Dr Olakounlé Gilles Yabi

“Everywhere, from the United States to India to Brazil, there are no achievements that cannot be called into question by unscrupulous political actors. Those who believe that ethics have no place in politics and that all practices are therefore acceptable fail to see the seriousness of the threat posed by the trivialisation of the rise of racist, sexist, sectarian and/or greedy political leaders. The moral bankruptcy of too many opinion leaders on every continent fuels violence, fear of the future and disillusionment. That is why the reneging by heads of state on their most solemn commitments, the culture of cunning, the manipulation of rules and the deliberate weakening of institutions send a devastating signal to young people and children. The lesson of the first two West African elections this season is that cunning, cynicism and force pay off.”

I wrote these words on 7 November 2020, five years ago, in one of my columns broadcast on Radio France Internationale (RFI), in the podcast “Ça fait débat avec WATHI”. The two West African elections from which I drew lessons were those that had just taken place in Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire. In both cases, incumbent presidents Alpha Condé and Alassane Ouattara had just been declared elected for a third consecutive term, after successfully removing the term limits in their respective constitutions. President Condé will only remain in power until September 2021, when he will be overthrown in a coup led by the officer he had promoted most rapidly in rank and responsibility, Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya. He was the head of new, over-equipped special forces answerable only to the president. President Ouattara, for his part, not only completed his third term (2020-2025) without any problems, but has just been elected with nearly 90% (89.77%) of the vote for a fourth five-year term.

The November 2020 column was titled: “Everywhere, the moral bankruptcy of political leaders is endangering democracy and peace.” We have since entered a phase of almost daily illustrations of this threat becoming a reality. At the time, I referred to the United States and the end of a violent election campaign between incumbent Donald Trump and his rival Joe Biden, who went on to win that year, but also to West Africa, which was already navigating between coups d’état and constitutional and electoral manipulations by incumbent presidents. In the meantime, Donald Trump made a triumphant comeback, elected president in November 2024 after an even more aggressive and unrestrained campaign than the previous one. In West Africa, apart from Senegal, Cape Verde, Ghana and Liberia, political and/or security trends over the last five years have been largely worrying, if not very worrying.

In Guinea, only those who truly believe in miracles could have been surprised by General Mamadi Doumbouya’s decision to run in the presidential election scheduled for 24 December 2025. Images of the Conakry strongman’s vehicle surrounded by dozens of bodyguards on foot, dressed in suits, ties and earpieces, have been circulating on social media. Part of the city centre was blocked on 3 November to accompany the general who led the coup in September 2021, who had promised not to run for president, but who did so under unbearable pressure from the people begging him to continue his work at the head of the country.

“Neither I nor any member of this transitional government will be candidates for anything… As soldiers, we attach great importance to our word,” Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya said after taking power in September 2021. The fact that he is not keeping his word is not actually the most worrying thing. What is worrying is that this does not seem to shock many of his fellow citizens, even though it is true that freedom of expression has long been reduced to a minimum. Civil society and media figures have gone missing – notably the two leaders of the National Front for the Defence of Democracy, Foniké Mengué and Mamadou Billo Bah, and journalist Habib Marouane Camara – and those media figures who have not been silenced are exercising extreme caution.

The mere fact that the transitional regime has an apparently impressive track record in terms of road infrastructure construction in several regions and the acceleration of the huge project to exploit the exceptional Simandou iron ore deposit is enough to make people overlook all the abuses, forced disappearances, other human rights violations and, of course, the creation of conditions that ensure that the election at the end of the transition period will be nothing more than a formality designed to keep the general in power for seven years, to begin with, as a democratically elected head of state. In the region and on the continent, it is now enough to claim that all problems are the result of ‘democracy’ – political violence, corruption, lack of economic development – in order to impose oneself by force and through laws that make it very easy to send anyone who gets in the way to prison very quickly and for a long time.

There were undoubtedly dozens of deaths surrounding a presidential election whose winner was easy to predict, 92-year-old President Paul Biya, and the future remains uncertain despite the increasing pressure on all those who refuse to calm down and to accept that the same clan who has been running the country for four decades continues to confiscate power. In Côte d’Ivoire, there was less violence and fewer deaths than in previous presidential elections, but hundreds of arrests and severe sentences of up to three years in prison for those who tried to take part in banned demonstrations. All this was done within the framework of the law. It is an unstoppable, formidably effective technique.

