By Ayo Yusuf
Barely 24 hours after the military coup in Gabon, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and 90-year-old Cameroonian President Paul Biya have fired their military chiefs.
In Kigali, Kagame sacked nearly 200 military heads, including two four-star generals, James Kabarebe and Fred Ibingira, and two three-star generals, Charles Kayonga and Frank Mushyo Kamanzi, Rwandan newspapers reported on Wednesday citing a government statement.
Generals Kabarebe and Kayonga have previously served as Chief of Defence Staff of RDF, while the other two have been service chiefs before as well.
The president also retired 83 senior officers, six junior officers, 86 senior non-commissioned officers, 678 end-of-contract officers, and discharged 160 on medical grounds.
Kagame, popular amongst Africans for his progressive policies, has sometimes been accused of using brutal tactics to crackdown on the media and opposition.
In Cameroon, Biya, who now spends most of his time in Switzerland, was also not taking any chances as he terminated and immediately reshuffled officers in the country’s army, air force and marine.
The sweeping changes in Cameroon and Rwanda came barely a day after the coup in Gabon, where President Ali Bongo Ondimba was toppled and placed under house arrest by soldiers. Both leaders did not reference the coups in Niger and Gabon in their respective decisions.
Biya, in a statement posted on Twitter Wednesday afternoon, said he had issued a decree to terminate some soldiers and move others from the country’s defence department.
Newly appointed senior military chiefs for the Cameroon army include Ajeagah Njei Felix, Kamdom Lucas, and Nguema Ondo Bertin Bourger, amongst others.
Edou Essono, Serge Durel and Moudio Hervé were among the newly designated officers in Cameroon’s marine force.
Biya assumed power in 1982 at the age of 49 and has led the nation ever since. Before he became president, he served as prime minister from 1975 to 1982. His decades-long administration has had no major impact on the Cameroonian economy, critics have said.
But over the past decade, as his health deteriorates from old age, Mr Biya has been living in his mansion in Switzerland, from where he has been governing his country’s roughly 30 million people.
Meanwhile, the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, in the last general elections, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has condemned the unconstitutional removal of the President of Gabon, Ali Bongo, by the country’s military officers.
Atiku who was a former vice president of Nigeria during former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, in a statement on Thursday advised the leadership of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), to engage these soldiers diplomatically rather than use force.
He said: “The coup in Gabon stands condemned. Democracy and democratic governance have come to stay as a preferred form of government, and everything should be done to enthrone, nurture, and sustain it.
“As I suggested in the case of the Niger Republic, the ECOWAS and African Union authorities should open a window of diplomatic engagement that will pave the way for the soldiers to return to the barracks.
“The latest coup brings the number of military takeovers in Central and West Africa to 8 since 2020. This is worrisome and calls for introspection. We may have to focus on dealing with the disease and not the symptoms that birth coups”.
