The Sudanese People are fighting for Emancipation
Guest post by Professor Abdu Mukhtar Musa
Political Science Department, Islamic University of Omdurman, Khartoum

For his thirty years in power, Sudan’s General Al-Beshir has ruled by military force and cracked down on his people. On June 30, 1989 the then Brigadier Omer Hassan Al-Behsir, toppled a democratically elected government of Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi. Supported by the Muslim brothers, led by the late Hassan Abdallah Al-Turabi, General Al-Beshir deposed all those who are not Muslim brothers. This purge included the civil service as well as all regular forces – particularly all members of security, besides the top-ranking officers of the army and police. In addition to this he created his own militias. Over time, members of the Islamic Movement controlled all institutions, including civil service, the regular armed forces and financial institutions. They excluded all other segments in the state – even those who are not partisans.

Thus, a “deep state” was being built, paralleled by Al-Turabi’s hosting of many elements of radical Islam – notably Osama Bin Laden. This was manipulated by the Muslim brothers, who are widely known as the Islamic Movement. Later on they hid behind the only political party, the National Congress, when all other parties were banned throughout the first decade of its reign.

Since December 19, 2018, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, and some other 25 towns of the 18 states of the country demanding the termination of Al-Beshir’s 30-yeare militarized Islamic rule. Tens of demonstrators were killed by the security forces and hundreds were injured. Some of the killers are said to be Armed Forces, in civil suits and veiled, affiliated to the Islamic Movement (led by the late Alturabi) – described as ‘militias’.

On April 6, trade unions – mainly the federation of the professionals – called upon the people to join the protesters to be million in number – to start a sit-in at the headquarters of the Sudanese army in Khartoum. The date coincides with the commemoration of April 6, 1985 when a popular uprising succeeded – with a support from the army – in terminating a 16-year military rule by Generl G.M. Numairi. A prompt response brought the number to more than what was expected reflecting how far is the dramatic decline of Al-Beshir’s popularity – taking into account the fact that the regime’s militias uses firearms to disburse the demonstrations. This also proves how fud up the Sudanese people are with the president’s continual pledges of reforms and economic recovery while living a reality of increasing corruption and no accountability. Social media frequently published news about the huge wealth being accumulated by Al-Beshir’s family and relatives. Such allegations were proven when – after being toppled by some army officers on April 11, the military intelligence – under emergency laws – found more than $112 million in Al-Beshir’s house after he was taken to the central prison of Kober (Khartoum north).

Al Beshir’s Islamist military regime has cracked down on the people whose country is very rich in natural resources and has significant deposits of minerals – notably gold. Despite this Sudanese people have been suffering very much from low standard of living, poor infrastructures, spiral inflation (scored three digits), indebtedness, poor services and 46% of the population below poverty line. The sole reason for this is mismanagement, corruption, crises and civil wars is wrong and rash policy of the Militant/Islamist regime of Al Beshir.

Mismanagement could be categorized into three aspects or dimensions: (1) mismanagement of resources; (2) mismanagement of ethnic diversity; and (3) mismanagement of foreign relations.

The first type of mismanagement is a product of two factors: (A) exclusion of the competent elements from the state machinery or the bureaucracy in general and replacing them with the members of the Islamic movement – the majority of them lack the appropriate qualifications and expertise. This has led to deterioration in the public service and services in general. Many developmental projects broke down. Agriculture and industry (factories) have been damaged. This immediately impacted exports and reversed the balance of trade to acute deficit. Consequently, imports exceeding exports resulted in a dramatic deterioration in the Sudanese currency, the pound, from SDG 12 against $1 when this regime assumed power in 1989 to 90,000 by late 2018. (B) The government embarked on loans from abroad. But projects are given to incompetent companies as schemes are not subject to open tenders but rather secretly allocated to definite companies because officials take big money in terms of ‘commissions’. So the loss is double – money goes to corruption and projects allocated to those incompetent companies failed. In one of the most productive states (Al-Jazira) about more than 300 factories stopped production and sacked the workers and staff.

