Most of wars or military coups or invasions are done in the name of democracy against democracy
In the last year, the dawn martial music that characterised military takeovers in Africa in the 1970s was replayed in three West African countries. The militaries of these beleaguered nations excused their upturning democratic rule on politicians’ vices.
Guinea. Mali. And now Burkina Faso. The Republic of Chad and the Niger Republic also had some disquiet during this time. As it was in the 1970s and 1980s, the atmosphere in Africa is getting charged with coup fever.
In the 1970s, coups d’état became the vogue and the junta habitually anchored every intervention on the misrule and corruption of politicians, an allegation that the jackboots eventually helped to perpetuate in gargantuan proportions. Many decades later, these latest erosions of national politics are still excused on the above-named vices, plus unchecked insecurity coming from militants of wild persuasions.
The fever is everywhere, very palpable all over Africa. Even where it has not come you can feel the pressure on the military institutions in those countries.
In Nigeria, the military authorities use every opportunity to warn that democracy has come to stay in Nigeria. If it has come to stay, do we need any reminders? Won’t we just see and feel it. After 22 consecutive years, is democracy in Nigeria practised as something that has come to stay?
Many still wonder if democracy really has been properly placed on a sound footing in this country or is it still on quicksand and nascent after two scores and two years? Nigerian politicians portray a picture of fatigued operatives who need a kind of rest or reenergizing. There is hardly anything in our political environment today to be proud of as a democratic nation. Since democracy returned in 1999, it has been all noise and no concrete action in the delivery of dividends. The pendulum weighs more on the failure of democracy in Africa than its success.
Listening to the new Burkina Faso junta leader, Lt-Col Paul Henri Damiba, 41, one was thrilled and almost tempted to say whether this is the kind of thing we need for sanity to reign.
When I recall all the revolutionary opening words of Nigerian coups, Joseph Garba, Joshua Dongoyaro, and Sani Abacha and how it all ended that in none was eventually reformative but opportunistic, I get even more disillusioned and crestfallen. This is not the first time Burkina Faso is throwing up charismatic leaders. Thomas Sankara still stands out as one of the finest revolutionary leaders of the time comparable only to Ghana’s Jerry Rawlings. But Sankara’s admirable era was short-lived, no thanks to his fellow wayfarers in military rule.
The new man in Ouagadougou is not oblivious of this history, hence his touchy remarks and his providential allusions to the possibility of his dying in the process. He is willing to die and does not want to be mourned if death comes but for the reform to go on. Yes, on paper these things are attractive especially when they arrive new, but far away, in reality, is the sustenance.
The growing wave of military coups, successful and aborted, should worry every concerned democrat but to be factored in is the reason for these undemocratic uprisings.
Africa’s torchbearer in good governance, the reformist President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, has answers to why the coup is beginning to rear its ugly head again in the continent.
“It is, to some extent, the result of a failure of governance. It is not just the fault of the military; civilians also have a responsibility. Of course, it is not the role of the military to carry out this kind of action, but it cannot be ignored that in some cases civilians also commit questionable acts.
“If under a civilian government the situation deteriorates and people die, problems pile up and the authorities use the military to rig elections, who is to blame when the military overthrows these governments? I find it inappropriate to criticise only the military and not blame the civilians who use them to stay in power. I guess it is from this kind of analysis that some people say that there are good and bad coups.”
The Rwandan leader may not have outrightly justified military intervention but he feels it does not just come but is oftentimes induced by the shortcomings of the politicians.
The question is if bad governance and insecurity have become like excrement that attracts the flies (military) into politics, is there any government in Africa that can be spared? Has the military demonstrated empirically that it is even an option, let alone a better one?
However, what should worry every discerning mind who is a follower of democracy in Africa is the glaring inability of this form of government that is working elsewhere to address the challenges of the people of the continent.
What is not in dispute is that Western democracy model has failed to take root in Africa. The ingredients of democracy have not been embraced by politicians in Africa. African leaders often find themselves being dictatorial while wearing the garb of democracy. They hardly ever conduct free, fair, and credible elections, they trample on the people’s rights, dissenting voices are suppressed, and the rule of law is not given space to operate.
In the face of this, they dip their hands mindlessly in public funds and spend it as if it’s their ancestral assets and the people who own the money just watch as laws are manipulated to protect these thieves.
Africa needs to find a way of having a workable democracy model. In the traditional African society, if somebody entrusted with public funds tampered with it he would hang himself or lose his position and face the shame of jail. Today they channel the stolen money into the system to fraudulently win elections and perpetuate themselves in office.
It’s always seen as sacrilegious in the old African setting dipping your hand in funds put in your care. But today through Western democracy, rules of reprimand are there but very difficult to implement as human rights and rule of law are jumbled up by corrupt leaders.
African leaders have repeatedly failed in the area of conducting elections. Either they are sitting tight and refusing to leave the office until they die or they are using the military under their command to rig elections and force their way through.
Another area of interest in this new wave of coups is the role of the West. The struggle for control between Russia and France is fingered in these coups. These interests have nothing much to do about development but more about arms sales and control unwholesome access to natural resources.
The insurgence that is taking a heavy toll on most West African countries would not have been as enduring if the West were not reaping bountifully from their arms and ammunition market from both the countries and the terrorists.
ECOWAS and the African Union should not just end in condemning military coups but should go further to address the issue that attracts them.
It’s duplicitous of these bodies to be complaining about flies in a room but doing nothing to tidy up.
So long as good governance and strict adherence to the dictates of democracy are obeyed in the breach and the people’s right to protest is continuously suppressed, so long will the military be interrogating the system. It may not be the best option but it appears to be the only one available.
Recall the first move in Nigeria when youths stood up to challenge misrule in the land, how innocent youths were massacred and everything is being done to suppress it even after a government fact-finding committee established abuse of authority. Issues like that box the people into an impossible corner and are responsible for the jubilations we see on the streets after military coups.
If, therefore, democracy has failed, as it seems, to deliver the goods in Africa, an alternative should be found. If a democratic government cannot guarantee the security of lives and property, the basic statutory requirements of any government, as it is becoming glaring in some African nations including Nigeria, then let us live with the inconvenience of military disruption. It’s shouldn’t be by saying that coups will vanish, it’s by doing the correct thing.
It needs to be underscored that the leaders and the led in Africa are sharing in this guilt. We are all guilty in Africa of bad government for accepting to live with it. For not rejecting policies and programmes that demean us as humans.
If you try to rationalise any bad government, you deserve it and what it brings even if it’s a military coup. May God help us.