More
than was the case with President Goodluck Jonathan last year, all
Africa was surprised when President Yahya Jammeh conceded to his
opponent Adama Barrow in last week’s Gambian presidential election. Some
Nigerians were quick to say that it was “the Goodluck Effect,” a replay
of Jonathan’s concession even before results were officially declared
in Nigeria’s 2015 presidential elections. Jammeh’s concession was doubly
surprising because it bucked an emerging world trend. Most pundits
think that if Donald Trump had lost last month’s US presidential
election, he would have upturned his
country’s two centuries-old tradition by refusing to concede. Trump said he will accept the results only if he wins. He must have borrowed that maxim from African rulers.
African witchdoctors and prophets are hard pressed to explain why Africa’s top marabout ruler lost an election. In conceding, Jammeh was thinking not only of Nigeria but of similar events in neighbouring Senegal. In 2012 President Abdoulaye Wade conceded an election to the current president Macky Sall. Wade himself sold it as he bought it, to use a local adage; President Abdou Diof conceded to him in 2000AD after Wade, like Muhammadu Buhari, contested and lost three presidential elections before he won on his fourth try.
Nor was that the first African change of guard through elections. In 1991 Zambia’s redoubtable President Kenneth Kaunda, who had ruled his country since 1964, conceded the election to former trade union leader Frederick Chiluba. Three years later President Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi was defeated in an election and he shocked all Africans by moving out of the State House. Let me rephrase that: he was moved out of the State House. Observers at the time said Banda, who was 96, did not even know that an election had taken place or that he lost it. He had no wife but he had an Official Hostess, Cecilia Kadzamira, who did the packing after 30 years’ stay in power.
Banda wasn’t the first African ruler to leave power without knowing it. In 1987 when Zin Abdine Ibn Ali toppled Tunisia’s equally redoubtable President Habib Bourguiba, the 84 year old Bourguiba did not even know it. He had been in power for 31 years and he used to sleep for 15 hours a day. Even Nigeria’s celebrated concession case only borrowed a leaf from our neighbour, Benin’s Mathieu Kerekou. In the wake of the wind of change that swept Francophone Africa in 1991, Kerekou lost an election and conceded to Nicephore Soglo. Kerekou bounced back through an election five years later, allegedly with financial help from General Sani Abacha.
Many Nigerian youngsters were rubbing their eyes in disbelief when they read that Jammeh has ruled Gambia for 22 years. To my generation, that is but a short stay. When Lt. Yahaya Jammeh seized power in 1994, a Nigerian military contingent led by Lt Col Lawan Gwadabe was based in Gambia. Some people accused it of aiding Jammeh to remove President Dauda Jawara, which was uncharitable because Jawara was an old friend of Nigeria’s First Republic leaders. I was listening to a BBC radio phone-in program in 1996 when ECOWAS was demanding the return to power of Sierra Leone’s toppled President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah. One anti-Kabbah listener phoned to ask why ECOWAS was not demanding the return of Jawara. Kabbah’s Ambassador to the UN, who was on the program, said, “You see, Jawara was in power for 33 years. It is difficult for anyone to ask for his return.”
Without being defeated in elections, there were some African leaders who left power peacefully, though they were few. The best example was Nelson Mandela, who pledged when he was elected as South Africa’s first post-Apartheid president in 1994 to serve only one term. The saintly man did not contest again in 1999. Mandela’s world acclaimed example tended to overshadow one from an earlier era. In 1983 Mwalimu Julius Nyerere served his ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party with a two year notice that he will retire from the Tanzanian presidency in 1985. The entire CCM Central Committee led by his deputy Ali Hassan Mwinyi went to Mwalimu’s house and pleaded with him not to retire. Nyerere drove them away and ordered them to nominate a successor. They then chose Ali Hassan Mwinyi. Tanzania is still reaping stability from that saintly example.
In our neighbour Cameroon, there was also a semi-voluntary retirement, though things quickly went sour. In 1982 President Ahmadou Ahidjo, who had ruled for 22 years, stepped down on health grounds. He handed over to his prime minister Paul Biya who promptly turned around, passed a death sentence on Ahidjo and has been ruling Cameroon ever since. Biya’s 34 years in power could be Africa’s longest after Muammar Gaddafi’s 42 years. The sorry Ahidjo-Biya case reversed an early positive trend in African politics and made other African rulers wary of handing over, even to their trusted confidants.
