Within six months, a certain wind of instability is circling the West African sub-region and so far, three of the regions territories have been overtaken by the blowing torrents. Ghana used to have special friendship pact with two of the countries under President Nkrumah in the famous Ghana-Guinea-Mali friendship. The three countries were then at the forefront of trade integration of the sub-region.
The third country, Burkina Faso was overrun by soldiers some two weeks ago after Mali and Guinea had theirs sometime last year—2021. The Burkina uprising, was led by Lt. Col. Paul Henri Damiba, who succeeded in toppling the country’s constitutionally elected President Roch Kabore. Significantly, all three coups followed same pattern: bloodless; captured the heads of public institutions, the Head of State or the President and spare the regular or the ordinary citizens.
This is in contrast to the previous West African coups that took place in countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Togo, Cote D’Ivoire, Mali, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Niger, the Gambia and many others. Many have interpreted the current trend to mean the latest coup makers are not really interested in their acts; it’s the circumstances that had driven them to act in the manner.
In other words, they acted on behalf of the people and not for self-aggrandizement as was in the cases of Olympio, Rawlings, Sankara and others of the 60’s, 70’s and the 80’s. It therefore came as no surprise at all, that the new Burkina Head of State, said he was neither a Jerry Rawlings nor Captain Thomas Sankara. He identified more with the regular suffering Burkinabes and not necessarily to create any revolutionary class that Rawlings and his cohorts tried doing in the late 70’s through to the 80’s.
Now what are some of the issues that have driven the military from the barracks to assume the position of civil authority? As usual, corruption leads; suppression of contrary views, collapse of businesses of suspected opposing members, wanton dissipation of national wealth and the craze for material things by the government people or officials.
These were exactly the issues that made the intrusion of the military into the governance structure very attractive in the 70’s and the 80’s to the extent that whenever there was a coup, people applaud with all pomp and pageantry. It does seem that the current crop of leaders in the sub -region are even living in ostentation more than their predecessors of the 70’s and the 80’s.
Otherwise, what at all could be the justification for a country in the Sub-Region paying $14000 per hour, for a luxurious Jet for her President ever since the said President, decided not to travel on his country’s presidential Jet, which some of his security experts say, “it’s obsolete and outmoded.” Meanwhile we hire out the said flying coffin to other West African countries like Liberia and Equatorial Guinea.
The Director of the Faculty of Academic Affairs and Research at the Kofi Annan Peace keeping Training Centre, Prof Kwesi Aning has within the contextual setting of how many of the West African countries are being governed predicted that there is the likelihood that more coups may occur between now and June 2023 in the sub-region. He therefore called on the powers that be and warned them that “unless steps are taken to avert them”— there could be possible more coup de tats in the coming months.
Prof Aning, himself a distinguished security experts was commenting on the latest military take-over of Burkina Faso by the military that easily ousted President Roch Kabore by Lt. Colonel Paul Henri Damiba and his group of disillusioned soldiers.
He warned: “This would not be the end of it; between now and June 2023, we would see similar things happen; by 2023, we are likely to get two or more,” he told listeners of Joy FM’s news and current affairs program: “Newsfile” and therefore advised the regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU) to urgently put proactive measures in place to end political instability in the sub-region.
But how will the two blocs ensure that? Will it be through a counter insurrection? And do leaders of these countries have the moral duty to question why the military took over the reign of power in these countries? The fact remains that the conditions that necessitated the military take-overs are more prevalent in some of the West African States than in the three affected countries and how would any Head of State presiding over such sordid affairs go intervening elsewhere?
Content created and supplied by: RKeelson (via Opera
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