We’ve made a mistake in Mali

As per BusinessDay NG’s rules, I had to turn in this piece to my editor three days ago. So this update came the day after. Per the update, it appears that both ECOWAS and France have de facto accepted the coup plot in Mali, having given them 12 months to return to civilian rule. Last I checked, the plotters are still holding out for 36 months…

So keep that in mind when reading the whole thing on BusinessDay. As always, given their paywall, I’ll only post a small section here.

There are multiple risks involved in permitting military interventions. There is the risk of Goita’s junta shrinking the civic and democratic space if allowed to stay in office without a definite timeline for returning the country to democratic rule. In addition, there is the risk that it is unlikely to honour the timeline if one is eventually reached.

But most importantly for us in Nigeria, is the risk of contagion.

Coups beget coups. Many of Africa’s “longest-serving” leaders, including Bouteflika in Algeria (he got 81% of the vote last time out), Mubarak in Egypt and Mugabe in Zimbabwe were essentially toppled by coups after popular discontent followed elections in which they “won” handsomely. The same applied to Bashir in Sudan, while in Nigeria’s immediate abroad, Cameroon, Paul Biya, who has been re-elected handily on a number of occasions is presiding over an undeclared civil war. When democratic rule is so brazenly undermined, provide cover for soldiers to seize power in the name of restoring — not disrupting — democracy.

Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea, all sharing borders with Mali, have elections coming soon, and possess similar political dynamics as Mali did before the contentious vote that saw IBK retain power. In Guinea, Alpha Conde has just decided to toss the Constitution, “democratically” of course. In Côte d’Ivoire, Alassane Ouattara is playing similar games. In both countries there are powerful groups that are unhappy, and have supporters in their militaries. If the junta in Mali is allowed to remain in power, it could encourage the militaries or other non-state actors in these countries to have ideas, and from there it could spread. That is how the disease of coup making spread in the region shortly after the rash of independence celebrations in 1960.

So what is Nigeria’s interest you might ask.

Nigeria is the behemoth in West Africa, and is just as unstable as any of these countries. Indeed, Ouattara’s Côte d’Ivoire is arguably more stable. If the disease of coups begins to spread, if ECOWAS allows the Mali junta to get away with it, then the risk of some discontented idiots in our barracks here having ideas goes up. At a time when our military is active in operations in all states of the federation bar Kebbi and Abuja, the last thing we need is a misguided attempt at “steadying the flagging ship of state”. What we need is for us to learn to dialogue with each other in this democratic experiment, no matter how obnoxious we find people from the other side to be.

I can give two examples of how, and why the best military government is worse than the worst democratic government, no matter how bad things may appear. On 15 August 1947, two countries were born in South-East Asia, both colonised by the British. In both of them, the first set(s) of elections were heavily contested and rigged in favour of the party in power. In both of them, there were games of musical chairs of politicians after each rigged election. In one of them however, by October 1958, the military had had enough, and conducted a coup. That country went on to have a total of four successful changes of government via the instrument of coup d’état. In the other, despite all the political higi-haga, the military never intervened.

So what are their outcomes? Today, Pakistan in which the military intervened four times successfully and quite a number of times without success, has a GDP of $284 billion, and most tellingly, HDI of 0.56. Its next door neighbour, India, where the military stayed away, has a GDP of $2.93 trillion and a HDI of 0.65. India’s GDP is 10 times that of Pakistan alongside whom it started the journey to nationhood, and despite having six times Pakistan’s population, it’s people live better. If these statistics don’t provide an illuminating verdict on the outcomes of military intervention, I don’t know what else will.

It is in Nigeria’s strategic interest, to ensure that the thugs in Mali do not get away with it.