By Paul Ejime
Military juntas currently ruling five African countries appear united in conspiracy to delay the transition to constitutional order in Sudan, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Chad, thereby reinforcing the erstwhile theory about the soldiers’ lust for political power.
In the first four countries, the army seized power from elected civilian governments through coups within the past 30 months. In April 2021, 37-year-old Gen. Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, succeeded his assassinated father, President Idriss Déby Itno, who had ruled Chad for more than 30 years.
Negotiations are going on in Doha, Qatar, with various rebel groups, but the young Deby-led N’Djamena junta has announced an indefinite postponement of a national reconciliation dialogue previously scheduled for May 10 to precede planned elections to civilian rule.
Chad’s Transitional Military Council comprising 15 generals, has since dissolved Parliament, dismissed the government and abrogated the national Constitution, but has failed to disclose when the twice-postponed national dialogue will start.
The Qatari mediators are struggling to make progress on the Chadian talks, with the junta and some 250 representatives of 50 armed movements refusing to talk directly to each other.
A Wakit Tamma platform, which brings together the vast majority of the unarmed opposition in N’Djamena, has also suspended its participation in the preparation of the Dialogue, accusing the junta of deliberately provoking the “stalemate” in Doha and “perpetuating violence by the security forces and human rights violations.”
Sudan is facing a similar delay following strong disagreements between pro-democracy groups protesting the October 2021 coup led by General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan. That putsch dislodged the transitional government formed after al-Burhan and his fellow army officers seized power in 2019 following mass protests against now deposed President Omar Al-Bashir.
Major elections planned for next year in Sudan are now overshadowed by uncertainty, with anti-coup protesters resisting al-Burhan’s regime, which has forged an alliance with the National Congress Party former by al-Bashir.
While France the former colonial power in Mali, the European Union and the African Union, have condemned the coups elsewhere in Africa, they have endorsed Chad’s Mahamat Déby, who has been received as head of state in Europe and elsewhere.
However, there is a different attitude toward Mali, which has endured two coups in less than two years from August 2020. ECOWAS, the West African regional bloc has slammed unprecedented sanctions on the country, including financial squeeze, border closure and travel ban on the Bamako junta. The U.S., France and the EU have also suspended military assistance and cooperation with Mali.
Re-elected French President Emmanuel Macron was the only European leader that attended Gen. Mahamat’s inauguration as Chadian president to succeed his father against the constitutional provisions. At the same time, Paris has withdrawn its military forces fighting terrorist and Islamist insurgencies in Mali. This was after France accused the Bamako regime of accepting military support from Russia’s private Wagner group.
While insisting that bilateral defence cooperation is within Mali’s sovereign rights, the Col. Assimi Goita-led military junta has in retaliation, expelled the French Ambassador from Mali and terminated a 2014 defence accord with France, deepening the diplomatic row between both countries.
Meanwhile, a court in the West African Economic Monetary and Monetary Union, UEMOA, has dismissed sanctions against Mali as “illegal,” with the Goita-led administration delaying by 24 months its earlier announced political transition programme, defying a shorter time-table demanded by ECOWAS.
Similarly, despite ECOWAS’ call for a “reasonable” transition timeline, the Col Mamady Doumbouya-led military government in Guinea on Sunday announced a 39-month transition programme, while his colleague in Burkina Faso, Lt. Paul-Henri Damiba, has also unveiled a 36-month timeline for handover to elected civilians.
Unlike Mali, which the military regimes in Guinea and Burkina Faso would appear to be copying, ECOWAS’ response to the political situations in the two other countries would appear to be different. The regional bloc has only imposed targeted sanctions against the coup-makers in Guinea but no measures against their counterparts in Burkina Faso.
Indeed, after the juntas in both countries failed to meet the ECOWAS deadline of April 25 to announce their transition programmes or risk sanctions, the regional organization now finds itself in a quagmire. It has announced plans to dispatch missions to Conakry and Ouagadougou to “enable preparation of a report” to be submitted to the next ECOWAS summit expected to hold in June.
The lack of progress in the ECOWAS interventions to fast-track the transition to democracy in its three troubled member States is mainly blamed on inconsistent strategy and ineffective leadership at national and regional levels. The African Union is also criticised for similar failings in handling political crises and conflicts on the continent, including its host country, Ethiopia.
Military rule is an aberration in today’s World with liberal democracy in full swing. Good governance is the only panacea to military incursions in politics in Africa.
It therefore, behoves political leaders in Africa to deliver the dividends of democracy, including improvement of citizens’ welfare with the provision of basic necessities of life, respect for human rights, national constitutions and the electoral acts. They must also deliver credible and transparent elections and abhor corruption, cronyism and favouritism based on ethnic, religious, and similar regressive considerations.
Greed and the craze for tenure elongation beyond the constitutionally allowed mandate must also be checked through peer-review and the application of the relevant laws and instrumentalities; otherwise, more military coups are inevitable to compound the troubling democratic reversal in Africa.
Also, external factors such as the endorsement of Chad’s Gen Mahamat by France and other Western countries while condemning military coups or constitutional violations elsewhere is not only inconsistent and hypocritical, but dangerous and most unhelpful to the consolidation of democracy in Africa.
If Africa needed any further proof about its world rating after the infamous exploitation of its resources, economic pillage, colonialism, slavery and neo-colonialism, the Covid-19 vaccine inequality or nationalism and the response by the so-called international community to Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine, are more than eloquent.
For instance, whereas a vaccine could have controlled the centuries-old malaria, which continues to kill thousands of pregnant women and children under-five annually, in Africa, (more than the fatalities from several World conflicts combined, including the Russia-Ukraine war), the development of anti-malaria vaccine remains in its trial stage.
Similarly, deadly conflicts raging in Africa, including in Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Ethiopia, have attracted only scant international attention.
Meanwhile, as further demonstration of the international conspiracy and insensitivity, the U.S. and its allies are busy chastising African countries for “not doing enough” in support of the proxy war against Russia. This is at a time when African migrants seeking to flee the war zones in Ukraine are also being discriminated against.
In reality, Africa is not zero-poor, but has been impoverished by corrupt, vision-less and selfish leaders, many of whom work with foreign interests against their own countries. These leaders must lead, find African solutions to African problems and be held to account by their people.
Also, the so-called advanced nations and their institutions, especially those that benefitted or are still profiting from the exploitation of African resources, must stop their duplicitous and hypocritical attitude toward Africa.
All the preachments about equality, equity, justice and fairness must be exemplified through concrete support for the war against corruption, bad governance and refusal by developed countries to warehouse looted resources from Africa. The foreign powers should also stop exploiting Africa and destabilizing independent-minded and patriotic administrations, while propping up stooges and puppet regimes on the continent.
*Paul Ejime is a Global Affairs Analyst and an Independent Consultant on Corporate Strategic Communication, Media, Peace & Security, and Elections