The government’s mismanaged diversity existed on several levels. Apart from deposing elements in civil service, security, police and the army at all ranks – who are not prone (or Islamist) – exclusion also took place in ethnic basis. Elites in marginalized areas proved willing allies in mutinies, and this led to more spending in defense and security at the expense of the general spending for wages and services. In effect, this means the government has been fighting in multiple fronts: The South (which seceded in 2011), Darfur, South Korfoan, and the Blue Nile region. Most areas are not treated on equal terms. This has triggered racial discrimination, tribal conflicts along with the armed rebel movements who sought support from regional and international forces – escalating conflicts and internationalizing the crisis.

Third and finally, with respect to mismanagement of foreign affairs, the militant Islamic regime has had a bad image in the international community since its advent. It adopted radical Islamic slogans and cultivated itself as a safe haven for extremism and terrorism. Under Al-Turabi, one of the main figures of political Islam, the regime harboured many extremists and hardliners such as Osama Bin-Laden, Hamas, and Carlos (later on jailed in France). A failed attempt to assassinate the ex-president of Egypt, M. H. Mubarak, and the embrace of anti-Western slogans resulted in regional and international isolation and sanctions. This has aggravated the already war-ridden economy of a country sucked by greed and corrupt elite. Moreover, sanctions have directly impacted the vital projects which constitute the nerve of the Sudan’s economy including Al-Jazira, the largest agricultural scheme, which was established by the colonial British administration in Sudan with an area of 2.2 million feddans along with dams in 1925. Other sectors of the economy damaged by the sanctions and Al-Beshir’s mismanagement include: the Sudanese airlines (among the first to be established in Africa), Sudan railways, Sudanese Sea transport line, and Nile Transport Company. Some projects were stopped due to lack of spare parts from the Western states, while others suffered from mismanagement and corruption.

Protesters completely rejected the presidency of General Ibn-Oaf after only one day in office, a newly formed transitional military council, led by General Abdulfattah Al-Burhan, is now waiting for civil associations to submit their candidates for a civilian cabinet to run the state for a two-year transitional period. A thoroughly demilitarized transitional regime has been the core demand of people who have maintained a sit-in at military headquarters in Khartoum for over two weeks. They are also asking for the arrest of all members of the former regime, and filing suit of corruption as well as of killing civilians over the last four months of protests (December 19, 2018 – April 11, 2019).

During my visit to Nigeria during the 2019 elections, I gave three presentations on my new book about Nigeria’s 2015 elections, Contemporary Nigerian Politics: Competition in a Time of Transition and Terror. I encountered the most rigorous, interesting and challenging set of questions I have ever faced from public audiences. To get a sense of the discourse, watch the video of my presentation at Nextier SPD consulting in Abuja.

Here is a sampling of some of the questions. I hope my answers here clarify and elaborate on my previous answers, and contribute to the formation of a new research agenda on electoral politics in Africa. My apologies for any abbreviations or potential misrepresentations; please comment to continue the dialogue. For those of you considering the book for course adoption, this list can serve as a resource for developing your lectures.

• I am not convinced that you demonstrate that the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) engaged in “coup proofing” after the 1999 transition.

The concept of “coup proofing” is used by Jonathan Powell in his article, “Determinants of the Attempting and Outcomes of Coups d’etat.” It refers to the idea that reassuring the military is an important part of many regime transitions. This is important to my study since I write about “pacts” – explicit, though not necessarily formalized, elite agreements that shape the boundaries and rules of governance.

The case against coup proofing might note President Obasanjo’s firings and forced retirings in 1999-2001. This would suggest that the new civilian regime was reigning in the military. As a former war hero and military dictator, Obasanjo had unique credibility with the military and thus some political latitude.