The norm in Africa since independence is for a ruler to go on ruling until he meets a sticky end. The luckiest were those that fled into exile. In 1979 Uganda’s Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada fled to Libya and later Saudi Arabia just ahead of a rebel army. Uganda’s President Milton Obote fled twice, in 1972 and in 1985, ahead of coupists. Sudan’s President Gafar El-Numeiry fled to Egypt in 1985 when General Swar al Dahab’s men struck. Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam fled to Zimbabwe when rebels swept down on Addis Ababa in 1991. Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko fled to Morocco [Sssh! The Moroccan King is here!] and later to the French Riviera in 1997 when rebels marched into Kinshasa. Of three of our Chadian neighbours, General Felix Malloum fled to Lagos in 1978; Goukouni Weddeye ran to Libya in 1981 while Hissene Habre fled to Senegal in 1991.
Other African rulers were not so lucky. Many were captured by rebels, tortured and imprisoned. One was Nigeria’s dear friend President Diori Hammani of Niger Republic, who was imprisoned by Lt Col Seyni Kountche from 1974 almost until his death in 1989. Another was David Dacko of Central African Republic, who was deposed twice in 1966 and 1981. In Egypt, former President Hosni Mubarak and the man who briefly succeeded him, Mohammed Morsi, are both in jail right now.
Exile and imprisonment may sound sticky but things could get even worse. Many African rulers were killed in the process of overthrow, among them Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa in January 1966, Major General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi in July 1966 and General Murtala Mohammed in February 1976. Also killed in coups or soon after were Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of Congo in 1961; President Sylvanus Olympio of Togo in 1963; President Ngarta Tombalbaye of Chad in 1975; Congo Republic’s Marien Ngouabi in 1977; Comoro’s President Ali Soilih in 1978 and Niger Republic’s President Mainasara Ba’are in 1999. This is just a sample.
Three bloody overthrows stand out in recent African history. Even though Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Sellassie was captured and detained when the Dergue toppled him in 1974, sixty of his ministers and Army Generals were executed on the night of the coup. Another one was in Ghana in 1979 when Flight Lt Jerry Rawlings had three former rulers, General Akwasi Afrifa, General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong and General Fred Akuffo tied to stakes on Accra beach and executed. The third ignoble case was in Monrovia, Liberia in 1980. After soldiers led by Master Sergeant Samuel Doe killed President William Tolbert, they lined up his ministers on the beach and shot them. Doe’s own execution by Yormie Johnson in 1990 was no less brutal.
Congratulations, Malam Yahya Jammeh. Hillary Clinton said recently that conceding an election is “painful.” Compared to exile, jail or execution however, it is very sweet.
country’s two centuries-old tradition by refusing to concede. Trump said he will accept the results only if he wins. He must have borrowed that maxim from African rulers.
African witchdoctors and prophets are hard pressed to explain why Africa’s top marabout ruler lost an election. In conceding, Jammeh was thinking not only of Nigeria but of similar events in neighbouring Senegal. In 2012 President Abdoulaye Wade conceded an election to the current president Macky Sall. Wade himself sold it as he bought it, to use a local adage; President Abdou Diof conceded to him in 2000AD after Wade, like Muhammadu Buhari, contested and lost three presidential elections before he won on his fourth try.
Nor was that the first African change of guard through elections. In 1991 Zambia’s redoubtable President Kenneth Kaunda, who had ruled his country since 1964, conceded the election to former trade union leader Frederick Chiluba. Three years later President Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi was defeated in an election and he shocked all Africans by moving out of the State House. Let me rephrase that: he was moved out of the State House. Observers at the time said Banda, who was 96, did not even know that an election had taken place or that he lost it. He had no wife but he had an Official Hostess, Cecilia Kadzamira, who did the packing after 30 years’ stay in power.
Banda wasn’t the first African ruler to leave power without knowing it. In 1987 when Zin Abdine Ibn Ali toppled Tunisia’s equally redoubtable President Habib Bourguiba, the 84 year old Bourguiba did not even know it. He had been in power for 31 years and he used to sleep for 15 hours a day. Even Nigeria’s celebrated concession case only borrowed a leaf from our neighbour, Benin’s Mathieu Kerekou. In the wake of the wind of change that swept Francophone Africa in 1991, Kerekou lost an election and conceded to Nicephore Soglo. Kerekou bounced back through an election five years later, allegedly with financial help from General Sani Abacha.
