Tag Archives: West Africa

Report: Tear gas used in Nigeria parliament

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BBC Africa today:

Nigerian security forces have fired tear gas inside parliament, just before a crucial debate on security in the conflict-ridden north-east.

Reports say the police were trying to stop House of Representatives speaker Aminu Tambuwal from entering. Mr Tambuwal defected to the opposition [APC party] from the ruling PDP last month. His former colleagues have since argued he should be stripped of his speaker role.

 
(Police denied using tear gas, but the photos I saw clearly showed some type of gas or smoke canister had been used.)

Recently, Speaker Tambuwal briefly threw his hat in the ring for the next presidential election before dropping out earlier this week to run instead for Governor of the far-northwestern Sokoto State and clear the field for a single APC presidential candidate. He had adjourned his chamber following his defection to the opposition, to avoid being ousted from the speakership by the ruling PDP, which I think has now been narrowly surpassed in the chamber by the opposition APC. The House had only been called back into session today for a special vote.

In addition to the deployment of tear gas, there was an extended confrontation between security forces and the Speaker (along with his followers), according to the Premium Times of Nigeria:

Mr. Tambuwal had earlier managed to drive through the first gate of the complex before his convoy was stopped at the second gate.

After several minutes, Mr. Tambuwal was later allowed in after he abandoned his car and escort vehicles at the gate.

Other lawmakers, mainly from the All Progressives Congress, APC, were also stopped from driving through the second gate.

At least 15 APC lawmakers scaled the assembly fence to access the building, our correspondent at the assembly said.

Mr. Tambuwal was later stopped at the third gate, and was finally allowed in after a prolonged argument with security operatives.

Witnesses say lawmakers came out of the assembly, overpowered the security, and damaged the third gate to allow the speaker in.

 
Eventually, the Speaker and his supporters made it inside anyway, but reportedly (Daily Post of Nigeria) no vote was held in the chamber on the key measure.

The BBC again, to explain the significance:

Parliamentarians were due to debate a presidential bill seeking the extension of the state of emergency in three states hardest hit by the militant group Boko Haram. BBC Hausa editor Mansur Liman says many opposition MPs opposed the extension of the state of emergency because they say it has failed to bring an end to the insurgency.

 
The National Assembly has been closed until Tuesday in response to the events today. The Senate failed to pass an extension as well, suggesting it may not pass at all.

Map of Nigerian states attacked by Boko Haram from 2010-2013. An ongoing state of emergency exists across three northern states. (Credit: Nerika - Wikimedia)

Map of Nigerian states attacked by Boko Haram from 2010-2013. An ongoing state of emergency exists across three northern states. (Credit: Nerika – Wikimedia)

Cameroon forces hold the borders against Boko Haram

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Boko Haram has spent much of the second half of 2014 attempting to breach the Nigerian-Cameroonian border permanently, to spread the war and their territory to a wider sphere of control — much like ISIS crossing from Syria back into Iraq and breaking up the colonial borders. Boko Haram kidnapped the Cameroonian Deputy Prime Minister’s wife from her home (she was eventually released under undisclosed terms) and staged dozens of major attacks on border villages in the country’s less populous and less hospitable northern regions.

AFD Background Briefing: The country, which is located next to Nigeria, Boko Haram’s home base, said it was going to war with Boko Haram back in May of this year when hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls were kidnapped in a raid. The girls are believed to have been taken to the forests near the border with northern Cameroon.

At great cost, Cameroon has held the line so far:

The strain is tangible. Cameroon’s elite Rapid Intervention Battalion, commonly known by its French acronym BIR, has lost dozens of men since the beginning of the year in the fight against Boko Haram.

About 1,000 men from BIR, trained by US and Israeli forces, have been deployed along a 500-km (300- mile) stretch of porous border with Nigeria. Boko Haram is advancing and Cameroon’s military fight daily battles to keep the boundary with Nigeria – Africa’s most populous state – intact.

Cameroon’s military recently dispatched another 2,000 soldiers to the border region to reinforce troops.
Last month, Boko Haram attacked the military post at Amchide with a tank.

 
They are certainly a more competent military force than Nigeria’s. But troops on the ground are already starting to wonder why France has not sent help from their base not so far away in the capital of Chad.
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Burkina Faso Army preps to hand back control to civilians

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In continuing the rapid implementation of the ECOWAS-sponsored transition plan, the military government in Burkina Faso (which took power just 15 days ago) today gave civilian groups a one day deadline to narrow down their proposed interim leaders to a consensus choice, who will govern until November 2015 elections. Here are some key highlights from the BBC report:

Burkina Faso’s military ruler has told activist groups they have until Sunday afternoon to provide a list of candidates for interim national leader.