However, Chapter 2 documents how the incoming PDP, as part of a “dual policy” toward the military, also gave the generals important reassurances. This included neglect of important, huge corruption cases, a weak truth and reconciliation committee (whose top pick was apparently assassinated), the promotion – rather than prosecution – of high level individuals implicated in abuses, and an increase in the military budget from about $790 million dollars in 1998 to over 2.2 billion dollars in 2002. Furthermore, Obasanjo promoted nearly 900 officers just weeks before his second oath of office. Taken together, these actions provide a good basis for coup proofing. It worked…but it imposed costs on democracy, which I explore in Chapter 6.

• Why didn’t you look at party manifestoes? How important is a candidate’s personality?

Party manifestos can provide information about party ideas. There’s some good new research on manifestoes in Nigeria, including Political Parties and Democracy in Nigeria, edited by Olu Obafemi, Samuel, Egwu, Okechukwu Ibeanu, and Jibrin Ibrahim (Kuru: National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, 2014.) It generally suggests that the manifestos don’t amount to much. By documenting what the parties actually talked about in 2015 in chapter 3, I think we get a better sense of how they set their priorities. And since there is a high level of conformity across the elites within each party in the coded responses, we have a decent basis to believe they coordinated their messages. Plus, that’s basically what several state party leaders and activists told me in interviews. Regarding personalities, a charismatic candidate obviously has advantages, but it’s also likely that a good party structure can help compensate for a candidate lacking such strong appeal.

• There are too many unheard voices in politics. Should Nigeria have a proportional representation (PR) system?

2019 turned into a surprisingly bad election year for women, and I can see something like PR perhaps helping a women’s party into the National Assembly. However, it is also quite likely that it would produce a Shiite party, and a Biafra party, and….you get the idea. Moreover, it is difficult to have PR with a presidential system because the executive has to cobble together a coalition across parties for every legislative initiative; we know this from comparative research on Latin America, for example. To fix that, you could have a parliamentary system. Nigeria tried that with the First Republic, and it didn’t go so well. A trend after the collapse of the Soviet Union was for some countries to have it both ways, with some legislators chosen through PR and others based on geography. That might be something to consider.

• You have a very narrow western view of the state. You reference ideology, but ideology is a function of material conditions.

I can appreciate that there were alternative modes of governance in Africa. Nonso Obikili has a good chapter on state building in my new co-edited Oxford Handbook of Nigerian Politics, which describes some of those histories and their linkages to modern Nigeria.  Katherine Baldwin’s recent book convincingly shows that traditional rulers remain very politically relevant in Africa; the old state models are still around. But scholars such as Jeffrey Herbst (2000) argue that African leaders explicitly bought in to the modern, Weberian state and the Berlin Conference borders when they got together and formed the predecessor to the African Union. When the Nigerian military tries to reclaim local governments taken by Boko Haram, it is asserting control over space and people in ways consistent with a “western” notion of a state.

It is also interesting to consider the variety of sources of ideology, which is quite often not a function of material conditions. Salafism comes to mind (see Alex Thurston’s recent book), as does the rise of “post-materialism” in developed countries. This latter idea, explored in the work of Pippa Norris and Robert Inglehart, shows that once people reach a certain level of material well-being, they are much more likely to care about the environment, secularism, and other issues. Different ideologies are then based on demographics and other characteristics.

• What is your theory of the demographic shift? You suggest that it contributed to the decline of the PDP, but you don’t really show that.

It’s part of the story of the decline of the PDP told in Chapter 2: Nigeria has a young population with one of the highest growth rates in the world, but the average age in the House and Senate increased with each successive election since 1999. It’s one data point that makes sense alongside other factors, such as the suffocated ambition that contributed to the massive wave of party defections in 2014. I hope that it is an invitation to new research on “slow moving” variables such as inter-generational change in Nigeria. I did meet with YIAGA and youth groups as part of my research. But I can’t say we have much of a theory yet about demographic age gaps and their broader political impacts yet.

•  Didn’t PDP lose in 2015 because of ethnicity, because they ran a southern candidate?

