Africa’s imperfect democratic and electoral multi-party system is better than opting for military coups and dictators, Ambassador Dr Abdel-Fatau Musah, Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security of the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS), has said.
“I am of the view that military and dictatorial rule is not a viable alternative to electoral multi-party democracy”, Ambassador Dr Musah posited when he delivered a lecture as the guest speaker at the Council on Foreign Relations-Ghana’s fifth-anniversary lecture series at the Accra International Conference Centre on Friday, 15 March 2024, on the theme: ‘ECOWAS at the crossroads: Emerging threats, challenges, and the way forward’.
He asserted: “Empirical evidence in Africa between 1970 and 1990, as well as the struggles of current military regimes, make that debate moot”.
Making a strong case for democracy, Ambassador Dr Musah cited the “recent demonstration of resilience by citizens and institutions in Senegal and the demonstration of statesmanship in the recent elections in Liberia by ex-president George Weah”, as examples, which he said: “offer hope for the future of democracy and show that there is life, after all, after the State House”
The ECOWAS Commissioner singled out “Ghana, Cabo Verde, Nigeria, and Benin” for praise, saying they are “increasingly demonstrating signs of maturing democratic culture and resilience, which we need to build upon, because if you look at some of the countries in the region, in Ghana, [for example], you will never ever hear the talk about a third term agenda. It is not on the cards at all. It is off the table in Ghana’s political discourse. The same thing [applies] in several other countries – Cabo Verde and others. This was not so just a few years ago. And then we have reduced open political upheaval”.
“So, when people are talking about ‘ECOWAS is collapsing’ and other things and that ‘Democracy has failed’, these are real examples that actually contradict that sort of thinking that we’ve heard about”, he argued.
Africa’s recent coups
It is worth noting that since August 2020, Africa has experienced eight coups and multiple coup attempts. The last one was in Gabon. On August 30, 2023, just hours after the country’s election commission announced that President Ali Bongo Ondimba had been elected for a third term, a group of Gabonese military officers from the elite presidential guard unit seized power and placed the president under arrest at his palace. Later that day, the officers declared General Brice Oligui Nguema as chairman of the transition.
The Gabon putsch was preceded by a military takeover in Niger on July 26, 2023, when the military announced the overthrow of President Mohamed Bazoum. General Abdourahamane Tiani became the new leader of the country. After the Niger coup, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) threatened on August 10, 2023, to deploy a regional force to “restore constitutional order” in the francophone country.
Before the toppling of Bazoum in Niger, there had been two coups within a space of eight months in Burkina Faso – Ghana’s northern neighbour. The first ousting occurred on January 24, 2022, when President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré was removed from power by the military and Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was subsequently inaugurated president in February of the same year. On September 30, Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba, too, was at the receiving end of the bitter putsch pill when he was dismissed by the army and replaced by Captain Ibrahim Traoré as a transitional president until a presidential election scheduled for July 2024.
Before Burkina Faso, there was Sudan. On October 25, 2021, soldiers led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane chased out the transitional civilian leaders, who were supposed to lead the country towards democracy after 30 years of dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, himself deposed in 2019. Since April 15, 2023, a power struggle war between General Burhane and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, has claimed, at least, 5,000 innocent lives.
Ahead of the Sudan coup was that of Guinea. On September 5, 2021, the military overthrew President Alpha Condé and Colonel Mamady Doumbouya became president on October 1, 2021. The military promised to return the place to elected civilians by the end of 2024.
Just like in the case of Burkina Faso, there were two coups in Mali, within nine months before Guinea’s. On August 18, 2020, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta was overthrown by the military, and a transitional government was formed in October. However, on May 24, 2021, the military arrested the president and the Prime Minister. Colonel Assimi Goïta was inaugurated in June as transitional president. The junta has committed to returning the place to civilians after the elections scheduled for February 2024. Apart from Sudan, all the other seven other coups happened in Francophone West and Central African countries.
