Always historicize”, advised Fredric Jameson, the great American literary theorist, philosopher and historian of human consciousness. It was his polite way of insisting that there are no human circumstances that cannot be greatly simplified by making history the point of analytical departure. The deployment of history not only enlightens, it also illuminates the discussion at hand and provides invaluable insight about the way forward. When you acquaint yourself with the history of a particular issue, you are halfway towards a perfect understanding of the main drivers of contention.
For some time now, there appears to be no love lost between the Nigerian government and the Burkinabe military authorities. Although things remain at the level of a cold war or what is known as diplomatic froideur, there is no guarantee that the simmering tension will not escalate into a full-blown confrontation given the propaganda blitz unleashed from Burkina Faso and the antics of a misguided section of the Nigerian political elite and social media miscreants hoping to tip the nation into the anarchy of simultaneous combustion. The fact that Russia and its controversial Wagner Associates now renamed as the Russian Corps are also rumoured to be the directing patrons of a well-coordinated effort to undermine western-style democracy and its most important outpost in West Africa should be a source of concern.
After the unraveling of the mighty Soviet Empire, a triumphant Western diplomat famously dismissed its Russian rump as little more than a Burkina Faso with nuclear weapons. The irony is upon us with the real Burkina Faso now armed with nuclear warheads of destructive propaganda supplied by the selfsame Russia. Of the three Francophone West African countries that went rogue and ditched ECOWAS to form the association of Sahelian states, Burkina Faso appears to be the most vehement and vociferous in its anti-Nigerian stance. This mutual antipathy can be traced to a widening gulf in ideological outlook between the two countries whose origins date back to an earlier epoch.
Yet it was not always like this. Even when they cannot reverse the nation-state paradigm imposed on them by colonization, African elites must resist the temptation to turn their countries to autonomous enclaves and personalized Bantustans which can never aspire to the organic coherence of true nation-states and which makes them very vulnerable in an increasingly disordered global order. Before the advent of colonization, the entire West African subcontinent was a vast, culturally continuous and economically contiguous ”free trade” zone. A niece who had been posted to Guinea by her multinational conglomerate was surprised to find herself accosted in downtown Conakry by a group of people speaking some old and pristine version of Yoruba language amidst the gaudy Francophone veneer of the city which made things eerily unsettling. Another cousin who originated from Nigeria but became an American citizen and noted professor of Francophone Studies found himself posted out to the University of Burkina Faso as a member of the American Peace Corps. An ebullient and gregarious character who has since tragically departed, he regaled everybody with his nocturnal forays in some dark alleys of Ouagadougou drinking palm wine and listening to old Sakara music among Yoruba-speaking natives a few of them with signature tribal marks. Talk of a native who had gone double native. And what of the Aku people of Gambia, Yoruba descendants of liberated slaves sent from Sierra Leone to man the Gambian civil service whose sonorous singing of Egungun ballads could send tears to the eyes?
Despite succumbing to different colonial rationalizations by Britain, France, early Germany before they were expelled and Spain, the post-colonial history of most of these countries did not diverge very much, as if the original African genes could not be suborned by colonial adversity. It was the same history of endemic poverty, corruption and the mismanagement of ethnic and religious diversities eventuating in violent military coups and rampart disorder. In this regard, Nigeria and Burkina Faso have a lot in common.
The dominant ethnic group, the warlike and fiercely independent Mossi people, resisted French occupation for decades until 1901 when their parched and dusty capital Ouagadougou was invaded and violently pacified. Independence in 1960 came within a few months of each other. Maurice Yameogo, the founding Upper Volta chieftain, ruled very much like a traditional African chief for the next six years with corruption, graft and instability very much the order of the day until he was deposed in a military coup by Colonel Sangoule Lamizana. Lamizana was himself overthrown by Colonel Yare Zerbo who later succumbed to Major Jean-Baptiste Ouedraogo, a military surgeon.
Meanwhile despite the epidemic of coups, the landlocked, resource poor country remained wracked by poverty and corruption with the dazed and disoriented populace tottering on the edge of despair and terminal disillusionment. While the people remained bitter and resentful, the officer-corps at the mid-ranking and junior levels became radicalized. But unlike in Nigeria where things took an ethnic and regional turn in the armed forces, the Burkinabe armed forces as well as significant sections of the elite became polarized along ideological lines with the military becoming a battle field of contending ideas in a world in which the Soviet bloc itself was in a state of terminal turmoil with the advent of a starry-eyed reformer known as Mikhail Gorbachev.