Maybe. That’s the obvious counter-factual, and it is a compelling one since President Jonathan was a southern Christian and many northerners felt it was their “turn” to rule. But I’m not sure that the hypothetical northern candidate would have had broad appeal across the south, which would have been necessary to win. It’s also somewhat encouraging to look at the map of states in Chapter 5 which shows the distribution of states where the candidate got at least 25 percent. Finally, it is interesting that the survey data shows that 14 percent of Muslims voted for Jonathan – and that there are more Christians in the north than anecdotal knowledge suggests.

• Your content analysis ignores informal campaign structures.

Not exactly. The coding of campaign comments by party elites covers a broad range of topics, which are then aggregated into five main issues. If party elites were not talking about issues at all, I did not to code the comment; the methodology is explained in the book. Two things are important: first, after dropping these comments, the PDP had less media coverage compared the APC. Second, the PDP lost in 2015. So the informal campaign strategies – attending funerals and weddings, or ranting about colonialism in the opinion pages – were not very effective for the PDP. They would have been better off talking about reducing gender disparities in school enrollment or highlighting recent economic diversification.

• Your content analysis is not accurate because it does not include local radio or social media.

This has come up a lot. I did a content analysis in 2010 (in Africa Today) that included radio and print, so it is possible. But when you are talking about a presidential campaign, it is reasonable to assume that when the candidate makes a comment, that comment is quoted across different mediums. This would not be the case if we were talking about a lower profile person. Nor does my analysis necessarily exclude local issues, such as coded local language meant to appeal to a region. For example, Jonathan might go to the Niger Delta, the oil producing region, and say “resource control.” But because we talking about a national campaign, those comments become smaller data points in the overall picture because the goal is to win a national office: the presidency.

Finally, I think 2,390 articles from three different newspapers produced a representative sample of the campaign content.

• Would this analysis of campaigns hold at the state level?

Probably not, and that would be a great project. Michelle Kuenzi and Gina Lambright did a rigorous and unique study of gubernatorial rhetoric in the 2007 elections. Governors have to talk about different things to get elected, and after 20 year of democracy, we still know little about their actual linkages to the center. The topic is ripe for research. I would start with a good empirical analysis of coattail effects to see how running on the same ticket as the president affects the governor’s likelihood of winning. But even that would be hard because of “split ticket” voting in Nigeria, where a voter votes for one party for governor and another for president. This was common in 2003.

• What does your analysis tell us about which kinds of communication are actually effective? How would your research design differ if the book was about 2019?

Evaluating effectiveness of different rhetoric techniques would probably require some sort of additional “discourse” analysis. The brief discussion of #BringBackOurGirls in the book suggests that the PDP’s rhetoric and messaging were both ineffective and counterproductive.

I do show in Chapter 3 that the parties systematically talked about different things. The statistical analysis in Chapter 4 then shows that the party that got more votes across states – the APC – actually emphasized those same clusters of issues: the economy, corruption, and electoral integrity.

A study of the 2019 elections would require a rather different research design. I would likely want to look at social media’s “amplification effects” rather than the content of campaigns. And maybe how different sources of news shaped voter preferences differently.

• Illiterate people tend to vote on ethnicity or religion. Their understanding of politics is simple and issues don’t really matter to them.

From the slums of Port-au-Prince to the forests of Adamawa State, that has not been my experience. Poor people may operate on different “information shortcuts” and they might use simple language. But they often have relatively sophisticated ideas about politics.

Chapters 4 and 5 show that lower income people overwhelmingly voted for Buhari in 2015, as did people with more negative perceptions of economic performance over the previous year. This is consistent with a study that I did with Matthew Page and Yoonbin Ha, published in Review of African Political Economy, using slightly different data.

The big question in Nigeria is where the new middle class stands, and what it is willing to tolerate from the current political class.

• What about “group think”? It seems to be a missing link in your causal story.

Great point. With regard to the tests on insecurity, I do draw from social psychology research and ideas of “affective intelligence theory,” which suggests that traumatic incidents create a heightened sense of political awareness or scrutiny. (We might observe these effects, for example, with increased voter turnout or incumbent vulnerability.) This is less explicit with regard to the hypotheses examining economic voting, but given the winning candidates’ consistent messaging, group think of some kind is a reasonable idea.