Lt Col Isaac Zida agreed [to] a transition plan with civilian political groups on Thursday, but no leader was named. The groups have agreed to submit a list of candidates to a 23-member council, which will then select a single leader.

In a communique on Saturday, Col Zida said civilian groups had until noon on Sunday to provide a list of candidates to serve as interim president. He also said the constitution was back in force in order to “allow the start of the establishment of a civilian transition”.

Under the charter agreed on Thursday, the interim president will be chosen by a special college composed of religious, military, political, civil and traditional leaders.

 
Let’s take another look at that constitutional power vacuum situation that led to the temporary — and thankfully apparently short-lived — military takeover after President Compaoré‘s resignation. Since many Western media sources were being a bit lazy about reporting the details accurately, I spent a number of hours immediately following the coup carefully parsing the constitution along with 2012, 2013, and early 2014 news articles from the country. My conclusion: Due to an ongoing political dispute well before the current crisis, Burkina Faso doesn’t actually have a Senate set up to fill the role of Senate President, even thought that position is designated without alternative in the 2012 Constitution as the Acting President if the Faso presidency becomes vacant.

In other words, there was no way any transition would have been constitutional, even if the Army had not suspended the constitution and assumed control. So, the “restoration” of the constitution today by the military doesn’t really fix that fundamental, unavoidable problem that led to their takeover in the first place.

However, here’s some good news: The uncreated Senate was supposed to have been composed of indirectly-elected representatives of the local municipalities (etc), worker groups, industry groups, religious groups, and (some) customary/traditional authorities (I think most were disbanded in the 1980s by Sankara). Thus, the plan announced Saturday essentially “restores” the Constitution to the extent actually possible and seems to try to emulate its spirit as closely as possible to fill the remaining gaps where it’s simply not feasible to follow the letter. For example, the acting civilian president will be chosen — by a 23 member council of representatives from the aforementioned interest groups — from a list submitted by those same groups and the 40 odd political parties in the country (or a lot of them anyway). That’s basically as close as humanly possibly to a duly-composed (in spirit) pseudo-Senate choosing a leader to fill the role of Acting President in lieu of a Senate President who never existed. Moreover, the military government has not attempted to rewrite, amend, or promulgate a new constitution.

If this plan holds up, this may prove to be one of the most efficient and minimally invasive military interventions in the democratic system of a country in recent memory. The real test, of course, will continue through the transitional civilian leadership period and into new elections (and presumably a less arcane and broken constitution eventually). But this is still a huge step, and a lesson to other would-be military interventionists both in Burkina Faso and abroad.

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Odd moments in decolonization: São João Baptista de Ajudá

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Fort São João Baptista de Ajudá was an early 18th century Portuguese fortress embedded within the city of Ouidah in Dahomey. The latter was an African kingdom that had itself just conquered the coastal city when Portugal was granted the territory for a fort, and then it became a French colony until 1960, and it was ultimately renamed Benin in 1975 during the country’s Marxist revolution.

While the fort zone and city were influential, initially, in the history of Portuguese slaving in West Africa and in the kingdom’s interface with the European powers, the fort was soon handed to a Brazilian company and later abandoned — whereupon it fell into disrepair until Portugal reclaimed it in the 1860s. But after this brief restoration to power, it rapidly lost influence and territory as France came to power in the kingdom around it. Even a late 19th century effort to establish a Portuguese protectorate over the city ended with complete French control of everything outside the physical walls of the fort. Quietly, Portugal began disengaging and pulling out but continued to assert authority over the “territory” into the second half of the 20th century.

When French Dahomey was decolonized in 1960, the fort at “Ajudá” was still a Portuguese-ruled enclave in Ouidah, and the Portuguese dictatorship was very determined to retain all its overseas possessions (most of which were then in or approaching open revolt, or had already been annexed to other liberated countries). However, despite its military and strategic origins, São João Baptista de Ajudá proved neither very valuable nor defensible a year later when Dahomey’s new republican government demanded control of the enclave. Mainly because it was infinitesimal in size and had almost no people. That being said, those still there seemed pretty darn determined to not go down without a fight … a really, comically pathetic fight.

From the Wikipedia summary of the final event:

Until its annexation by Dahomey in 1961, São João Baptista de Ajudá was probably the smallest recognized separate modern political unit, initially around 1 km2 and being reduced until only 2ha (5 acres) by that time: according to the census of 1921 it had 5 inhabitants and, at the moment of the ultimatum by the Dahomey Government, it had only 2 inhabitants representing Portuguese sovereignty, who tried to burn it rather than surrendering it. When the fort was captured, they were hastily escorted to the Nigerian border and expelled from the country.