The three military rulers in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso rode on the tide of terrorism in the Sahel to topple their democratically elected governments. They argued that terrorism and jihadism were festering in the region while their previous governments did nothing about the situation. They, thus, took power by force to deal with the threat. They have formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) and put together a joint force to fight the very evil from which they collaterally benefitted.
Niger’s army chief Moussa Salaou Barmou made the announcement on Wednesday, 7 March 2024 following talks in his country’s capital, Niamey. The composition and other details of the joint force are sketchy for now but the whole purpose is to use such a military body to smoke out jihadists and Islamic fundamentalists from the Sahel.
All three countries have cut ties with former colonial master France and announced their decision to exit ECOWAS en bloc. They accused ECOWAS of siding with foreign powers and doing little in the anti-terrorism department. Additionally, they withdrew from the G5, an international anti-terrorism force and formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) – a closely-knit replacement. Also, the leaders of the juntas ordered the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, Minusma, which for decades, had been helping the security situation in the region, to pack out. But while cutting ties with some Westerners, they were strengthening ties with others such as Russia.
Painting the whole of Africa with the same brush
Although West Africa has been plagued by terrorism and multiple coups, Ambassador Dr Abdel-Fatau Musah cautions that the bloc must not be seen in the same light as the other regions on the continent. He said talking about and dealing with the political and security situation on the continent must be nuanced.
“While we are talking about the negatives, you will see that even today, under the conditions of terrorism, West Africa remains the only region among the five main regions under the African Union, without an ongoing active war. And that is very difficult to understand. You go to North Africa, Libya is burning; you go to the Horn of Africa, you’ve got so many of them – Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia; you go to Southern Africa, you’ve got DRC, in Eastern Congo; you come to Central Africa and it’s the same thing with CAR and others. Over here [West Africa], there are opportunistic attacks by terrorist organisations from time to time but you cannot talk of anything happening in West Africa as an open civil war unlike in many parts of Africa, today. So, that is why we have to relativise when we are talking about [Africa] like everything is falling apart in the region”, Ambassador Dr Musah urged.
He pointed out, though, that the “façade of democracy” on the continent, however, was, “unfortunately, also underpinned by serious governance and development deficits, marginalisation, youth unemployment, ethnic and religious tensions and others”, adding: “The end of the first decade and the beginning of the second decade of the 21st Century, witnessed accelerated instability, characterised by the impact of Ebola and COVID pandemics, financial, food and social crises; governance deficits and the intensification of terrorism and violent extremism”.
Ambassador Dr Musah drew attention to the fact that the shift from liberal democracy to juntas and dictatorships in West Africa and the African continent at large, is not taking place in isolation.
“The recent retreat from liberal democracy and the growing instability in the West African sub-region and the wider continent is taking place within a very complex and dynamic global landscape characterised by an unprecedented convergence of threat vectors, namely geopolitical and geostrategic shifts; economic downturn, currency fluctuations, digital advancements and misuse; climate and environmental concerns; and changing socio-cultural dynamics. Globally, liberal democracy is on the retreat everywhere in the world with the rise of new conservativism and nationalism, worldwide”, he said.
On the global front, he said: “Even traditional mainstream political forces in Europe and elsewhere, are pivoting toward populist anti-migrant rhetoric, as they progressively cede political ground to extremist forces in Europe”.
“In fact, the EU elections are coming up in June and if you speak to all EU representatives, one of the things they dread is there’s going to be something like a landslide by nationalist forces which would shift Europe completely to the right. President Trump in the US, today, is among the most popular people in the country and we all know his politics. So, this is the environment in which we live and West Africa is no exception to some of these dynamics”, Ambassador Dr Musah cited as examples.