Many Nigerian youngsters were rubbing their eyes in disbelief when they read that Jammeh has ruled Gambia for 22 years. To my generation, that is but a short stay. When Lt. Yahaya Jammeh seized power in 1994, a Nigerian military contingent led by Lt Col Lawan Gwadabe was based in Gambia. Some people accused it of aiding Jammeh to remove President Dauda Jawara, which was uncharitable because Jawara was an old friend of Nigeria’s First Republic leaders. I was listening to a BBC radio phone-in program in 1996 when ECOWAS was demanding the return to power of Sierra Leone’s toppled President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah. One anti-Kabbah listener phoned to ask why ECOWAS was not demanding the return of Jawara. Kabbah’s Ambassador to the UN, who was on the program, said, “You see, Jawara was in power for 33 years. It is difficult for anyone to ask for his return.”
Without being defeated in elections, there were some African leaders who left power peacefully, though they were few. The best example was Nelson Mandela, who pledged when he was elected as South Africa’s first post-Apartheid president in 1994 to serve only one term. The saintly man did not contest again in 1999. Mandela’s world acclaimed example tended to overshadow one from an earlier era. In 1983 Mwalimu Julius Nyerere served his ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party with a two year notice that he will retire from the Tanzanian presidency in 1985. The entire CCM Central Committee led by his deputy Ali Hassan Mwinyi went to Mwalimu’s house and pleaded with him not to retire. Nyerere drove them away and ordered them to nominate a successor. They then chose Ali Hassan Mwinyi. Tanzania is still reaping stability from that saintly example.
In our neighbour Cameroon, there was also a semi-voluntary retirement, though things quickly went sour. In 1982 President Ahmadou Ahidjo, who had ruled for 22 years, stepped down on health grounds. He handed over to his prime minister Paul Biya who promptly turned around, passed a death sentence on Ahidjo and has been ruling Cameroon ever since. Biya’s 34 years in power could be Africa’s longest after Muammar Gaddafi’s 42 years. The sorry Ahidjo-Biya case reversed an early positive trend in African politics and made other African rulers wary of handing over, even to their trusted confidants.
The norm in Africa since independence is for a ruler to go on ruling until he meets a sticky end. The luckiest were those that fled into exile. In 1979 Uganda’s Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada fled to Libya and later Saudi Arabia just ahead of a rebel army. Uganda’s President Milton Obote fled twice, in 1972 and in 1985, ahead of coupists. Sudan’s President Gafar El-Numeiry fled to Egypt in 1985 when General Swar al Dahab’s men struck. Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam fled to Zimbabwe when rebels swept down on Addis Ababa in 1991. Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko fled to Morocco [Sssh! The Moroccan King is here!] and later to the French Riviera in 1997 when rebels marched into Kinshasa. Of three of our Chadian neighbours, General Felix Malloum fled to Lagos in 1978; Goukouni Weddeye ran to Libya in 1981 while Hissene Habre fled to Senegal in 1991.
Other African rulers were not so lucky. Many were captured by rebels, tortured and imprisoned. One was Nigeria’s dear friend President Diori Hammani of Niger Republic, who was imprisoned by Lt Col Seyni Kountche from 1974 almost until his death in 1989. Another was David Dacko of Central African Republic, who was deposed twice in 1966 and 1981. In Egypt, former President Hosni Mubarak and the man who briefly succeeded him, Mohammed Morsi, are both in jail right now.
Exile and imprisonment may sound sticky but things could get even worse. Many African rulers were killed in the process of overthrow, among them Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa in January 1966, Major General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi in July 1966 and General Murtala Mohammed in February 1976. Also killed in coups or soon after were Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of Congo in 1961; President Sylvanus Olympio of Togo in 1963; President Ngarta Tombalbaye of Chad in 1975; Congo Republic’s Marien Ngouabi in 1977; Comoro’s President Ali Soilih in 1978 and Niger Republic’s President Mainasara Ba’are in 1999. This is just a sample.
Three bloody overthrows stand out in recent African history. Even though Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Sellassie was captured and detained when the Dergue toppled him in 1974, sixty of his ministers and Army Generals were executed on the night of the coup. Another one was in Ghana in 1979 when Flight Lt Jerry Rawlings had three former rulers, General Akwasi Afrifa, General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong and General Fred Akuffo tied to stakes on Accra beach and executed. The third ignoble case was in Monrovia, Liberia in 1980. After soldiers led by Master Sergeant Samuel Doe killed President William Tolbert, they lined up his ministers on the beach and shot them. Doe’s own execution by Yormie Johnson in 1990 was no less brutal.
Congratulations, Malam Yahya Jammeh. Hillary Clinton said recently that conceding an election is “painful.” Compared to exile, jail or execution however, it is very sweet.
ref: http://www.dailytrust.com.ng/news/columns/exile-jail-death-or-concession/174504.html#BgQxVk4Y0SDKiB0j.99
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