It was this roiling cauldron that threw up a youthful idealistic military officer, Thomas Isidore Sankara. To stabilize his regime, Ouedraogo had decided to appoint a prime minister from the left bloc. His choice was none other than the young charismatic major with the star quality who was immensely liked and admired by the rank and file. It was a fatal error of judgment. Disagreement soon broke out between the two over the direction of the country and Ouedraogo had his deputy arrested and put under house detention. To break the deadlock, troops from the fabled and dreaded Po Garrison and their commander, Blaise Compaore, an acolyte and childhood friend of Sankara, marched on the capital from over eighty miles to free Sankara and install him as the new president.
This was where fate conjoined the two West African countries in a way and manner that could not have been greatly understood at the time. Sankara was a military revelation. The word “cool” could have been invented for the iconic paratrooper. Tall, dashing, thoughtful, polite, deeply compassionate with a calm, unflappable mien, Sankara was the ultimate designer revolutionary officer. When he visited Nigeria around this period, the strappling swashbuckling major with his holstered service pistol was the cynosure of all eyes inviting swooning adulation from men and women alike to the quiet embarrassment of his military hosts and ranking generals who were all conservative law and order military traditionalists and regime survivalists. Alarm bells began to ring in all the power sanctuaries of West Africa and beyond. This was the mad boy who would put everybody in trouble. Francois Mitterrand, the French president, described Sankara as a cutting edge that cut too sharply. Felix Houphouet-Boigny , who was related to Blaise Compaore by marriage, began fretting in Cote D’Ivoire. General Babangida who had earlier warned junior officers that their regime would not tolerate “undue radicalism” could not have found it funny. Sankara’s goose was cooked.
After Sankara was violently eliminated in a daylight military putsch masterminded and spearheaded by his bosom friend, a thick pall of gloom and grief descended on West Africa and beyond. JJ Rawlings, Ghana’s ruler and a close friend and ideological acolyte of the fallen major, mounted a seven-day national vigil for the departed ruler. But Nigeria showed its hands by openly and undiplomatically welcoming Compaore’s envoys, the two majors who were part of the triumvirate that ousted Sankara. This was while they were being shunned and driven away from several African capitals with Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia particularly devastating in his putdown. General Olusegun Obasanjo equally dismissed them as purveyors of military perfidy and treachery. But nemesis caught up with Major Zongo and Major Lingani a few months down the line as they were summarily executed for plotting to overthrow Compaore.
After that, there was only one master law-giver and autocratic tyrant in Burkina Faso. Unlike Sankara, Compaore is no starry-eyed ideologue but a harsh pragmatist, ruthless schemer and master power player who knew how to secure the levers of power and keep the populace in close leash. He had no illusion about human nature. He was known to have privately rued that Sankara was a softie leftist and he was making too many concessions to the populace and civil rights groups which undermined the very basis of military authority and opened the backdoor to anarchy. For the next twenty seven years, he put Burkina Faso through the torture wrack until 2014 when the usual combination of civil uprising and military insurrection sent him scampering across the border. More civil unrest and a few more military coups down the line, enter the young and energetic Captain Ibrahim Traore. But is he the new Sankara, an avenging angel ready to deliver his country from the crushing weight of historic misrule?
Not quite. And not so fast. Despite his menacing bearing and gung-ho militarism, it is obvious that the young captain lacks the visionary elan and sublime intelligence of Thomas Sankara, otherwise he ought to have known that he is a mere pawn on the international chessboard of a Russia making a ruthless pitch for Africa’s mineral resources. Sankara, an avowed Africanist, was nobody’s puppet or poodle dog. Russia itself has since transited from a Communist superpower to a hyper Slavic, ultranationalist nation spreading terror and hysteria in Africa and many of its former vassal states.
The barrage of misinformation and AI-generated impressions portraying the youthful Burkinabe leader as a superman and new African avatar are completely misguided. The lure of military messianism and the revolutionary ardour that convulsed Nigeria and many African countries a few decades ago have waned considerably. It may yet creep back but not in the current configurations. Burkina Faso itself is a standing rebuke and ringing indictment of such misplaced hope. The young man from Waga has many things going for him. But for now, he should remove the bullet-proof encumbrances and settle down to real work.
