REPS MINORITY CAUCUS CONDEMNS COUPS IN AFRICA………..
By:Safiya Abdulrahim Dabban
The Minority Caucus in the House of Representatives has condemned coups and the growing trend of military adventurism in Africa, blaming it on bad governance, inordinate ambitions and outright disconnect from the citizens.
The position of the opposition lawmakers came on the heels of the military coup in Gabon earlier in the week which ousted President Ali Bongo Ondimba.
The Caucus in a statement issued by the Leader, Mr Kingsley Chinda, said it was extremely sad, deeply worrisome, and pathetically shameful that the continent, in the past few years, has witnessed sudden rise in military coups.
Chinda said the military incursions were rolling back the gains of the democratic struggles for the return to civil rule of the late 1980s and 1990s.
“It is totally condemnable that in the past one decade, military putsch has taken place in Sudan, Mali, Tunisia, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger Republic and now Gabon. That these countries are in the Western, Northern, and Central regions of Africa, which represents more than half of the entire continent calls for serious concerns and debilitating worries.
“Confronted with the pain and misery foisted by these sit-tight leaders on hapless citizens, who have been going through years and decades of bad governance, collosal economic hardship, serial social deprivation, deep-rooted poverty, deliberate intimidation and corrosive lack, military interventions of any guise will not only be welcomed but celebrated by citizens of these countries.
Chinda wondered why leaders in these countries in their respective bids to achieve inordinate ambitions take decisions and actions to perpetrate themselves in office, and in some cases turn the leadership of their county to family’s birthright.
He warned that, the use and deployment of brute force, and aggression in whatever guise is not the solution to the problems at hand and condemned any plans by either the AU, UN, or any global association to use force or coercion in restoring democratic governance in Gabon, Niger Republic or any other country in Africa.