Opinions of Thursday, 31 August 2023

Columnist: Rockson Adofo

Hurricane 'coup d’état’ is devastatingly sweeping across the African francophone countries

Niger coup Niger coup

The French-speaking countries in Africa have in the past two years become victims of hurricane “coup d’état”.

The rate at which their military, as codenamed “hurricane” in this publication, has been ousting their democratically-elected presidents and governments is similitude to the wild summer bushfires ravaging Greece, parts of the USA, and some countries in Europe.

The chronology of the coups goes as follows:

Mali on 24 May 2021

Guinea on 5 September 2021

Burkina Faso on 30 September 2022

Niger 0n 26 July 2023

Gabon on 30 August 2023

A rumour from a reliable source indicates that Madagascar is the next on the radar to be hit by hurricane “Coup d’état”

What is going on, one may ask? Why this flurry of coup d’états in the African francophone countries?

Where has France gone wrong hence her former African colonies overthrowing their democratically-elected governments and replacing them with the military all of whom are tilting towards Russia?

There are certain public expressions of the fact that almost all the deposed presidents are puppets directly or indirectly aiding France to exploit the wealth of their countries to the hilt, while theirs remain poor.

Again, France is alleged to have helped some of these puppet, corrupt, incompetent, and clueless leaders to amend their country’s constitution to go further than the two-term limits set in their constitution.

Greediness, overly love of power, and being exceedingly corrupt coupled with the inability to manage the economy of their country satisfactorily for the collective benefit of the citizenry, have been some of the cited reasons for overthrowing their governments.

The military is not going to sit on the fence while their presidents are short-changing the citizenry and the country big time, although, managing a country is not the duty of the military but protecting the country against external aggression.

Why are the leaders of the military juntas of the mentioned countries tilting their countries towards Russia? Do they see Russia as better than the West they had been with since all these donkey years dating from their political independence from their former colonial masters?

Or, the Russian Wagner mercenaries are behind the spate of coup d’états the French African colonies are going through?

Let the hurricane ravage on provided it is in the best interest of Africa to rid the continent of rogue presidents who see the sky as the limit of their quest for power and wealth, hence don’t give a hoot when their countries are being adversely exploited by foreign countries provided they get their cut?

By the way, are the military juntas any better? We live to see!

To conclude, why can’t Africans be themselves? As quickly as they divorce from their Western partners, they remarry either the Chinese or the Russians. I don’t mean wife and husband but the nations forming new alliances with the Asian countries.

Why can’t the fifty-two or so African countries form a block of their own to stand on their feet to do business among themselves to prosper to gather as African countries?

I hope the military juntas will seek to bring African countries together to make us strong and prosperous to curtail our over-reliance on either the Western or the Asian countries, that is, China and Russia.

“When you see someone’s beard on fire, better get water beside yours”, so an Akan adage goes. Subsequently, the Anglophone countries in Africa, especially in West Africa, must be on the lookout.

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