By Steve Otaloro
Across the vast and wounded continent of Africa, the word “coup d’état” is not merely an entry in history books; it is a recurring nightmare, a blood-stained refrain that has echoed from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean for six decades. Since Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah was toppled in 1966 while on a peace mission in Hanoi, the continent has suffered more successful coups than any other region on earth- over 200 attempts, more than half victorious. Togo, Burkina Faso (eight times), Sudan (seventeen attempts), Nigeria (eight), Mali, Guinea, Niger, Gabon, Chad, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mauritania, Comoros, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea-the list is a necrology of democratic hope.
Each time the barracks gates swing open and soldiers in dark glasses announce “a new dawn” on national radio, the same ritual of barbarism unfolds. Parliaments are padlocked or turned into barracks. Political parties are dissolved. Newspapers are shuttered. Judges are dismissed. Citizens are reduced to trembling subjects who must applaud decrees issued at gunpoint. The legislature- that sacred arena where the people’s diverse voices are supposed to wrestle, negotiate, and forge a common destiny- is the first institution to be murdered. With it dies the very idea of representation, accountability, and consent.
Military rule is governance by terror disguised as discipline. The junta arrogates to itself the power of life and death: curfews enforced with bullets, critics disappeared into unmarked graves, opposition leaders dragged from their beds at midnight. There is no budget scrutiny, no parliamentary question time, no free press to expose theft. Corruption does not merely flourish; it becomes the operating system of the state. Soldiers who yesterday commanded platoons suddenly award themselves oil blocks, diamond concessions, and presidential palaces while the treasury bleeds out.
History is merciless in its verdict. Mobutu’s Zaire, renamed and plundered into ruin. Bokassa’s Central African Empire, a grotesque theatre of cannibalism and coronation with stolen French millions. Idi Amin’s Uganda, where universities were closed and intellectuals fed to crocodiles. Sani Abacha’s Nigeria, whose stolen billions still litter Swiss vaults. Eyadéma’s Togo, a father-to-son dynasty masked as military continuity. Every single one of these regimes left their countries poorer, more divided, and infinitely more brutal than they found them. Even the “best” military regimes- Rawlings in Ghana, Murtala in Nigeria, Sankara in Burkina Faso- eventually revealed the fatal flaw: power without consent sooner or later rots into power without restraint.
The shortcomings of military rule are structural and incurable:
• Suppression of every civil liberty speech, assembly, movement, thought.
• Suspension of the rule of law; decrees replace statutes, kangaroo courts replace justice.
• Economic collapse; soldiers are trained to destroy, not to build budgets or attract investment or nurture institutions.
• International isolation; sanctions, suspended aid, pariah status.
• Succession crises; when the strongman dies or is killed, the vacuum invites another coup.
• The militarisation of the national psyche; violence becomes the default grammar of politics.
In the twenty-first century, khaki dictatorship is not merely immoral; it is obsolete. The world has moved on. Citizens armed with smartphones and satellite television will no longer kneel quietly while illiterate sergeants or uninformed officers play emperor. The recent wave of coups in the Sahel- Mali 2020 and 2021, Guinea 2021, Burkina Faso 2022, Niger 2023, Gabon 2023- are not revolutions; they are the death throes of a discredited idea masquerading as salvation.
The African Union and regional bodies must draw a line in blood and sand: no more tolerance, no more “wait and see,” no more legitimisation through observer status. Every recruit and officers into every African barracks must, on the day of enlistment, swear a solemn oath enforceable by court-martial and international prosecution never to participate in the overthrow of a constitutional government.
Any coup must be declared null, void, and legally non-existent from the very minute it is announced. ECOWAS, SADC, EAC, IGAD must maintain rapid-response political and, if necessary, military intervention forces whose sole mandate is to restore the legitimate government within weeks, not years. No breathing space for the putschists to entrench themselves. No negotiations that reward treason.
Elections must be sanctified. Independent National Electoral Commissions must be truly independent, funded regionally if necessary, supervised by joint AU–UN missions, with results transmitted in real time and protected by biometric irrevocability. Term limits must be non-negotiable; any attempt to amend them for self-perpetuation must trigger automatic suspension from the African Union.
There is no acceptable civilian dictatorship either- but at least civilians must periodically face the verdict of the ballot box. Soldiers never do.
I salute President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria for his swift, decisive response when President Patrice Talon of Benin cried out against a creeping coup. Despite Nigeria’s own burdens, President Tinubu mobilised diplomatic and security resources to smother the plot before it could draw its first breath. Such Pan-African vigilance is the new template: neighbours as guarantors of one another’s democracy.
In the end, the argument is simple and irrefutable. Democracy- noisy, messy, sometimes corrupt, often slow- the only system that treats citizens as owners of their nation rather than prisoners in it. Military rule treats them as a conquered species. There is no third way. There is no “disciplined” autocracy that delivers development without freedom. Every attempt has ended in shame and ashes.
Africa has bled enough under the jackboot. The era of coups must be buried with the century that spawned it. The future belongs to the ballot, not the bullet. And any soldier who dreams of seizing power must know, before he even loads his rifle, that the entire continent will rise as one to crush his treason and restore the people’s sovereignty.
The iron fist has crushed too many African dreams. It is time to break those fingers, one by one, until democracy breathes free again because the future truly belongs to the ballot not the bullet.
Otaloro is a political analyst, governance commentator, and international policy observer.
