JUST sighting the caption of the article as ‘Return of the Natives’ will drive the imagination of a reader to Thomas Hardy’s novel, but here, it is just a mere allegory to the tragedy of failure of human capacity to govern or organise as is prevalent across the continent of Africa. In Hardy’s novel, a certain lady thought that loving and getting married to a certain man will give her fulfilment and joy only for the result to turn the opposite. That is exactly where the ordinary African found himself roving between the world of democracy by civilians and the autocracy of the military rule. He didn’t quite know the certainty of which to pitch his tent.
After the decolonisation of the continent brought about by the agitations of the then founding fathers after World War II, most post independent leaders of Africa turned their states to monarchy and autocracy, which were essentially corrupt and total opposites of the expectations of citizens.
Here, the physical structures for survival are killed leaving politics as the only surviving business where everyone scrambles for survival. For instance, Nigeria that is supposed to be the torchbearer of Africa is the only oil producing country that imports all her refined petroleum products, the only country in the world with one of the best iron deposits that imports even the needle. In Africa, particularly Nigeria, no government discusses physical policies but politics and innovations on election as the most important things every day. We have forgotten that you need the society for the politics to flourish.
That was what resulted in the early military interventions across Africa with the common objectives of improving governance and quality of life of the citizens. But like the lady in Hardy’s Return of the Natives, expectations soon turn sour as soldiers overthrew the initial soldiers and the chain continued through the ’60s to the ’90s before it subsided. A study on African political development shows that between the ’50s and now, Africa has had over 200 coups which the research defined as an overt or illegal attempt by the military or other civilian officials to unseat sitting leaders.
The reasons for these military interventions, however, across Africa are not farfetched. They ranged from faulty leadership processes to disappointment in citizens expectations, misgovernance, poverty, unemployment, constitutional manipulations to permit sit-tightism, and neo-autocracy worse than whatever was seen before. By the end of the ’90s, military rule became an aberration across the world and was also curtailed in Africa in favour of what is now called democracy.
The question then is what is democracy, and what is the essence of government? As lofty and beautiful the expectations of democracy may be, recent events tend to be showing that unless it is tinkered with some indigenous flavours, one might be tempted to assume that it is not working for Africa. And why it is not working can be traced to the way Africans imbibe foreign characters without considering any local input. The characteristics of democracy in its native home of Greece are not what it is in USA, neither is it so among the Arabs, the Asians and many other places.
Democracy should be what works best to organise your community. But in Africa, what obtains in the US is copied verbatim not minding the local peculiarities that must be taken into account and worse of all, the failure to even practice properly what was copied. In democracy, the principle of popular participation, citizenship equality, political tolerance, transparency and accountability in governance, regular, free and fair elections, open and accessible economic space, institutional capacity to check abuse of power, sustenance of right of persons and strict adherence to the rule of law are what make it a more tolerable system of government. The moment these are observed in the breach, there are bound to be issues.
Democracy or governance by civilians or whatever name it’s called, is supposed to improve the life of the citizens, plan for the future of the country and ensure infrastructural development which will make life meaningful and reasonable. In Africa, democracy is only a source of wealth for a few stakeholders who organise the institutions of governance for their own benefit. In responsible climes, democracy or politics is a process where the best of brains are projected, but in Africa, it is a profession, a means of survival where the hunters pride violence, bow and arrow, where the worst of brains are projected.
In Nigeria, which is supposed to lead Africa, discussions on how to improve in science, education, health, agriculture, and such physical areas of development are usually only in paper and overshadowed by intense focus on politics and election. There is no election yet held in Nigeria since the present dispensation that has not attracted a new law just to allow a responsible election, but none had worked. Election budget in Nigeria is ten times what is spent on health; education put together, yet the more the innovations, the worst the elections.
Here, the physical structures for survival are killed leaving politics as the only surviving business where everyone scrambles for survival. For instance, Nigeria that is supposed to be the torchbearer of Africa is the only oil producing country that imports all her refined petroleum products, the only country in the world with one of the best iron deposits that imports even the needle. In Africa, particularly Nigeria, no government discusses physical policies but politics and innovations on election as the most important things every day. We have forgotten that you need the society for the politics to flourish.
In his maiden speech, the Guinean coup leader quoted the late Jerry Rawlings to have stated that ‘if the people are crushed by the elites, it is left for the army to give the people their freedom’. Continuing from there, one can assume that it will be difficult to wish away the essence of this statement considering the nature of civilian leadership across Africa. The reasons for military interventions in Africa, from immediate post-independent era to the moment, remain the same.
In Africa, leaders remain in power in perpetuity without improvement on the condition of the people or public infrastructure, except the enhancement of their personal empires. In Uganda, after making popular entry into power through rebellion which overthrew Milton Obote, Yoweri Museveni has changed the constitution times without number which has kept him in power for over three decades now.
In Burundi, the tension and stress of efforts to remain in power must have ignited the cardiac arrest that consumed Unkurunziza after so many armed insurrections against him. In Togo, the presidency is an inheritance of the Eyadema Family, so also it is in Guinea Bissau for the Nguema Dynasty. In Sudan, al-Basir held on to the reign through 1989 until he was overthrown by a popular revolt in 2020. In Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe ruled for 37 years before he was eased out in a palace coup, also in 2020. Alassane Ouattara, who was himself supported by the international community to get his election validated and get Laurent Gbagbo out of power and to jail in The Hague, today has changed the same constitution he benefited from, to enable him to stay in power in perpetuity.