Civil society and media figures have gone missing – notably the two leaders of the National Front for the Defence of Democracy, Foniké Mengué and Mamadou Billo Bah, and journalist Habib Marouane Camara – and those media figures who have not been silenced are exercising extreme caution

In Tanzania, admittedly far from West Africa, the true number of victims linked to the presidential election is still unknown. 800 dead? 1,000? 2,000? Outgoing President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared elected with 97% of the vote. The main opponents have been in prison for several months and were unable to participate in the election. In recent years, the combination of electoral reforms and the manipulation of the justice system has become the surest way for incumbent presidents to avoid taking any risks during an election. And it usually works very well. This can only give others ideas…

Institutional innovations under the pretext of cleaning up and “streamlining” the political process by reducing the number of parties allow those in power to define new rules of the game, modifying them at will according to their objectives and their assessment of threats to the continuity of their power. In Benin, where presidential elections are scheduled for March 2026, there will be only two candidates, or more precisely two tickets (president and vice-president), but one “clear favourite”, to put it mildly. Equally troubling is the fact that a proposal to amend the constitution has emerged in the midst of the pre-election period, with the major innovation being the creation of a senate that would include the country’s former presidents. While some remarkable progress has been made in public policy under the outgoing president, Patrice Talon, there are few signs of consolidation of democratic institutions, national cohesion and social justice.

In the countries of the central Sahel, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, nothing can shake the certainty of the leaders and their most devoted servants that their states, as heirs to great empires, will inevitably triumph over their ever-increasing enemies, and that peace, security, stability and prosperity will return after a few difficult years or decades. Territories disfigured, communities divided, local economies in tatters controlled by criminal groups, traditional authorities powerless, wandering populations invading secondary towns and capitals, where there is no longer any new public investment, children completely deprived of schooling and educational support because the rulers will have driven out what remained of dubious foreign partners who were nevertheless injecting useful resources into basic services. All this is the price to pay for the conquest of sovereignty.

Whether the hypothesis of Bamako being conquered by the main armed group claiming to be jihadists is alarmist and intended to discredit the Malian state and its armed forces, or whether it is a hypothesis that cannot be ruled out, like other less catastrophic ones, is one of the big questions of the day being discussed by Sahel analysts. This is of only limited interest. Even if the capital does not fall, the country’s trajectory of disintegration, social fragmentation and economic collapse continues inexorably. The regime of ex-colonels, now generals, who know everything, listen to no one and imprison all those who criticise them, is determined to see its approach through to the end. Whatever the cost.

In Tanzania, admittedly far from West Africa, the true number of victims linked to the presidential election is still unknown. 800 dead? 1,000? 2,000? Outgoing President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared elected with 97% of the vote. The main opponents have been in prison for several months and were unable to participate in the election

If the country finds itself on the brink of disaster or… in disaster, history will remember, they no doubt hope, that they gave everything to save their homeland. Chaos with dignity. Sovereign suicide with pride. Except that it is the whole of West Africa, and in fact the whole of Africa, where there are already too many hotbeds of extreme violence and political decay, that will pay the price for the pride of the heirs of the great Sahelian civilisations.

The great, medium and small powers of this world are not playing games. More than ever, the whining and accusations levelled against France, Europe, the West, Ukraine, Russia, the rich Gulf emirates, Turkey, Algeria and others will not change anything on the ground. The same goes for the bravado, the lies we tell ourselves, and the denial of the balance of power. It is urgent to alert those who lead us on the continent and those who can still speak to them about the real possibility of a total and difficult-to-reverse loss of control over the destiny of our nations in the making. Because we will have weakened them even further politically, economically, intellectually, culturally and morally.

Let us never forget that even without states, without schools, without basic public services, and while war and the most horrific crimes continue, gold and other mineral resources will continue to be extracted and feed the global economy. All the major players in this economy can live with unstable and chaotic parts of Africa. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for several centuries, mineral resources have been extracted without any problems, amid a sea of misery, corruption and violence. In Sudan, the horrors that have taken on genocidal proportions in recent weeks, in full view of the world, have not prevented gold from being exported on a massive scale out of the country to the Emirates and flooding the global market.

If the country finds itself on the brink of disaster or… in disaster, history will remember, they no doubt hope, that they gave everything to save their homeland. Chaos with dignity. Sovereign suicide with pride. Except that it is the whole of West Africa, and in fact the whole of Africa, where there are already too many hotbeds of extreme violence and political decay, that will pay the price for the pride of the heirs of the great Sahelian civilisations

Meanwhile, the President of the United States has discovered that Christians are being targeted for massacre in Nigeria and is threatening to intervene militarily to put an end to it. In fact, the first victims of Islamist terrorist violence in northern Nigeria in particular are Muslim, and in general, the multifaceted violence in the continent’s most populous country affects populations regardless of religion. Apparently, in Sudan, despite the monstrosity of recent and ongoing violence, there is no urgency to threaten the killers, who film their own crimes, with military intervention.

I will end where I began this text. Moral bankruptcy fuels violence, fear and disillusionment everywhere. But realism and wisdom dictate, as Nigeria has done, that we respond politely and without aggression to the leader of the world’s leading power, whose capacity for harm is exceptional. Let us in Africa focus on highlighting the widespread moral bankruptcy coupled with a dangerous ignorance of the extent of our vulnerabilities and the balance of power, because we have the legitimacy to do so and the responsibility to do so. Let those who want to commit sovereign suicide in pride do so alone and not drag their respective countries and tens of millions of Africans with them.

 

---

 

Crédit photo : ijnet.org