicate how “quickly” it would be. For now, his utterances only serve to remind keen observers of the likes of Idi Amin and Jean-BedelBokassa.
Upon seizing the reins of power from President Milton Obote on January 21, 1971, Major General Amin told jubilant Ugandans that he was not interested in politics nor in holding onto power; and that he would hand over to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as normalcy was restored. What was the time frame for the restoration of that normalcy, he did not say. By the time his murderous tyranny was terminated by Tanzanian forces and Ugandan rebels on April 11, 1979, Amin had transformed into a blood-thirsty monster, with the official title of: “His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal, Alhaji, Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and the Fishes of the Seas, Conqueror of the British Empire (CBE) in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.”An estimated half a million Ugandans perished during his eight-year maniacal rule; more were hounded into exile.
Colonel Bokassa of the Central African Republic (CAR) did not fare any better than Amin. When he toppled the government of President David Dacko on January 1, 1966, he announced in a national radio broadcast: “Central Africans! Central Africans! This is Colonel Bokassa speaking to you … At 3:00 a.m. this morning your army took control of the government. The Dacko government has resigned. The hour of justice is at hand. The bourgeoisie is abolished. A new era of equality among all has begun …”Unfortunately, the people failed to notice the warning signs contained in his vacuous statement, and they could only rue their fate as he transformed into a blood-thirsty lunatic who killed and maimed at will, while allegedly cannibalizing some of his victims. In December 1976, he did what no other African tyrant dared: he turned his republican country into an empire – the “Central African Empire,” with himself as the “Emperor.”However, his imperial show of shame lasted less than three years. On September 20, 1979, the self-proclaimed emperor was overthrown in a French-orchestrated military coup. Surely, the neo-colonial master had determined that enough was enough of its puppet’s madness.
The scourge of military rule in Africa began in Egypt, in July 1952,when General Mohammed Naguib and Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser led the “Free Officers Movement” to overthrow the monarchy of King Farouk. Sudan’s General Ibrahim Aboud followed suit in November 1958 by overthrowing the government of Prime Minister Ismail al-Azhari. Borrowing a leaf, Colonel Mobutu Sese Sekoof Congo (Zaire) sacked Prime Minister Lumumba’s government in September 1960. In the continent’s first coup-related assassination, President Sylvanus Olympio of Togo was gunned down on January 13, 1963 in a plot hatched by Sergeant Etienne Eyadema. Three decades later, nearly all fifty-five sovereign states of Africa had experienced a military coup in one form or another, with the notable exceptions of Botswana, Morocco, Senegal, and Tanzania.
The Cold War was a major factor in the preponderance of military coups in Africa. Military opportunists, charlatans, and ethnic chauvinists enlisted the support of either of the two super powers in their bid to overthrow unfriendly governments.Coup plotters who denounced socialism and communism were quickly supported by the US-led West bloc, while the Soviet-dominated East bloc ran to the aid of those who railed against capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. Expectedly, the end of the Cold War, following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, has seen a significant decline in military coups across the continent, since plotters now find it difficult hiding behind ideological façade to attract external support.
To a large extent, gone are the days when Africa’s venal junta leaders deceptively branded themselves as revolutionaries, liberationists, redeemers, emancipators, etc., while plundering, looting, and stashing away their booty outside the continent. Some, like Nigeria’s General Ibrahim Babangida, frittered away untold sums of money in bogus transition-to-civil rule programmes even as they schemed to civilianize their junta rule. The hallmark of their deception was the adoption of catchy regime-names, in what the Nigerian avant-garde Afro-beat musician, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, aptly termed “Soldier Go, Soldier Come”: National Liberation Council; Revolutionary Command Council; People’s Redemption Council; Supreme Military Council; Armed Forces Revolutionary Council; National Council of the Revolution; Military Committee for National Liberation; Military Committee for National Recovery;Military Committee for National Salvation; etc.Of course, some meant well for their respective countries, but a lot metamorphosed into sit-tight blood-thirsty tyrants.
Ironically, the root of the endemic problem of sit-tightism in Africa is traceable to the inordinate ambitions of the continent’s nationalist leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, SekouToure, Modibo Keita, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Jomo Kenyatta, Kamuzu Banda, etc. No sooner had they wrested the reins of power from their various colonial masters than they began to entrench themselves in power by instituting one-party dictatorships and life-presidency. They muzzled all forms of opposition and in some cases eliminated them violently. The case of Nkrumah is particularly instructive.
Rightly hailed as the father of African nationalism, Nkrumah was a visionary leader who quickly succumbed to the lure and trappings of power as both genuine admirers and sycophants eulogized him as “Osagyefo” (Redeemer).The man, who vowed to make Ghana an enviable African democracy at Independence in 1957 had, by 1964, instituted a one-party dictatorship with himself as the life-president. As the world struggled to come to terms with his metamorphosis, the Ghanaian armed forces pounced, ousting him from power on February 24, 1966. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” wrote the 19th Century English scholar and politician, John Dalberg-Acton. It had taken only nine years for Nkrumah to transform into a tyrant. For some others, the time frame was much less.
In his aforementioned speech, President Obama alluded to the example of Nelson Mandela who endured twenty-seven years and six months in jail under apartheid South Africa white minority rule, only to emerge as the first black majority-rule president of the country on May 10, 1994. Against popular expectations, he chose not to run for a second term at the end of his first five-year term in 1999. By that singular gesture, the icon of the anti-apartheid struggle had amply demonstrated the ludicrousness of African leader’s penchant for sit-tightism. The Madiba’s worthy example has, unfortunately, failed to impress most of the continent’s leaders.
Similar to the fate that has befallen several African leaders travelling down the road of self-succession and tenure elongation, Guinea’s President Conde has been administered a bitter dose of the coup medicine by Colonel Doumbouya who, in the characteristic manner of Africa’s junta leaders, has promised to restore democratic rule and basic freedoms to his troubled country. Meanwhile, the masses (especially the repressed opposition under Conde’s rule) are jubilantly celebrating the success of Doumbouya’s coup, claiming to have regained their freedom. Had they all been students of African leadership history, they would have known that there is no freedom when military predators are on the prowl.
It would be recalled that on April 22, 1980, Liberians erupted in wild jubilations as Master-Sergeant Samuel Doe, having assassinated President William Tolbert in course of his coup, lined up several associates of the slain leader and cut them down in a hail of bullets. “Freedom!Freedom! Yes, we’ve got our freedom at last,” chanted opponents of the overthrown regime. Suffice to say that the “freedom” they got was 10 years of Doe’s tyranny, and 13 years of fratricidal civil war. In crisis-prone African political environment, those who seek democratic freedoms from predatory military coup plotters must be careful what they pray for.
Dennis Onakinor is a public and international affairs analyst, who lives in Lagos.