 
So…not exactly the Alamo or 300 Spartans against the Persian Empire.

I assume that the lesson “pick your battles” was not taken to heart by those two residents and their five-acre colony.

In the end, the fort was not burned and was eventually restored as a historic site with funds from the post-colonial Portuguese government some time after the 1975 transition to democracy.

Dramatic engraving of Pirate captain Bartholomew "Black Bart" Roberts following the capture of 11 ships outside the Portuguese Fort at Ouidah. Engraved by Benjamin Cole.

Dramatic engraving of Pirate captain Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts, following his capture of 11 ships outside the Portuguese Fort at Ouidah in the other dramatic episode it is famous for. Engraved by Benjamin Cole.

ECOWAS outlines a 1-year transition for Burkina Faso

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The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) sent senior officials to member-state Burkina Faso to meet with Col. Isaac Zida, who seized power on Saturday following the emergence of a constitutional power vacuum last week.

According to Reuters, this meeting resulted in a one-year transition plan that will rapidly end on military rule and (they hope) be minimally deviated from the existing elections calendar:

Three West African presidents urged Burkina Faso on Wednesday to appoint a transitional government to guide the country to elections next year following the people’s overthrow of longtime ruler Blaise Compaore last week.

Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama led the delegation from the West African bloc ECOWAS to help Burkina Faso plot a path to a civilian-led transition after the military named a senior army officer as head of state on Saturday.

Mahama, the current ECOWAS chairman, held talks with Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Zida, opposition politicians, Compaore’s supporters, religious leaders and civil society groups. There was a general consensus in favour of a civilian-led interim government, he said.

“There were going to be elections next year. We believe that we should just work with that election date, which is next November,” he said. “This means there will be a transitional government for one year and a new president will be elected.”

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and Senegalese leader Macky Sall, part of the ECOWAS delegation, agreed with the timetable, Mahama said.

 
A specific proposal was outlined for trying to find a consensus interim leader from the civilian community who can guide the transition over the coming year until elections are held:

Delegates from the meetings with Mahama said that all the separate groups had been asked to select three candidates for the interim presidency, which would be discussed in a plenary meeting later on Wednesday.

Mahama said the presidents had recommended that members of the interim authority should not be permitted to stand in the elections next year.

 
The existing Constitution of Burkina Faso, which I was reading on Saturday, already identifies a complex network of interest groups, religious communities, etc. which makes it easier to figure out who has quasi-constitutional role in sorting out a crisis like this. Presumably these groups were the ones represented at that meeting and are the ones who will be suggesting nominees for leadership roles in the transition administration.

The 15 member states of ECOWAS have, collectively, a vast amount of experience with military coups and transitions to democracy. Not necessarily good experience or track records, but they have the record to work from.

Although a few members, like Senegal (whose president was at the meeting), have actually avoided the blight, most of them have experienced at least one coup — if not a half dozen or more — since the end of colonialism. In just the past 15 years, for example, there were at least six successful military coups in ECOWAS members Côte D’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Niger, Guinea-Bissau again, and Mali. Throw in other improper transfers of power like the (still unresolved) 2005 Togo presidential succession and the list starts to grow pretty fast. Burkina Faso, which had managed to prevent coups for 27 years under President Compaoré — an apparent aberration — is actually on number seven now, which is a similar experience to Nigeria and Ghana, though they too have managed to maintain stability for a while, and have had democratic handoffs. Meanwhile, neither Togo nor The Gambia actually have democratic governments or any plan to transition toward that. One wonders exactly how well this Burkina Faso plan is going to work, given the ECOWAS record in general.

In fact, I’m not fully convinced that a stable transition is even possible in Burkina Faso without substantial military involvement (and heavy supervision from the international community). On the one hand, military-guided transitions to democracy have a super high failure rate (not sure if that’s adjusted for economics though); so that’s an argument for a rapid transfer. But on the other hand, Burkina Faso has 40+ political parties, an absurd and borderline non-functional constitution (now suspended by the military), no legitimate successor to the presidency, and so on. Thus, I’m kind of thinking the military might actually be the only valid option here for overseeing the transition, as it serves as a unifying factor cutting across competing affiliations.

I’m not even sure elections held under the existing system could result in anything that could actually set up a transitional government or interim constitution. And if a civilian is chosen to oversee the transition, there’s a risk of “playing favorites” with one of the forty factions. I hope, however, that the ECOWAS plan for selecting a consensus interim leader can actually find that necessary consensus. The next few months should also be used to consolidate the vast array of parties into a handful of reasonable competitive contenders.

