Diagnose causes of coups in Africa

 The August 30, 2023 coup that ousted Gabon’s President Ali Bongo Ondimba has come as a surprise but one carrying a number of messages, depend­ing on what argument one wishes to make.

The surprise is that unlike a good number of African countries, Gabon has been ruled by a coup leader for just two days since its inde­pendence on August 17, 1960 after becoming a territory in 1910.

History has it that that country’s first president, Léon M’ba, elected in 1961, with Omar Bongo Ondimba as his vice, was toppled in a coup d’état on February 17, 1964 and his political nem­esis, Jean-Hilaire Aubame, installed president by the military plotters.

Aubame assumed power for just two days after which order was restored on the night of February 19 follow­ing France’s intervention.

M’ba was reelected in March 1967, but died of can­cer in November 1967 and was succeeded by his vice, Albert-Bernard Bongo, who came to be known later as El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba (or simply Omar Bongo), who ruled for almost 42 years, until his death in 2009.

Upon his death, his son, Ali Bongo Ondimba, suc­ceeded him by winning that country’s 2009 presidential election.

Ali was reelected in 2016, but observers said the elec­tion was marred by numer­ous irregularities, arrests, human rights violations, and post-election protests and violence.

Another aspect of the surprise is that an attempt­ed coup in Gabon in 2019 should have taught Ali Bongo a lesson to avoid anything that could truncate his rule and third-term bid, yet he did not care about recurrence in 2023 of some of the acts that marred his 2016 reelection.

Probably, he thought, but now proven erroneous, that he would always have his way and coups could not succeed in Gabon.

Now, everyone, organisa­tion, political blocs and even whole countries can express relevant views, both negative and positive, that can be seen as messages being carried by the Gabon coup.

On our part, the coup is sending certain signals and the earlier the whole of the African continent identifies those signals the better for democracy on the continent.

To be honest, some of us thought the coup-motivating factors are strong in only West Africa but our view can be debated and defeated.

With events in Gabon now, we would rather say that it seems there are certain things going on in former French colonies on the continent that need to found and fixed.

Currently, there are military juntas ruling in four West African countries, namely Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Niger, and these are for­mer French colonies.

We must not only condemn these juntas and blame them for drawing back democracy in their respective countries and across the continent.

We need to go further to ascertain the causes, and specifically what the ousted presidents did before their toppling.

Before now, West African leaders probably thought coups were becoming a sub-regional headache and so they were going to use military force to restore de­mocracy in Niger and by that single act stop coups in their jurisdictions.

We remember the African Union in joining the fray in condemning the coup in Niger and we want to say that condemnation cannot stop coups.

If it could, none of the recent five coups would have occurred because earlier coups elsewhere had been roundly condemned.

African leaders must be advised strongly that they should always play by the rules, common sense and morality.

Why should two members of the same family, father and son, rule a nation for 56 years?

Father and son ruling at various times may not be wrong but for ever is a huge problem.

Africa must grow democ­racy.