Here we go again! Africans just have a way of muddying the waters. When you are thinking that Africa may finally be nearing getting used to democratic governance, even in its most elementary and rickety form, it springs new surprises that promptly and rudely snap you out of such day-dreaming. Two diametrically opposed occurrences in two English-speaking West African countries (Ghana and Gambia) just a few days apart brought about this thought. Presidential elections were held in both countries just a few days apart and the results were exactly the same, i.e., unambiguous electoral shellacking for both incumbent presidents by the people. While Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama, who has just served only one term of four years out of two terms allowed by the constitution, willingly accepted the popular verdict, President Yahya Jammeh, his counterpart in Gambia who has ruled for 22 years, initially accepted the electoral verdict and congratulated the winner, Adama Barrow of the opposition party, only to make a complete and inexplicable about turn a few days later and to reject the result of the election, implying he intends to hang on to power illegitimately and against the wish of the people. Yahya Jammeh has thus carelessly tossed a spanner into the wheel of progress, and democracy is coming under a serious threat in that tiny nation.
Yes, there is no denying the obvious fact that democracy is in recession across the globe. A number of recent studies by established scholars of democracy have indicated that democracy and its appurtenances, such as freedom and human rights, are being eroded, bending democracy into a crooked form almost beyond recognition. Many leaders who though had gained power through democratic means had been known to systematically and incrementally stifle democratic rule. While major powers like Russia and China have never been democracies even by the remotest of definitions, recent developments in countries like Turkey, Philippines, and now the United States of America with the election of that narcissistic demagogue Donald Trump as president, are confirming or lending credence to the conclusion by renowned scholars like Larry Diamond on the inexorable decline of democracy across the globe.
Africa is evidently the poster boy of authoritarian rule. Since Africa came on the global scene with a plethora of newly independent states in the 1960s, most of the countries have since been ruled by an array of pretentious democrats, ruthless autocrats, psychopathic tyrants, sanguinary despots, sadistic presidents-for-life, and an assortment of cold-blooded military dictators, such that democracy is actually more of an exception on the continent than the rule. The proverbial ‘third wave’ of democratization has made little, mostly cosmetic, impact in Africa, as these Stone Age despots cynically manipulate democratic processes and symbols to consolidate autocratic rule. Robert Mugabe has ruled hapless Zimbabwe since 1980 and has just only a few days back manipulated his ruling party to endorse him at 92 years of age as its presidential candidate in the 2018 general elections. Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Paul Biya, Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame, to name a few, have kept their respective countries under tight-fisted rule for more than two decades each and have continued to manipulate democratic processes to entrench extreme personalist rule. The predictable end result of long personalist rule in the African experience is to bring the hapless country to ruin. The carcass of the so-called Democratic Republic Congo after Mobutu’s ruinous 32-year dictatorship is there for all to see!
Today, intra-state violence rages on in Burundi where the president, Pierre Nkurunziza, has repudiated the constitutional term limit and rigged himself into office against the wishes of the people; DR Congo, perpetually embroiled in political turmoil since its independence in 1960, is about to combust all over again by President Joseph Kabila’s blunt refusal to conduct elections and leave power at the expiration of his tenure. The opposition coalition is gearing up for a fight, and no one can predict exactly how it will all pan out. As if that is not enough to unnerve Africans, Gambia’s pocket-size tyrant who initially accepted the results of the presidential election has made a dangerous about-face, repudiating the elections. He has also snubbed an ECOWAS attempt to persuade him to respect the will of the people by handing over power. Gambia is about to have its own baptism of fire, as Jammeh sticks to his guns and as the winning party is insisting on taking power in January. Jammeh has deliberately created what is known as a ‘Mexican stand-off’, a situation an online dictionary defines as “a stalemate or impasse; a confrontation that neither side can win.”
Jammeh is now the bull in Gambia’s china shop, and unless a suitable deal is worked out quickly to ease out of power, the tiny country of less than two million people risks going the way of DR Congo. Africa has regrettably walked this destructive path too many times before, with extremely devastating consequences, a path that Professor Adebayo Williams famously calls “the road to Kigali”. Unfortunately again, it does not yet seem that African rulers have learnt any useful lessons from these destructive experiences. It was not long ago that the once peaceful West African country of Cote d’Ivoire also exploded in an orgy of massive post-election violence and bloodletting on a scale that beggared belief, simply because the incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo, like Yahya Jammeh now, refused to give up power after a credible election that he lost. Jammeh should be told of the two fates that await him should he continue with his obduracy: leave in a casket, like Muammar Gaddafi, or be hauled before the International Criminal Court in The Hague to face trial like Laurent Gbagbo!
ECOWAS and African Union leaders definitely have their work cut out for them. Both organizations of which Gambia is a member-state must insist forcefully and unequivocally on the non-negotiability of the sanctity of the peoples’ choice of their own leaders, and it is time Africans threw down the gauntlet that if democracy would take root and deepen, it must begin with the respect for the sanctity of elections. They must do the level best to guide this Jammeh bull out of Gambia’s china shop, and save the long-suffering people of Gambia avoidable conflagration and bloodbath. The rest of the world can make all the righteous noises but they cannot help Africa until Africa first helps itself.
Besides, unless Jammeh and Kabila are made to respect their countries’ constitutions and quit power, they risk setting dangerous and ignoble examples for other sit-tight despots to emulate. Even though what Jammeh and Kabila are doing is not entirely new in Africa, but the time has come for such to be stiffly resisted in order to send powerful signals across the continent that we have had enough of destructive sit-tight rule. If this is to be done, West Africa, erstwhile the most coup-prone of all the five sub-regions of Africa, must take the bull by the horns and set the positive example. This is a great test for President Muhammadu Buhari and his fellow ECOWAS plenipotentiaries, and they must know the rest of the world is eagerly waiting for them to act, and act decisively, first in defence of democracy, and second, to save Gambia from avoidable violence.
- Prof. Fawole is of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State.