• How did the two major parties in 2015 approach gender differently?

It’s hard to say without going back and re-reading what they said, with that question in mind. My main point for now is that it is an unclaimed issue. I believe a coherent party agenda around women’s issue priorities, and the recruitment of more women mainstreamed into the party, can help that party win. Neither party in 2015 understood this, and PDP made a mistake by not sufficiently emphasizing the progress Jonathan’s administration made in girls’ education and several other gender indicators.

Looking to the future, I would also hope to see research about how Internally Displaced Persons are likely to disrupt conservative social structures in the northeast. There are millions of women and girls who have now practiced leadership through the necessity of survival, often without the usual patriarchical structures around. What will they do with these skills and expectations once the war is over? Research by Hilary Matfess raises important questions along these lines.

• You assume that the Independent National Electoral Commission was transparent. I disagree.

I do not think INEC was or is sufficiently transparent. The law requires all the electoral results to be published down to the polling unit level. Where are they? And why haven’t the donors (or civil society) made post-election information management a higher priority for technical assistance?

I do discuss two important things: in Chapter 3, I show that the APC promised better and more transparent primaries, and it campaigned on electoral integrity more than the PDP. Other scholars such as Darren Kew had already noted this; I provide some additional empirical evidence. Second, in Chapter 5, using a statistically sampled nationwide survey, I show that PDP supporters were less skeptical of INEC. The APC’s skepticism corresponded with its promises for electoral integrity.

• Can there be a “third force” in politics? Does Nigeria need one?

It’s hard to imagine an independent candidacy or a third party being successful for the foreseeable future. The two largest parties got 95 percent of the vote in 2015, and this is the culmination of a long trend in that direction. I know many people in Nigeria support independent candidates. But who would be viable? A really, really rich person. I also think the constitutional requirement to have a presence across the states is a good one, and hard requirement for an independent candidate to meet.

I think popular movements such as #BringBackOurGirls or campaigns like #NotTooYoungtoRun are the building blocks of reforms. If such movements can build real momentum, with a nationwide presence and the ability to make vertically integrated decisions with a grassroots base, I can see them pushing their way into a party and shaping it. But they also have to identify new winning issues.

• I am running for president in 2023. Does populism win?

It does for now. But as we have seen in Venezuela, and as we will soon see in the United States, it is hard to sustain. Don’t formulate your platform yet.

Guest post by Solomon Gofie, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Addis Ababa University

The political transformation in Ethiopia since early 2018 captured many by surprise. The recent changes followed a period of sustained protests against mounting state repression that lasted for at least three years (2015-2018). Thousands of political prisoners have been released, individuals, groups and political organizations in exile have been pardoned and returned to the country, and a modicum of freedom of expression and the press appears to be re-emerging. A major regional hostility in the Horn of Africa that lasted for about 20 years involving the Eritrean regime and its Ethiopian counterpart has been resolved unexpectedly, mainly due to bold initiative taken by the new Ethiopian Prime Minster, Abiy Ahmed.

The new EPRDF (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front) group led by the Abiy Ahmed since April 2018 has been actively working to reform the state in Ethiopia. However, attempts to reform have been accompanied by promises as well as profound concerns among the population. For example, the dramatic ease in the archetype political control of the country spearheaded by the former Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) dominated EPRDF before 2018, has since been eroded. But as it has been replaced by a group of EPRDF reformers making dramatic changes in rhetoric and making several reconciliatory moves, new trajectories of tensions have been emerging in different parts of the country. “Ethnic conflicts” reported from remote parts of Ethiopia over the decades appear to have now reached the central plains.