The unfortunate thing is that, as these leaders stay in power so the economic and human capital fortunes and development index in their countries worsen. While leadership in other continents focus on human and structural developments of their countries, in Africa, what is on the front burner is looting and political innovations that will ensure election manipulation to sustain the status quo of criminality in governance.
In Nigeria, which is supposed to lead Africa, discussions on how to improve in science, education, health, agriculture, and such physical areas of development are usually only in paper and overshadowed by intense focus on politics and election. There is no election yet held in Nigeria since the present dispensation that has not attracted a new law just to allow a responsible election, but none had worked. Election budget in Nigeria is ten times what is spent on health; education put together, yet the more the innovations, the worst the elections.
What is obvious beyond the political facade is the locust of corruption and misgovernance that have engendered extreme poverty, tribal, regional and religious nepotism which determines the distribution of representation and the use of same over and above competence. Until this is tackled, it will be difficult to control and curtail the ‘Return of these Natives’. It is so bad that over 60 years after independence, Nigeria is unable to maintain a single refinery, is unable to fix electricity, just as education, health and other infrastructures are comatose. Yet, Nigeria, along with perhaps Kenya, houses the highest paid political office holders in the world.
In Africa, while citizens pray for forceful removal of governments in power, the opposite is the case in advanced climes. An example can be seen today in Ukraine where Russia has spent billions of dollars, blood and lives begging the citizens to effect a regime change to no avail. Between 2017 and now, while there are a total of 13 military coups across the world, all 12 but one, which occurred in Myanmar, were in Africa.
In other continents, there are regional checks and balances to ensure that countries obey the rule of leadership by ensuring accountability in governance on the part of leaders to the citizens, ensuring that there are always programs and policies aimed at improving the lives of citizens and strict observance of the rule of law and due process. Thus in Europe, the European Union will ensure that authoritarian or totalitarian regimes are never tolerated and their parliaments are as effective as any government. There are equally effective security architectures that ensure that individual countries do not take a particular advantage over the citizens or the neighbours. In this respect, there is NATO in Europe and the US acting as the big boys to ensure that rules of engagements are obeyed.
In the maiden address given by the Guinean coup leader, he emphatically reiterate that until Africa is able to change these narratives, it is expected that more coups will be waiting to happen in the coming years because the essence of government is the people and which is lacking in the case of African countries.
In Africa, individuals are more powerful than institutions. The regional organisations such as ECOWAS, East and southern African commissions are mere lame dogs. The OAU, which was very effective in the fight against colonialism, now AU, has almost gone comatose due to deficiency in ideas and the political will to cause a change. Younger generations in Africa do not know if there is anything as AU, let alone what it does. In fact, the organisation’s headquarters currently in use in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia was built and donated to it by China.
In Africa, since most of the regimes are products of the same defective process, and sustained by corrupt mechanisms, the tendency to check one another is completely absent hence a thief cannot check a thief. To ensure that there are standards below which governments are not expected to operate in Africa, the AU in the 90s started the idea of Peer Review Mechanism (PRM), which was meant to act as examiners on how far a government has performed. But since all the regimes are culprits, the idea was killed or no longer functional because there is no means of enforcement of results gotten from the reviews.
In the Sahel region, one of the prevailing reasons why coups have come back is the inability of the standing regimes to check the damages and threats of Islamic insurgencies that have ravaged the entire region. From boko haram to ISWAP, AL SHABAB, among others, there is no country in the region that has not being battling the insecurity for years now, yet there is no effective regional standing force to tackle them or any strong collaboration among the states.
Recently a research shows a total number of 80 successful coups and 102 failed coups among others in Africa since independence. In this records, the countries with the highest number includes Burkina Faso 9, Guinea Bissau 9, Mali 8, Benin 8, Niger 7, Chad 7, Sudan 17, Nigeria 8. Curiously, these countries are among the most fragile countries in the world. In another research conducted by a group, Network Afrobarometer, respondents in 19 African countries returned a verdict of increase in corruption, poverty, misgovernance and absence of rule of law among African regimes. In Nigeria, it is said that 1 out of every 3 citizens is not employed while it stands as the poverty capital of the world today.
ECOWAS and AU issues sanctions against military regimes that topple a government which crippled the country and is welcomed by the citizens, but the same organisations cannot sanction or check a government on matters of corruption and misgovernance as they occur. The same organisations will be silent when elections are rigged and or manipulated and constitutions are arbitrarily changed to suit a dictator because they are all birds of same feather. One wonders the difference between a military coup and a regime that is a product of rigged election or manipulated constitution. These countries fall within the index of the least scale of economic and human capital development. In order words, there is a relationship between the occurrence of unconventional interventions in regime change and welfare of the people. Most richer and stable countries don’t experience coups. Unfortunately 15 of the 20 most fragile countries across the world are in Africa among which are Cameroon, Central African Republic, Somalia, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Nigeria.
In the maiden address given by the Guinean coup leader, he emphatically reiterate that until Africa is able to change these narratives, it is expected that more coups will be waiting to happen in the coming years because the essence of government is the people and which is lacking in the case of African countries. In Idoma language, it is an adage that, the only way to keep the hawk away from home, is to talk to the fowls.
Dr Alleh Esq. writes from Abuja and be reached through allehokpeh@gmail.com.