On the geopolitical and geostrategic fronts, he listed three broad tendencies as follows: “Number one: it is the tension between liberal democratic forces and the push toward autocracy and military dictatorship, as we are seeing now. The second is the jihadist agenda to create caliphates on the continent, instrumentalising faith and identity while asserting illegal control over natural resources. … If you look at the Accra Initiative and what is happening from Burkina Faso to the coastal countries, right from the beginning, Al Qaeda and ISIS said their objective is to make sure, from the Sahara, all the way to the Gulf of Guinea, and beyond, they are going to create caliphates and this is their vision and they are working toward it assiduously. So, there is that dynamic – which is the second current – that is flowing also in Africa, today”.
The third, Ambassador Dr Musah mentioned, “is the contradiction between growing inter-dependence and the collapse of multilateralism while we see the inexorable rise of multi-polarity. We’ve got dynamics between the NATO powers, who some people call the collective West, and then we’ve got the BRICS axis, led by China, Russia and India; and then this is complicated by the stakes that the medium powers have also claimed in Africa. We are talking about the Middle-Eastern powers: Turkey, Saudia Arabia, UAE, and Qatar; and then you’ve got the North African rivals – Morocco and Algeria – also laying claim to the Sahel”.
“So, these are the dynamics that we see: the three broad trends that we have under multi-polarity, the whole terrorist movement and the fight between liberal democracy and military dictatorship on the continent”, he reemphasised.
Ambassador Dr Musah mentioned that the security and political threats confronting the African continent were harbingers of a repeat of history. “So, we see the threat posed by the possible return to proxy wars akin to the Cold War experience from 1945 to 1989. They say history moves in cycles and this is what we are seeing now; we are returning to it”, he bemoaned.
He analysed that the devolution of world power, rather than opening up a multiplicity of possibilities, rather appears to be narrowing countries’ choices, as a result of the complexities of geopolitical interests and the scramble for Africa by everybody else except Africans themselves.
“… Under multi-polarity, everybody hoped that there would be choice: You could create alliances everywhere to your benefit but what we are seeing is that with multi-polarity, now, anybody who flouts their own regional norms and other things, will have a partner who will support it and we see that today in West Africa with the Alliance of Sahelian States. They’ve got their backers and are making France the Boogeyman and attaching ECOWAS to France that ECOWAS is being dictated to by France. You hear that often and often”, he noted.
“Ironically”, Ambassador Dr Musah indicated: “These countries continue to stay in UEMOA, the West Africa Economic and Monetary Union, which was actually facilitated by France and they continue to use Franc CFA, whose validity is guaranteed by France. So, those are some of the contradictions that we see unfolding”.
Certain factors, he added, have been enablers and accelerators of the crisis of legitimacy of liberal democracy. “It is the cumulative impacts of the pandemics, poor leadership, and macroeconomic mismanagement amidst a global financial, economic and social downturn. That is one. Two, the asymmetric security crisis, terrorism, radicalisation and violent extremism, led principally by the Al Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates on the continent; identity-based violence – the farmer-herder dynamics; inter-communal violence and climate change as a threat multiplier [to] the dynamics in Central Sahel with the worsening cyclical floods and droughts”.
“So, if you look at the three countries who say they want to withdraw [from ECOWAS], they are at the epicentre of the Sahel and this is where terrorism is at its highest; this is where climate change has a lot of impact and, so, you have to look at it and then ask yourself: ‘Why is Guinea not withdrawing [From ECOWAS] because we’ve put sanctions on Guinea, also? And is it actually the sanctions or there is something else?’”, Ambassador Dr Abdel-Fatau Musah wondered.
Recalling a similar withdrawal threat by Niger in the past, Ambassador Dr Musah said: “… Most of the time”, it is caused by “rules that countries have signed up to and they don’t want to obey and live by them and it’s interesting to know that the Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance was adopted in 2001 in Senegal and we are having this upheaval in Senegal, today”. “And that protocol”, he added, “came into force under the Chairmanship of Niger in 2005, and then people are saying, ‘there was nothing like that, so, the sanctions imposed on the country were illegal, they are nowhere in the protocols and all that’”.
Ambassador Dr Musah said terrorism, “which all these regimes said was one of the main reasons why they took over”, is still festering in those countries. “Terrorism is becoming worse and worse in the countries”, he insisted, noting: “So, we have to look at all these situations”.
