The Failure Of Democracy In Africa

 By Chiedu Uche Okoye

The rashes of successful military takeovers in some African countries signpost the failure of democracy on the African continent. Before the Caucasoid race brought democracy to Africa, the many different kingdoms in Africa had their pre-colonial types of government.

Then, we had the Dahomey kingdom, Benin kingdom, Oyo Empire, and others. Their respective pre-colonial types of government throve, ensuring and guaranteeing orderly succession of pre-colonial governments in Africa. The evolutionary trends of our pre-colonial governments were stymied by the white people’s introduction of democracy to the African people(s), however.

Ali May Be Gone But The Bongo System Survives In Gabon

 By Chidi Odinkalu

Citizens of Gabon, the small Central African country and former bastion of French colonialism in the Congo Basin, broke out in spontaneous celebration at the news of the ouster of President Ali Bongo Ondimba, on August 30, 2023. This is the 22nd coup attempt in Africa since 2013, and the 11th successful coup across eight countries since Zimbabwe’s soldiers sacked President Robert Mugabe in 2017.

*Ali Bongo makes first public appearance after suffering a stroke 
This is also the third coup attempt in Gabon’s history and the first to succeed. The coup began on the fourth day of a nation-wide curfew accompanied by a shutdown of the airspace, borders, and the internet and shortly after Gabon’s electoral commission announced under cover of darkness that President Bongo had won another seven-year term in elections in which he allowed no observers.

The New Strongmen Of The Sahel

 By Chidi Odinkalu

In July 2013, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, then Egypt’s army chief, sacked his benefactor and Egypt’s first democratically elected president, President Mohammed Morsi, in a military coup, installed himself as military ruler of the country and suspended the country’s constitution. And 11 months later, at the end of May 2014, the General proclaimed himself the elected ruler of Egypt, winning 93% of the votes in an election with a pre-determined outcome in which he was the only candidate with any chance of being declared winner. 

The African Union, which had previously decided that coup plotters should not use the benefit of their incumbency to confer democratic legitimacy on themselves, quickly embraced General Sisi, even making him Chair of their Assembly of Heads of State and Government in his first term four years later. 

The Homosexuality Of Cultural Imperialism

 By Owei Lakemfa

I made acquaintance with a lady, Yeye Akilimali Funua Olade, about 1990. A few months later, my wife and I visited her in Ila Oragun where she was running a rural library, the African Heritage Research Library. She was an American who had studied at Fisk University from 1963 -1965, earned a Bachelor’s degree in African- American/Black Studies from the San Francisco State University, and a Master of Library Science from the University of California.

So what was she doing in such rustic circumstances? She said she had three children, including two girls and all around the American communities she lived, aggressive forces of lesbianism were on the rise. So, with the agreement of her African American husband, Ayantuga Olade, she fled the United States. Unfortunately, the forces she ran away from in North America, four decades ago, are on the move in her adopted continent, Africa in the guise of campaigning for workers and human rights.

Nigeria: The Warnings From Sanusi And Danjuma

 By Lasisi Olagunju  

The Washington Post of May 29, 1979 reported an exchange between President Idi Amin Dada of Uganda and an agent of a British money-printing firm. The Ugandan dictator asked the man to help him print two million Ugandan shillings worth of 100 shilling notes. The Briton accepted the offer but "gingerly" asked Idi Amin how he was going to be paid for his services. "Print three million and take one million for yourself" was Amin's answer. 

*Danjuma 

The Ugandan leader had a minister of foreign exchange. Before Idi Amin's engagement with the Briton, the minister had informed the president that “the government coffers are empty.” Amin looked deeply at him and retorted: “Why (do) you ministers always come nagging to President Amin? You are stupid. If we have no money, the solution is very simple: you should print more money.”

Is The West Lusting For Robert Mugabe Again?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  
Two interesting incidents that played out on the international scene recently clearly underlined the profound confusion of values that has crept into Western policies and attitudes towards President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Late in May, the United Nation’s World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) announced the choice of President Mugabe as a United Nations Ambassador for Tourism, despite the fact that the international travel ban and other sanctions imposed on him by the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) were yet to be lifted. He was warmly welcomed into the prestigious “leaders of tourism” group with his Zambian counterpart, Michael Sata.  

*Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe
 And His Wife, Grace...

At Victoria Falls, on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, where Sata and Mugabe met to sign an agreement with the UNWTO Secretary General, Taleb Rifai, Mugabe must have been surprised and elated to hear Rifai say this about his own Zimbabwe: 

"I was told about the wonderful experience and the warm hospitality of this country … By coming here, it is a recognition, an endorsement on the country that it is a safe destination." 

Following this May 28, 2012 agreement, Zambia and Zimbabwe will jointly host the UNWTO general assembly in August 2013.  

Reactions to this development were prompt and unsparing. Human rights groups across the world and government functionaries in EU countries condemned it in very strong terms, just as Canada immediately announced its decision to withdraw from the UNWTO. But while Canada maintained that Mugabe’s appointment was the key factor that inspired its decision to terminate its membership of the global body, UNWTO stated that Canada had already withdrawn its membership two weeks before Mugabe was invited to join the body. 

African People And Review Mechanism

By Moses Obroku

Following the adoption of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) by the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee in March 2003, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) was instituted. The APRM is a mutually agreed instrument voluntarily acceded to by the member States of the African Union (AU) as a self-monitoring mechanism.

Like all other policies informing the institution of various treaties in the plethora of regional, sub-regional and global organizations in the world, the APRM has lofty ideas that make it look promising on the paper it is couched in its secretariat.

Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe

Essentially, the APRM is meant to operate based on self-assessment questionnaire developed by its secretariat. Here, Governments that have subjected themselves to the review mechanism will assess their performances in the areas of democracy and political governance and socio-economic development, as well as checking their compliance with wide range of African and international human rights treaties.

As at the end of 2010, interestingly about 20 countries have signed the MOU agreeing to come under peer review. It would appear African leaders are leaning towards the idea of credible governance by this gesture, even though a number of them are sit-tight undemocratic despots.

But the APRM is not going to solve the problems of the African people. That is why they are beginning to look for a way out in recent times. What people hitherto had not thought possible is becoming very popular. The African people are beginning to realize that true power and political will reside in them, and results are being recorded promptly.

(L-R) President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, his wife, Janet,
Queen Elizabeth II Of England, her husband, Prince Philip,
The Duke of Edinburgh, at a State banquet at State  House
on November 22, 2007 in Entebbe, Uganda, before the opening
of the CHOGM hosted by Uganda.


A new APRM (African People Review Mechanism) was established when the Tunisian people told erstwhile dictator Ben Ali that they had had enough and he quickly tucked his tail and fled into exile after massive protests and demonstrations. The review has started and it is spreading.

The youths of Egypt, embracing this rude awakening started demonstrating against the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak whom no one could stand up to formerly.


Before our eyes their numbers swelled and daily they thronged the streets of Cairo, converging on the Liberation Square  telling Mubarak that time was up. It is worthy of note that it took only eighteen days for this Egyptian revolution to mature. The heat became too much for Mubarak to handle.



Former President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt

The African Peer Review is segmented into four namely: Base Review, Periodic Review, Requested Review, and Crises Review. However, it has been suspected that it is only the Base Review that may be practicable for now and the least time this has taken for the first four countries to go through it is eighteen months!


It is therefore apparent that the People Review Mechanism yields result with the speed of light. This movement has no patience for cheap talk and intergovernmental bureaucracies. With one strong voice the people shouted and the despots were forced to oblige.

If the African Union, NEPAD, and even the APRM were serious about good governance, what business do they have condoning the many dictators that parade themselves as leaders in Africa? As I look at the list of countries that have submitted themselves for review in APRM from 2003-2010, I thought the joke is on the leadership of the AU that set up the APRM. Surely, Algeria, Gabon, Uganda, Egypt, Sudan are a laughing stock on any kind of ‘good governance review’.




Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika

It is apparent that this People Review Mechanism will not stop with Tunisia and Egypt. It has quickly crossed to the Middle Eastern monarchical Bahrain where they are calling for widespread political reforms and I have no doubt they will get what they want.

And now it is back in Africa and Libya is under review. Muammar Gaddafi has turned Libya to a fiefdom. For forty two years now he has ruled the country with an iron fist. But like his counterparts he did not see this coming, and his best response was to station mercenaries and snipers with automatic weapons to take down protesters. Gaddafi does not understand that this type of movement has only one outcome, and that is victory! He also does not understand the Arabs. The people just don’t give up.

While, the protesters get gunned down, and Gaddafi is spitting fire and hailstone that he would rather die in power(as the villain that he is not a martyr), it is certainly only a matter of time before he gets kicked out of power or killed in the process according to his utterances.

It is profound when one thinks of the happenings in leadership in Africa. There seems to be that inherent tendency to want to remain in power for life like any monarchy.



Africa, My Africa

Perhaps, Africans are wired genetically to do so. Or else, how does one explain the shameless clinging onto office endlessly in a charade of democracy by African leaders?

 Forty two years and Gaddafi is still holding onto power. And he is not alone nor the first African to do so. Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Abdullaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, Yahya Jammeh of Gambia, Theodore Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Paul Biya of Cameroon, Blaise Campore of Burkina Faso, Hassan Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, Jose De Santos of Angola, Idris Derby of Chad, Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Pakalitha Mosisli of Lesotho, Ismail Oma Guelleh of Djibouti, are all kindred spirits.

The saying that all it takes for ill intentioned people  to take over society and poison it is for good people to stand aloof and do nothing is now tested in these societies under review. Only in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and other climes, the people had stood aloof for too long.

But this current review has come to stay. It is reminiscent of the renaissance movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s that swept the whole of Africa heralding the independence of many African states from colonialism.

President George W. Bush shakes hands with Burkina Faso
President Blaise Compaore,  during a meeting Wednesday,
July 16, 2008, in the Oval Office of the White House.
(White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

As this piece is written, Libya is still under review by the same people who have groaned under the heavy hand of its leader and who has now turned the weapons he purchased with the money of tax payers on those same tax payers. The rest of North Africa and indeed the rest of Africa , the Middle East and every cranny of the world where dictators have held sway should warm up for their own review. African people are simply fed up with bad governance.

In the case of Algeria, it was the rising cost of food items that sparked off the riots in 2010 that eventually ousted the president. In Nigeria, the people would have  myriads of reasons to choose to protest about- electricity, bad roads, unemployment, rising prices of food commodities, fuel of all description, health care issues, housing , as well as the general hijacking of decent living conditions by a callous few.

As this revolution sweeps through Libya, we can only watch with bated breaths, anticipating which country will take it up until ultimately the whole of Africa will be free from economic and political oppression.

Enough is enough!

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Moses Obroku, a legal practitioner, contributed this piece to this blog from Abuja, Nigeria. (Email: mosesobroku@yahoo.com)