Author: Chidinma Iwu 

Please note: All views belong to the author.

My mother used to talk about coups with a certain loathing—so strong that it doesn't just narrate the accounts of their viciousness—but transports you to that time and era so you witness it yourself. Her words were my introduction to Africa's afflicted past and the powers that controlled it, but also the tendency for Africans to throw their weight around autocratic extremism in politics. 

She was a year old when the deathly 1966 coup led by Kaduna Nzeogwu ravaged poor Nigerian homes and killed thousands of people in Northern and Eastern Nigeria. She was 10 when the 1975 coup which largely decided Nigeria's present fate, was executed. She had lived her teenagehood and young adulthood through the news of the overthrows in Sudan, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Mali, and the tyrannical leaderships in Libya, Zimbabwe, Uganda, etc.

The Sahel region has had a long, turbulent history of political instability, where coups have been, on more occasions than not, used as a means of seizing power—and in a flawed ideology—to achieve socio-economic justice. The exploits orchestrated by Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Yakubu Gowon in Nigeria, etc., has left a lasting imprint of horror in the memories of older Africans, but this has seemingly not deterred the support for it.

Maybe Africa has a cognitive dissonance problem, maybe the development of our liberation sensibility is one of the biggest indictments of how colonialism ruined the Sahel, or maybe it's our perception of totalitarian authority as just and fair, stemming from religious beliefs and precepts—one thing is constant: Africans will support coups. Democracy would be reinstated, and years later, coups would string up again with colossal support from citizens. This is why they continued to spread like wildfires and deadly viruses across the continent. 

You could try to justify the ideologies behind past coups as a salvaging measure from the decadence of African democracy which functioned as a colonial concept and continued to pay homage to white masters. You could say education wasn't accessible, and a lot of ideas people had weren't theirs and were adopted from the educated manipulators who they looked up to. There is a shot at trying to condone the coups of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, but in 2023? The era of decentralized web systems, of advanced internet, of free-thinking and liberating ideologies? It is obscene, and quite frankly, embarrassing.

The advent and evolution of the internet through several years, from the 90s till now, has marked various political changes for Africa, making history more accessible and giving people the independence of decision-making about their choice of government with information they can readily interact with. It brought prospects of a politically sane future for Africa while pushing for the decolonization of democracy. And even though democracy still suffers a deadly illness that takes the lives of its citizens and corroborates oppressive policies, the internet's accessibility is educating people about various political doctrines like Marxism, Socialism, and Communism — opening them up to how different policies could shape Africa's future. 

This is why it remains a confounding phenomenon that people continue to pitch tents with dictatorships and coups as a trump card to expedite the liberation of people from Africa's erroneous democracy.

What we're seeing today, in fact, is a notable shift in the revolution's perception of the internet and social media. They're now embracing it as a means to promote their ideals and objectives, and this is a contrasting effect from what we thought these digital platforms would be: avenues that attract a convergence of people who should know better, engaging in meaningful discussions for the advancement of Africa's cause. These revolutionist marauders present the allure of coups as a promise of rapid change, an end to corruption, and the establishment of political justice — attracting disillusioned citizens whose sights are blurred by the decadence of Africa's democracy and the uncertainty of things ever getting better. All coups have done though, according to history, is commit mass murders and oversee deaths. 

There have been around 10 attempted coups in the Sahel since 2020 —more than 3 in 2023 alone— and we've seen them get enormous support from citizens of the countries where the coups are plotted and citizens from other countries who are disgruntled by the rot in their own democracy. The increase in coups in Sahelian countries is gradually being spurred by witnessing their success in neighbouring countries. Now, there's a copycat phenomenon spreading and being proliferated by social media, especially as news consumption by its users has evolved. This is prodding gullible and equally distraught citizens into the ploy of calling for its replication in their country.

This development reveals how bandwagonism trumps the accurate application of in-depth knowledge of events to sound thinking. It reveals a gap in how people have recently started to respond to news and uncovers how much influence blog media has on news consumers. It is upsetting and distasteful not just because people's support for coups is an indirect endorsement of murder and disaster in Sahelian countries, but because these people — especially Gen Z and young millennials who are the future of whatever Africa becomes— are choosing not to think for themselves. Wrongful information dissemination is taking the lead as the revolutionists' weapon. This is easy; the transformation of how news is consumed, is led by the bandwagon effect and thus, pulls in concerted dedication to spread the gospel of coups. 

We now exist in a bubble where pro-coup instigators can effortlessly share their ideologies to recruit like-minded folk and substantially influence them into viewing coups as necessary steps toward realizing fairness. There are tactile measures put into enabling the rapid propagation of radical ideas across regions in the Sahel.

The perpetration of coups leads to several significant consequences and broader implications on the political progression of a state than the degeneracy of democracy could ever have—and its idolaters know this. I mean, it's not like we're oblivious to the long trail of depravity, regression, gore and death that were the aftermath and consequences of past coups. While people within the state have their rights taken away, sanctions and bans are placed on the countries, raising international concerns and destroying any potential for international partnerships and establishments. 

It is impossible to address extremist developments without challenging the spread of radical ideologies—where they stem from and why it has become so easy to push them. We cannot overcome the takeover of these behaviors in our futures without interrogating the flaw in people's perception of forward-thinking. Are we perpetually bonded to the colonial mentality, or is our chronic online existence obscuring the lines between what's actually good and what's evil?