“If you are going to look at the figures, in 2023 alone, 3,500 terrorist attacks occurred in West Africa and even that is a lower number than previously, but what is interesting is that there are fewer attacks but greater fatalities because the state is withdrawing from the periphery, leaving people to their fate and the terrorist groups have got more lethal weapons and, so, with fewer attacks, they are causing more and more casualties among the population. So, we have the 3,500 attacks in 2023 and about 2,000 of them were in Burkina Faso alone and then out of all these, 9,000 fatalities emerged from it and we are quoting the figures from the Global Terrorist Index of 2024”, he referenced.
He said there were about “7,000 fatalities in the Alliance of Sahelian States alone out of the 9,000 in the region. Burkina Faso, today, has overtaken Afghanistan as the most terrorised country on earth. That is the reality that we are living there”.
In contrast, he said: “When the democratically elected government was there, about 30 per cent of the territory was under terrorist occupation, you had about 700,ooo internally displaced people; today, there about two million internally displaced people in Burkina Faso and most of them are spilling over their border into Benin, Togo, Northern Ghana and then into Cote d’Ivoire”.
“So, we have a situation in that area and if these countries are to withdraw from ECOWAS, then how do you effectively combat terrorism in those areas? And how do we protect the coastal countries when terrorism is festering just on the northern border?” he asked, reiterating: “These are some of the critical questions that people have to ask themselves”.
He said once terrorism festers, other crimes would, too. “… There is also the correlation between the terrorist attacks and transnational organised crime”.
Ambassador Dr Abdel-Fatau Musah said a potpourri of elements has conspired against Africa’s political and security stability, which bode ill consequences for the continent.
“So, genuine changing sentiments are also there from people toward traditional powers. The rebirth of nationalism and the populist exploitation of insecurity and the public mood by sections of the military and their associates and then there is also forum shopping, which is happening; that is from the multi-polarity that we see. There are changing strategic choices between traditional and emerging powers without a clear exit strategy. The thing is: ‘Oh, we don’t want France, we don’t want the US’, and then you welcome Russia. So, what is the exit strategy from the permanent dependency syndrome? And that is the question we have to ask ourselves. That is where Africa has to more and more look within for solutions instead of always being an appendage to one power or the other and this is what we are seeing today; and then we have the explosion of new technologies that are adding an incendiary element to the dynamics that are happening. You are talking about the pervasive influence of social media and the manipulation of opinion through misinformation and disinformation. This is the cocktail that we have on the continent which is very different from the ECOWAS that we had in the early 1990s”, Ambassador Dr Musah enumerated.
Concerning governance deficit, Ambassador Musah said “One of the key elements is the manipulation of constitutional and electoral norms, weaponisation of the judiciary, and the instrumentalisation of the security forces”.
The aim, he noted, is: “To suppress dissent and enable unconstitutional maintenance of power and we all have to fight against it if we are not to give a reason how to fight against it, if we are not to give a reason to adventurists within the military to seize power”.
Despite the daunting task of democratising Africa, Ambassador Dr Musah warns against despair. “Looking ahead, I believe that we should avoid the pessimistic scenario where we see only the intensification of proxy competition, the collapse of liberal democracy and the return to military dictatorial regimes on the continent. This is what some are predicting. Others are also looking at the intensification of terrorism and identity-based violence leading to state collapse. And the third, a pivot toward new proxy wars on the continent. That’s a very negative scenario on the one hand”.
Instead, he suggested: “We have to move toward optimism and that is the need to reconcile the tension between democracy, governance and development through measures to enhance the inclusive production and equitable distribution of democracy dividends. Two, following the recent goodwill gestures by the ECOWAS authorities toward the three member states wishing to leave the bloc, including the easing of the sanctions, and the various behind-the-scenes engagements, the ball is very much in the court of the Alliance d’etats du Sahel to critically and soberly examine the implications of their move with the view to, perhaps, reconsidering their position”.
