What Nigeria must learn from Mali, Belarus’ political impasse

Two important events in Mali and Belarus are shaping the political circumstances of the modern time with far-reaching lessons for Nigeria in particular and West Africa in general.

In both countries, the citizens rose in anger against the political rascality of the ruling elite amid dwindling fortunes of the countries characterised by manipulation of the electoral process and the imposition of unpopular policies that undermine the aspirations of the people.

The people of Mali had for more than two months embarked on regular demonstrations calling for the President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita to step down three years before the end of his final term. The impasse came to head last Tuesday when the military arrested him and declared a mutiny. The West African country has been suffering from debilitating level of terrorism and insurgency just like Nigeria and the government of Keita appeared to have failed to address the matter. He also failed to tackle poverty and the worsening indices of the economy amid insecurity and political instability.

Although the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has announced the suspension of Mali from the group and demanded the restoration of Keita and constitutional order in the country, Keita had already announced his resignation pledging loyalty to peace and stability to his country.

“If it pleased certain elements of our military to decide this should end with their intervention, do I really have a choice?” he said. “[I must] submit to it because I don’t want any bloodshed,” he further said.

The coup-makers – who called themselves National Committee for the Salvation of the People – promised to oversee a transition to election within a “reasonable” period and restore stability in the country.

In Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled for 26 years, claimed he had won a landslide victory in an election marred by accusations of vote-rigging. This sparked a large protest, where a crowd of thousands gathered in the centre of the capital city of the country Minsk, to show disapproval of the announced result. The protesters have vowed to maintain pressure on the president until he yields to their demands.

Following these developments, political pundits in Nigeria have warned the authorities that have subjected the people to economic hardship that no government can survive the people’s fury once they unite to make specific demands especially now that the economic situation appears to be getting worse and the terrorism in the north east is not abating.  Keita was toppled in what appears to be the culmination of the people’s consensus that was executed by the military.

Speaking to BDSUNDAY in an interview, the Director of the Center for China Studies (CCS), Charles Onunaiju, said that what happened in Mali is a case of national consensus on ending the stalemate of the country’s crisis.

“This is a home-breed solution. We know what has been going on there in the past one month. Despite ECOWAS shuttle diplomacy, no concrete results were achieved. These Malians took the step to restore the country to normalcy and save the country from this quagmire,” he said.

Onunaiju further said: “The lesson is that people should not take constitutional order as an alibi to perpetrate all manner of illegality, all manner of confusion, all manner of corruption. You don’t corrupt the system, you don’t bastardise and undermine the system and take shelter in constitutional order. Nobody should fool himself that the constitutional order is sacrosanct especially if it is abused with reckless abandon; nobody should take that for granted. That is the lesson of the Malian example. ”

The public intellectual denounced the position of ECOWAS to raise a standby force to probably invade Mali to restore order, stressing that the best ECOWAS can do is to help the Malians restore constitutionality as soon as possible.

“Seeking to invade the country is going to be a waste of time. What we saw is a national consensus which regional efforts have not ended despite the shuttle diplomacy which has even worsened the matter.

“So, in as much as we said that military has no role in the political life of the sub-region, the reality is that the political standoff is nearly plunging the country into a quagmire, and this is their own way of building a consensus around a solution,” Onunaiju said.

According to him, “The man who was overthrown has accepted his position; he does not want his country to be plunged into bloodshed. He is the right person to call for ECOWAS intervention. But he is the first to step down to avoid plunging his country into chaos. So, who will be more patriotic than Keita? Who will be more Malian than Keita, who has opted out?

“So, any deployment of troops to that country will be rebuffed, not just by the soldiers, but that will unite the country. So, the best ECOWAS can do is to nudge the so-called committee for national salvation into early transition to civil rule.”

On the possible economic impact of this coup in Mali, following the suspension and economic blockade by imposed by the regional group, Onunaiju maintained that while sanction may hurt the Malians they were already in economic crisis caused by political instability and wished to address the matter urgently.

“You cannot build any sustainable economy in an atmosphere of political instability. Mali is already wrecked by political instability; no meaningful economic development can take place.

Also speaking to BDSUNDAY, public affairs analyst, Katch Ononuju, said the lesson is that Nigeria must lead ECOWAS to pay more attention to negotiated peace which was abandoned in the aftermath of the coup that toppled Keita’s predecessor Ahmoudi Toumani Toure.  

“If the African Union (AU) and the ECOWAS had paid more attention and engage in the process of negotiated peace, this matter would have long being addressed. Agreements are set goals, implementation is to bring it into execution to bring things to a close but the ECOWAS and the AU did not pursue it,” he said.

He however, warned that the seeming support the coup plotters are enjoying in Mali is not real support, adding that it has the potential to have ripple effects of coups in the region if the junta is not immediately forced to restore constitutional order as he called for invasion of the country.

“Those who invested in taking power through unconstitutional means, they will also do other things to make their action legitimate by organising the people to the street. The ripple effect is more instability.

“We already have a workable protocol to sort Mali out and the military will return power to constituted authority. This is what we must do and if possible invade Mali and restore constitutional rule.

“The people of Mali currently require help and we will help them to bring peace. So, let the sub-region provide that stability protocol if possible by force to stabilize Mali because if there is chaos in Mali it will affect other countries of the sub region,” he said.

Although there has been international condemnation of the coup by the US, UN, ECOWAS, AU, the dire situation in Mali, just like in many West African countries, was a clear invitation of coup because of extra-constitutional measures adopted by politicians in the region to manipulate the electoral process.

Nigeria will go to general election in 2023 but barely two-and-half years to the election, electoral reforms are yet to be concluded, which gives credence that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) government led by President Muhammadu Buhari, appears unwilling to carry out these reforms especially the issue of electronic transfer of results. The APC has been accused of planning to manipulate the process to retain power in 2023.

The same scenario is playing out in Ivory Coast, where President Allassane Ouatara is allegedly seeking a third term outside the prescription of the country’s constitution and the ECOWAS and AU appear to be saying nothing about it. In Guinea-Conakry, not far from Mali, the president is also said to be seeking a third term. So, if the democratic institutions are manipulated as is often the case in the region, is there any serious argument against unconstitutional change of government?

Ayo Adamu, a public affairs commentator and systems engineer, told BDSUNDAY that Nigeria had no moral high ground to champion a clampdown on the military junta that has seized power in Mali.

“By every standard of measurement of good governance, the government in Nigeria has failed. The Nigerian citizens are tired with government and their case is worse than that of Malians. Who moral high ground does the Nigerian government have champion an aggression against the military junta that sacked the Malian president? We must first remove the log of wood in our eyes before probing other people’s eyes for a grain of sand. Our situation in Nigeria is pathetic, needing urgent attention; we must not pretend all is well here. That’s just my take,” Adamu said.