It is no small wonder that with the spate of military coups taking place across west and central Africa has once again drawn the attention of the world to Africa. It is quite disheartening that this attention is not for the right reasons.
The world’s attention is now focused on the men from across Africa, despots really, who have managed to keep their people subjugated while they rule unfettered as modern day monarchs with many of them seeing the presidency as a family heirloom.
Consider the fact that just 11 men, namely Paul Kagame of Rwanda (23 years), Paul Biya of Cameroon (42 years), Teodoro Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea (43 years), Dennis Nguesso of Congo (38 years), Isias Afwerki of Eritrea (30 years), Yoweri Museveni of Uganda (37 years), Alhassan Outtara of Ivory Coast (13 years), Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo (38 years), his son Faure Eyadema of Togo (18 years), Omar Bongo of Gabon (14 years), and his son Ali Bongo (14 years) have collectively ruled different African countries for a total of 347 years in the name of democracy. This is what can be described as AFRICAN WONDER.
But is this situation tenable in this current democratic trajectory the people across the continent are on? And after Niger and Gabon, who is next?
The current spate of military men taking over from Mali to Guinea and Burkina Faso, from Niger to Congo, we see that they acted after the incumbents failed or is refusing to relinquish power to the opposition, who mostly won the elections that the incumbent is claiming to have won. These presidents in the abovementioned countries wanted to hold on to power even against the wish of the electorate.
There was a time in history when such men were accepted because they were necessary for the stability of their countries. Although they were despots they nonetheless maintained a firm grip on their countries, especially the police, army, judiciary and elections management bodies in their countries, all of who are eager and willing to do their biddings. The majority of the people that were meant to check the president’s excesses are hired by the president, which makes monitoring and accountability suspect.
With all these military coups against organisers of institutional coups in the government it is clear that Africans will no longer tolerate presidents for life who don’t have anything to show for their decades of rule and the decades under their sons, except that they made them and their friends and cronies rich at the expense of the state.
But after Niger and Gabon, who is next? Our attention is drawn to the other country in west Africa where the announcement of the presidential results have resulted to widespread condemnation of the tallying of the elections results that were announced, as all of the elections observer missions and the members of the diplomatic and donor community calling for a release of the disaggregated polling data at polling station level.
This demand has elicited nothing but refusal from the head of Sierra Leone’s electoral commission. After it became widespread that the incumbent is operating on a stolen mandate, the first move by the Sierra Leone Police is to arrest several soldiers and former officers they claimed were planning to use the impasse to stage a coup or distabilise the state.
The people of Sierra Leone in the main believe that the men were arrested to dissuade others from wanting to or thinking of doing what is being done across west Africa, adding that it was a move to divert the country’s attention from the demands being made of the executive regarding the disputed elections result.
At present men whose positions as head of state is not tenable are those that earlier mentioned: Paul Kagame of Rwanda (23 years), Paul Biya of Cameroon (42 years), Teodoro Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea (43 years), Dennis Nguesso of Congo (38 years), Isias Afwerki of Eritrea (30 years), Yoweri Museveni of Uganda (37 years), Alhassan Outtara of Ivory Coast (13 years), Faure Eyadema of Togo (18 years).
These men rule countries that are rich in mineral deposits but whose people are some of the poorest in the world.