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Burkina Faso: Attempted 3rd coup in 3 days fails; protesters cleared

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On Sunday, Burkina Faso’s capital again filled with thousands of protesters, this time demonstrating against the new “transitional” government of Col. Zida, whose backers unexpectedly seized power from within the military on early Saturday, removing the first military government set up on Friday after Blaise Compaoré resigned the presidency.

Zida, who was Army Spokesman and commander of the presidential guard, is less well known than many of the country’s top officers and is feared to be even more tied to the old order than the Friday government. Although he pledged a quick transition to elections and a new constitution, the timeline was undefined. One protester told Reuters why there was enough concern today to take to the streets again today:

“They are coming from Kossyam to enslave us,” said protestor Sanou Eric, in a reference to the Presidential Palace. “This is a coup d’etat. Zida has come out of nowhere.”

 
Zida’s Saturday government was created in the country’s seventh successful military coup since independence from France in 1960.

Later in the day today an apparent attempted 3rd coup in as many days was thwarted, according to Reuters reporting in the capital:

Witnesses said prominent opposition leader Saran Sereme and an army general, along with a crowd of their supporters, headed to the RTB Television on Sunday afternoon to declare themselves in charge of the transition but were thwarted by the army.

Gunshots rang out at the station and the channel was taken off the air. There were no reports of anybody being injured.

 
The Army reportedly dispersed the massing protesters in the capital streets with live-fire warning shots.

The international community continues to play wait-and-see, in light of the fact that they cannot automatically label the situation a coup (with all the legal implications that brings) because the constitutionally prescribed transfer of power was impossible due to the specified successor position not existing when the presidency became vacant on Friday after 27 uninterrupted years of control.

In other news, witnesses in neighboring Côte D’Ivoire reported the arrival of former President Compaoré in their capital on Saturday, according to the AFP:

…Burkina Faso’s deposed president reportedly arrived in neighbouring Ivory Coast, less than 24 hours after being forced from power. Compaore, who resigned on Friday amid mass protests against his 27-year rule, arrived in the capital Yamoussoukro on Saturday with his family.

“The services of the President hotel in Yamoussoukro served him [Compaore] dinner yesterday [Friday] and breakfast this morning [Saturday],” a hotel employee told the AFP news agency. A local resident told the AFP he saw “a long cortege of around 30 cars going in the direction of the villa,” which is used as a semi-official residence for foreign dignitaries.

 
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Possible coup inside Burkina Faso military government

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On Friday, Burkina Faso’s President Blaise Compaoré resigned from office after 27 years in power and a week of escalating protests (see our background report). In light of a constitutional vacuum, he handed power to General Honore Traoré, head of the Burkinabé Army, his former aide-de-camp, and called for elections within 90 days. Traoré made no comment on the latter point.

While protesters celebrated the fall of Compaoré, whose whereabouts are now unknown, General Traoré is still generally regarded as being too personally close to the former president.

Already things are looking very shaky for the transitional military government under Traoré:

The presidential guard’s second in command [and the Army Spokesman], Colonel Isaac Zida, says he has assumed power as head of state.
[…]
Col Zida said General Honore Traore’s claim to be head of state was now “obsolete”.

“I now assume… the responsibilities of head of the transition and of head of state to assure the continuation of the state” and a “smooth democratic transition”, said Col Zida in a televised speech quoted by AFP news agency.

Reuters reported that Col Zida, in a statement read out on local radio, had said: “I assume the functions of head of state and I call on (West African regional bloc) Ecowas and the international community to demonstrate their understanding and support the new authorities.”

 
From independence in 1960 to the end of the Cold War, there were at least five successful coup d’états and then none until now. Friday’s military takeover as a “transitional” government in the absence of a viable constitutional successor makes six, and if this one succeeds that will probably qualify as the seventh, despite being internal to the military and in such rapid succession.

Added: Reuters is counting this as number seven and reports:

“I assume from today the responsibilities of head of this transition and head of state,” Zida said, dressed in military fatigues, in the studio of BF1 television.

“I salute the memory of the martyrs of this uprising and bow to the sacrifices made by our people.”
[…]
Zida said the army had stepped in to avoid anarchy and ensure a swift democratic transition. He said a roadmap to elections would be drafted by a body drawn from different elements of society, including political parties and civil society.
[…]
“This is not a coup d’etat but a popular uprising,” he told Reuters after making the statement. “The people have hopes and expectations, and we believe we have understood them.”

 
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