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It remains a subject of great coincidence but regardless, many conversations have already started on how it is that a number of coup d’etats have happened in West African ECOWAS member countries within a span of 2 years.

President of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s is current Chairman of the Economic Community of West African States, and whilst the ECOWAS, under his leadership has done significant work to deal with these coups, what specific measures were put in to tackle these unrests within the sub-region?

From Niger, Mali, and then to Guinea, the latest news of the now confirmed coup d’etat in Burkina Faso adds up to the list while all the nagging questions remain.

The latest - the Burkina Faso coup was led by Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who was the head of security in the Ouagadougou.

GhanaWeb sought the experiential inputs of two security analysts on what could be accounting for all of these coups, why now, and the possible threats these could portend for Ghana as a country, particularly too because of the proximity of the latest country to have joined the growing list.

Before that, we take a look at the coups that have been recently experienced in West Africa and what the ECOWAS bloc has done about each one of them:

The Niger coup that lasted for 15 minutes

On March 30, 2021, the Northern West African nation of Niger suffered a coup attempt just a few hours to the inauguration ceremony of then president-elect, Mohamed Bazoum.

Bazoum was due to be sworn-in as the next Niger leader after an election victory was disputed by his opponent, Mahamane Ousmane, with former president, Mahamadou Issoufou, leaving the reigns after serving two five-year terms.

But how long did the coup attempt last? 15 to 20 minutes according to an AFP report.

WHAT THE ECOWAS LEADERSHIP DID

Since this coup was a short-lived one, there was no official action from the ECOWAS bloc except for the condemnations that came from within the country.

Mali Coup

In May 2021, Col Assimi Goïta led another ousting of the president of Mali, Bah Ndaw, and Prime Minister, Moctar Ouane, over their failure in their duties and over what he described as their agenda to sabotage the country's transition.

Nine months earlier, in August 2020, elements from the Malian military had taken siege of the Soundiata military base in the town of Kati in Mali.

The group was said to have made their way into the armory of the base and detained senior officers of the force and subsequently headed into the country’s capital of Bamako and detained the country’s President, Ibrahim Keita, including other government officials.

Ibrahim Keita was then forced to resign as president and dissolved the government over corruption-related concerns and mismanagement of the economy.

Prior to that, Malians took to the streets on June 5, 2020, in protest of Keita’s administration and called for his resignation.

WHAT THE ECOWAS LEADERSHIP DID

The ECOWAS suspended Mali's membership in response to the coup in that country, asking authorities to stick to a timetable for a return to democracy.

The bloc however stopped short of imposing new sanctions after an emergency summit in Accra.

Guinea Coup

On Sunday, September 5, 2021, the nation of Guinea was hit with a coup.

A group of men allegedly from the Guinea Special Forces claimed to have seized power from Guinea’s President Alpha Conde.

Despite a conflicting report by the country’s defense ministry stating they had fought back the ununiformed men, a video of a captured Alpha Conde was shared across social media.

The men in the shared video were captured stating they had dissolved the country’s institutions and taken over the reins of power.

“We have decided, after having taken the president, who is currently with us (...) to dissolve the current constitution, to dissolve the institutions; we have also decided to dissolve the government and the closure of land and air borders,” one of the ununiformed men in the video said.

WHAT THE ECOWAS LEADERSHIP DID

The Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led ECOWAS suspended Guinea’s membership, days after a military coup in the country that removed President Alpha Conde.

The leadership of the bloc also demanded a return to the constitutional order and the immediate release of Conde, who was arrested by special forces led by Lieutenant Colonel Mamady Doumbouya.

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s Chairmanship has no links with unrests:

Security analysts, Irbard Ibrahim, and Dr. Vladimir Antwi-Danso, both believe that for any conversations that surround the leadership of the current Chairperson of the ECOWAS bloc, it is an unfair argument to make to the effect that the Nana Addo Dankwa-led ECOWAS tenure is producing these unrests.

However, while Irbard believes that this is more of a francophone trend, Dr. Antwi-Danso is of the view that it is coincidental and could easily happen in any of the countries that make up the region.

“I think it would be the height of unfairness to blame the turbulences within the sub-region on him. Just as we’ve seen, most of the turbulences we’ve seen within the francophone bloc: Mali, Guinea, and now Burkina Faso, it’s a systemic thing and leaders come and go; heads of ECOWAS, heads of governments come and go. What then do we say about 2014 when we saw the activities of ISIS within West Africa? What then would we say about Boko Haram? What then would we say about other challenges about the heads of ECOWAS and heads of governments at that time?” Irbard told GhanaWeb.

Dr. Valdimir Antwi-Danso agrees that unless there is a direct link, such arguments should not be advanced or even encouraged especially when these are issues of security being discussed.

“Absolutely not. It is lame and it is not logical to think that what is happening within the sub-region has anything to do with his chairmanship of ECOWAS. I don’t see the direct link. In matters of conflict, in matters of security, you don’t link such occurrences in individual countries to the community except if there is some kind of variable which we can actually pinpoint as having come from the center which is creating some hiccups within the community,” he said.

He also explains why the trend should not be linked only to francophone countries because any country at all within the sub-region could experience such unrests should certain things not be checked early.

“We need to discuss what is happening in the region with the very specificities of governance in most of the countries around. What is happening in Burkina Faso is akin to what happened in Mali in 2011/2012. If you see the soldiers’ demands in Burkina Faso, it is a similar thing that the Malian soldiers were demanding.

“We call something in terrorism, ungoverned spaces, and I have been talking about that very seriously: when you leave parts of your country to be taken over by miscreants who are the laws over there. If government does not move there: no social amenities, these are bound to happen.

“In Burkina Faso, this is there. In Mali, it was there and when the military are sent to, they are overwhelmed, they are killed like anything. In any country where these things are happening, these things are bound to happen so, you don’t link it with Nana Akufo-Addo’s chairmanship

“Anything can happen in Nigeria, for example, because the things that are causing the things that are happening in what you label as in francophone countries, but I think it is a coincidence in the sense that similar things are happening elsewhere but the francophone specificity is that they border the Sahel and ISIs and Alkaeda movements into West Africa happens to be the areas where they are prevalent and present,” he said.

In the long term, the two analysts call for governments, and the ECOWAS bloc, to be more proactive in responding to the concerns of members states, while work is advanced on review the ECOWAS Charter that presently limits the punitive force of the leadership of the ECOWAS body.