One of the key challenges during this era of reform has since been a wave of internal displacement. This includes about a million people from the Ogaden region of Ethiopia in the East starting late 2017, perhaps half a million from the Guji & Gedeo regions in the South, a quarter of a million from the Benishangul-Gumuz and Wollega in the west, and thousands more from several parts of the country including in the north. In line with these, in August 2018, months after the coming into power of Abiy Ahmed, following tensions between groups supporting two armed political organizations which returned after a peace deal in Asmara, Eritrea, clashed in and around Addis Ababa, the effect of which led to deaths, and displacement of thousands of people most of whom were reported to have returned to their homes.

In December 2018, Abiy appeared in military uniform to announce the formation of a “Republican Guard” meant to protect state officials and their families. This is a sign that Ethiopian politics remains full of both hope and uncertainty.

Solomon Gofie is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. He teaches courses in contemporary global politics & transnationalsim, international relations and international human rights and politics in Africa. His research interests include state-society relations and the politics of human rights, citizenship and political communities in Africa, migration and transnational involvement in Africa, conflict dynamics and conflict resolution.

I am pleased to share this important message from American civil society groups regarding Buhari’s meeting with Trump.

On the occasion of the visit of President Buhari:

The Nigeria Working Group is made up of diverse organizations who work in advocacy, human rights, direct humanitarian relief, peacebuilding, and various other technical sectors committed to supporting a fruitful and constructive relationship between the United States and Nigeria to promote development and peace. Nigeria is a strong ally for the United States with social, political, and economic influence across the continent. We are concerned with the current state of conflict in Nigeria and look forward for the opportunity for President Trump and President Buhari to strengthen their commitment to preventing and ending violence in Nigeria.

On the important occasion of President Buhari’s official visit to Washington, DC, members of the working group urge that he and President Trump discuss the following issues including:

1. Safe return of refugees and internally displaced persons: To ensure safe return of displaced persons requires access by humanitarian actors, clear reporting on the security status of the area of return, and measures to support adequate food and medical provisions for the returning populations. Individuals who have returned or escaped abduction should be provided with necessary care and have access to family members during this process. Alongside and incorporated into humanitarian assistance, there needs to be specific attention paid to reconciliation and reintegration efforts. Limited attention to rebuilding community relationships risks reversing successes made in the fight against Boko Haram and creates conditions for the escalation of social conflict in this fragile context.
2. Robust and effective response to the ongoing violence of Boko Haram: A multifaceted response that includes accountability and a commitment to the practice of good governance is critical for defeating the insurgency and rehabilitating communities in crisis. Deradicalization, reintegration, and rehabilitation of former Boko Haram combatants must be coordinated, strategic, and locally-led, with a clear vision for long-term success. These efforts should also go beyond focusing on individual fighters and also focus on community and economic stability and resilience.
3. Addressing root drivers of inter-communal conflict in the Middle Belt: Violence between farming and herding communities in the Middle Belt continues to escalate, with over 170,000 people displaced from Benue state alone since December. Increasing attacks and high-level calls for Nigerians to ‘rise up and defend themselves’ threatens to intensify violence in other states and export instability to other regions of the country and to bordering countries. The Middle Belt is the food basket of Nigeria and continued violence not only threatens human lives, but the food production and security of the country. There needs to be support to local platforms that link up to state and national level responses to address conflict drivers and triggers and to manage conflicts in their community. At the same time, there needs to be a coordinated effort to lessen inflammatory rhetoric around attacks, build trust between communities and the government, and promote messages of peace.

This meeting comes at a critical time for Nigeria’s future and we welcome the opportunity to discuss many important issues for the future of the partnership between Nigeria and the United States. Many significant gains have been made in combatting Boko Haram and building community platforms for peace, but there must be continued engagement to sustain and expand this progress. As we look at promoting development, growth, and peace in West Africa, Nigeria and the United States must jointly promote a holistic strategy to prevent violence within its borders. As a working group and individual organizations, we stand ready to assist in promoting this strategy and welcome further engagement on these and other issues of great importance for both Nigeria and the United States.

Mike Jobbins

Senior Director, Partnerships and Engagement

Search for Common Ground

 

Nathan Hosler, PhD.

Convener, Nigeria Working Group

Director, Office of Peacebuilding and Policy

Church of the Brethren