Colonel (rtd) Festus Boahen Aboagye, a security expert, has said that extensions of presidential tenure in Africa are becoming a major cause of military coups.
Aboagye’s comment comes after Tuesday’s reported coup attempt in Guinea-Bissau which left many members of the security forces dead.
Coups appear to be making a comeback in West and Central Africa. Over the past two years, there have been military takeovers in Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso and Guinea, as well as further east in Sudan.
Speaking on The Asaase Breakfast Show on Wednesday (2 February 2022), Colonel Aboagye said, “The prevailing situation, especially in West Africa, demands that there must be democratic accountability, so ECOWAS has got the instrument to ensure that civilian rule is not in name.
“So, when presidents change their constitution to run again, ECOWAS must be heard to be sanctioning them, but ECOWAS doesn’t do that. It then creates the conditions that engender coups.”
He added, “And then in the aftermath of coups, all of a sudden ECOWAS finds its voice and condemns the coup, [and] places those countries and coup-makers under sanctions, even before ECOWAS goes to the capital to ascertain the facts from the ground. That is counterproductive.”
Guinea’s attempted coup
A reported coup in the West African state of Guinea-Bissau has left many members of the security forces dead, its president says.
Umaro Cissoko Embaló said the situation was under control, calling it a “failed attack against democracy”.
Gunfire erupted near a government building on Tuesday in the capital, Bissau, where the president was reportedly attending a cabinet meeting. Soldiers are said to have detained the president and his ministers.
Unidentified heavily armed gunmen attacked the government palace while President Embaló was meeting Prime Minister Nuno Gomes Nabiam there, according to reports from the ground.
A security source who did not want to be identified told the BBC that gunmen in civilian clothes had opened fire and a police officer had been killed.
West African regional leaders described the incident as a coup attempt and urged troops to return to barracks. But what happened remains unclear: it is not yet known who the gunmen were and the president did not give an exact figure for those killed.
One of the poorest countries in the world, Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony, has experienced nine coups or attempted coups since 1980.
Struggling with huge foreign debt and an economy that relies heavily on foreign aid, the country has also become a transit point for drugs from Latin America, leading some to describe it as Africa’s first narco-state.
On Tuesday evening Embaló said the “well prepared and organised” attack could have been “related to people involved in drug trafficking”, but gave no further details.
While Embaló won the December 2019 presidential election, he faced a last-minute stand-off with parliament before taking office the following February.
Coups making a comeback?
As events in Guinea-Bissau unfolded, the regional political and economic bloc ECOWAS issued condemnations, as did the United States. But one thing the new wave of coups is making clear is that there is very little international bodies can do by way of deterrent.
ECOWAS has issued sanctions against Mali and Burkina Faso, but these have not stopped the wave of coups in the region. Guinea-Bissau has also been subject to sanctions over the past decade.
In a recent interview, the head of the ECOWAS Commission said that sanctions on Guinea-Bissau had been effective because they had helped the country return to peace. That assessment now seems to have been premature.
Soldiers in the region have seized on popular discontent with corrupt and ineffective governance to justify their actions. In Burkina Faso and Mali, their actions have been welcomed with joy from some parts of the population.
However, analysts worry the democratic gains made in the region over the past two years are being undermined, and that what was once known as Africa’s Coup Belt could well be earning that name again.
Fred Dzakpata
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