However, Ambassador Dr Musah said ECOWAS must not waive its core principles for coup makers. “ECOWAS will continue to engage them toward this end. This is the official position of ECOWAS. However, the region must not compromise on its strategic choice of liberal democracy and its core values and principles as enshrined in its instrument. Thus, we must insist on the restoration of constitutional order in the countries in transition – Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Niger – through dialogue and peer pressure”.
Listing some measures put in place by ECOWAS toward combating the manipulation of constitutional and electoral laws for unconstitutional maintenance of power, Ambassador Musah said there are reforms in the works, as well as the use of social and peer pressure techniques on leaders with such intentions.
He said there is an ongoing review of the Supplementary Protocol which ECOWAS is engaging in, as well as looking at constitutional reviews which have an intent to hang on to power. “We are on that now and we need to empower and unleash the civil society and private sector agency in favour of democratic consolidation and inclusive economic development”.
Also, he said the enhanced operationalisation of the ECOWAS Conflict Prevention Framework and the establishment of the ECOWAS ECOSOCC – the Economic Social and Cultural Council – “which is supposed to come on stream as the interface between broad civil society and decision-making instances of ECOWAS”, is expected by the end of the year.
Additionally, Ambassador Dr Musah emphasised the need to strengthen counter-terrorism efforts, pointing out that the “activation of the ECOWAS standby force is in its kinetic mood”, as well as the “coordination of the disparate counter-terrorism efforts in the region, including the Accra Initiative and the Multinational Joint Taskforce”.
Further, he said, “we are already working toward agreeing MoUs with all these structures to make sure that we have a coordinated front in the fight against terrorism”.
“In this regard”, he noted, “the timeliness of the recent UN Security Council resolution authorising the use of assets contribution to sustainably fund African-led peace support operations cannot be overemphasised and the developing and operationalising of a strategic communication strategy is also very key, which ECOWAS is working on and then forging a new compact with external partners to prevent the return of a new Cold War in Africa is also something that we have to engage in”, he said. “As a consequence of the latest development, ECOWAS plans to engage in deep reflection with the participation of critical stakeholders in the region on the fate of regional integration, democracy and governance in an era of multi-polarity and an asymmetric conflict environment. This is also in the works”, he announced.
To conclude, Ambassador Dr Musah said the issues raised above “make any single-factor explanation for the growing political and security malaise in the region, untenable”.
“We know democracy in the post-Cold War iteration is only a generation old. This liberal democracy started in the 1990s; it’s just one generation [old], about 30 years. It may have failed, so far, to deliver enough public good, but it safeguards citizens’ rights and offers free choice. Military and dictatorial rule guarantee neither development nor human rights and this, our history, teaches us that. It is important that we all work with determination to prevent the region from becoming a new arena for new proxy wars. [With] that said, the fledgling and struggling liberal democracy in Africa requires urgent resuscitation through the infusion of local culture, traditions and realities; strengthening internal democracy representativeness and issue-based programming of political parties that constitute the basis for governance under liberal democracy; promoting proportional representation to enhance inclusive governance is also an issue that we have to look at; and then the roll-out of infrastructure, provision of basic services and adding real value to regional endowments through integrated industrialisation is also a major exercise worth undertaking”, he added. ECOWAS, Ambassador Dr Musah noted, “has arrived at the fork in the road of regional integration. What we do, collectively, based on sound analysis and action, will determine which direction we take further. Promoting and ensuring good governance and development require the collective efforts of all – government, the citizenry, their organisations and partners. Citizen apathy is the accelerator of bad governance. The political, economic and social condition in the region is dire but not irreversible. Restoring confidence in governance in the region requires a compelling strategic approach, as well as a multi-dimensional, multi-actor and multi-agency effort by all critical, local, national and regional actors in a strategic partnership with the African Union and the United Nations. I think with determination, we can overcome the current hiccups that we are seeing in the region”.
