Paul-Henri Damiba was ousted from power by the army commander, Captain Ibrahim Traore, eight months after he grabbed the helm of the country.
Burkina Faso’s military has taken control of the country’s public television and used it to say that they had removed Paul-Henri Damiba as the country’s military commander, dissolved the government, and put both the constitution and the transitional charter on hold.
In a statement that was read on national television late on Friday night, Captain Ibrahim Traore said that a group of officers had decided to remove Damiba due to his inability to deal with a worsening Islamist insurgency. Traore said that the decision was made because Damiba was unable to deal with the situation. He said that all political and civil society activities would start right away, and that all borders would be closed for an undetermined amount of time.
The West African nation has been the target of two coups in the space of eight months. The democratically elected president, Roch Marc Kaboré, was overthrown in a coup that took place in January and handed power to Damiba.
The discontent with Damiba’s leadership has intensified in recent months as his and his supporters’ promises to make the country safer have not been kept. Violence has persisted unchecked throughout the country.
The announcement came after an unpredictable day in which gunshots were heard in the nation’s capital, Ouagadougou.
“In the face of the continuing deterioration of the security situation, we have repeatedly tried to refocus the transition on security issues,” said the statement read aloud on Friday evening by the soldiers. The soldiers promised the international community they would respect their commitments and urged Burkinabes “to go about their business in peace.”
The UN is worried about how unpredictable things are getting and has asked people to stay calm.
“Burkina Faso needs peace, it needs stability, and it needs unity in order to fight terrorist groups and criminal networks operating in parts of the country,” UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said.
People could be seen in the streets of Ouagadougou showing their support for the new leaders of the country.
“We are demonstrating to support this coup, confirmed or not,” said Francois Beogo, a political activist from the Movement for the Refounding of Burkina Faso. “For us, it is already a coup.”
Beogo said Damiba “has showed his limits” during his short time in power. “People were expecting a real change,” he added.
Some of the protesters yelled chants that were critical of France, which was Burkina Faso’s previous colonizer, and proclaimed their support for Russian intervention in the conflict in order to put an end to the carnage. Even though their use has been criticized all over the world, the junta in Mali hired Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group to help keep the country safe.
The previous week, Damiba went to New York, where he gave a speech to the general assembly of the United Nations. In his address, Damiba justified his January coup as “a matter of survival for our nation,” despite the fact that it was “possibly repugnant” to the international community. Damiba said this while acknowledging that the international community may have been wrong. On Thursday, he delivered a lecture at Djibo, which is located in the violent northern region of Burkina Faso.
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Following similar takeovers in Mali and Guinea, the coup that occurred in Burkina Faso in January added to the growing concerns about a reversal of democracy in West Africa. Even though Damiba predicted that the transition in Burkina Faso would continue for nearly two more years and none of the other juntas have committed to a date for fresh elections, none of the juntas have either.
As a result of the previous government’s inability to stop Islamist violence, which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of people and the displacement of at least 2 million more, many people in Burkina Faso originally welcomed the military coup. However, there has been no discernible decrease in the level of violence in the months after Damiba assumed power. After removing a brigadier general from his previous role as defense minister earlier this month, he also took up those responsibilities for himself.
This past week, a supply convoy was ambushed by armed individuals in the Gaskinde commune of the Soum province in the Sahel. As a result of the incident, at least 11 troops were murdered, while 50 civilians are still missing. Eric Humphery-Smith, a senior Africa analyst at the risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, described the incident as “a low moment” for the administration of Damiba and said it “certainly had a role in motivating what we’ve seen so far today.” This attack was “a low point” for Damiba’s government.
Chrysogone Zougmore, head of the Burkina Faso Movement for Human Rights, referred to the events that took place on Friday as “extremely sad.” She stated that the instability would not be beneficial in the effort to combat extremist violence.
“How can we hope to unite people and the army if the latter is characterised by such serious divisions?” Zougmore said. “It is time for these reactionary and political military factions to stop leading Burkina Faso adrift.”
