The current civil war in Sudan goes beyond a simple power struggle between two generals. It reflects a deep-rooted crisis within the country’s governing structure that’s been present since it gained independence from the British in 1956.

Since independence, the Sudanese have experienced 35 coups and attempted coups, more than any other African country. In the country’s southern region a 56-year rebellion eventually led to the creation of South Sudan in 2011. A Darfurian uprising in 2003 was sparked by accusations that the central government was discriminating against the region’s non-Arab population. It led to ethnic killings and continues to simmer.

Delving into the history of Sudan, which I have done for more than three decades, reveals that the country suffers from a long-standing identity crisis that has fuelled the numerous rebellions. The inability, or perhaps unwillingness, of successive governments to manage the country’s diversity and articulate a shared vision has resulted in unfair distribution of wealth and resources. Sudan has a population of 49 million. It comprises 19 major ethnic groups and about 597 ethnic sub-groups speaking hundreds of languages and dialects. Sudanese Arabs make up the largest single ethnic group at about 70% of the population.

Achieving peace in Sudan requires a focus on the concerns of marginalised populations in conflict zones and deprived regions. These include Darfur, South Kordofan and the Nuba Mountains. It also requires addressing the root causes of armed violence. Among them are issues of marginalisation, the relationship between religion and state, governance, resource sharing, land, social justice and equality at the national level.

The early years of independence

The Sudanese government that came to power in 1956 insisted on an Arab and Islamic identity. The state was based on the principles of Mahdism, an Islamic Sufi order established in the 1880s. It wasn’t representative of diverse communities and sought to subject them to the will of the Mahdist state. It demanded a degree of compliance that many were unwilling to provide. Resistance against Mahdism was widespread.

In 1989, a new government seized control of the state under the rule of the National Islamic Front. This was an alliance between army officers and the Muslim Brotherhood, a fringe outfit that grew into a powerful political organisation. This coup brought to power Omar al-Bashir, who was supported by Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi. Their government also endeavoured to establish an Islamic state. The government set up an internal security apparatus, which arrested and tortured dissenters. In 1991, the regime introduced a new penal code to impose an Islamisation agenda, and created the “People’s Police”.

Two further developments would create the conditions for the war that continues to rage today. The first was the al-Bashir regime’s decision in 2003 to enlist Janjaweed militias to quell an insurgency in Darfur. Second, the Islamist regime used this new militia to keep the elite in the Sudanese army away from conflict zones in the periphery. In 2013, al-Bashir formally designated these tribal militias as the Rapid Support Forces through a presidential decree. This affiliated them with the national security and intelligence services.

In 2017, Sudan’s parliament ratified the Rapid Support Forces Law. This formally incorporated the militias into the government’s military apparatus under the direct command of the president. The minister of defence was tasked with overseeing the Sudanese Armed Forces. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, alias Hemedti, was appointed by al-Bashir to lead the Rapid Support Forces. This enabled his power and influence to grow. It was to inform the dramatic and tragic events in Sudan in the coming decade.

After protests in 2018 swept through Sudan’s major cities – driven by grievances around poverty, corruption and unemployment – the military intervened in April 2019. They removed al-Bashir from power and declared a state of emergency. Despite establishing a transitional military government, demonstrations persisted demanding civilian leadership.

With mediation from the African Union, an agreement on power-sharing was reached in August 2019. It resulted in a military-civilian transitional administration. Still, challenges persisted, including a failed coup attempt in September 2021. A month later, Sudan’s top general, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, led another coup, derailing the country’s democratic transition.

The months leading up to the war in April 2023 were marked by civilian protests that were violently repressed, and tensions between army and Rapid Support Forces leaders.

Forging a militia-dominated state

The Rapid Support Forces emerged as a counterbalance to the armed forces. It strategically deployed thousands of battle-hardened fighters to the country’s biggest cities, volatile border regions and economic hubs like gold mines. Concurrently, Russia forged ties with the Rapid Support Forces through the Wagner Group to secure access to Sudanese gold. Three conditions coalesced to foster the emergence of a militia-dominated state, with the Rapid Support Forces at its helm.

1. Civil strife in Darfur in 2003 presented an opportune moment. While the army focused on quelling rebellion in south Sudan, the suppression of the Darfurian uprising in the west was left to paramilitary forces.

2. Support from the Sudanese government enabled the self-styled militia to access financial resources and weaponry. It could then develop commercial ventures to attain and sustain autonomy from the state.

3. Ideologically, Hemedti portrayed the Rapid Support Forces as a militia representing marginalised Arabs from Sudan’s rural and border regions.

The unravelling

In Sudan’s evolving democratic transition, Hemedti’s rise to the vice presidency of the Sovereignty Council in 2021 was crucial, overseeing the path to elections. Disbanding the Rapid Support Forces or sidelining Hemedti risked sparking unrest, given the outfit’s size and business interests. Militia dominance over the state can prompt belated responses from the military, potentially making conflict worse. Initially, Hemedti refrained from seizing power by force. He aligned his troops as allies of the army, which also had substantial economic ventures.

But the October 2021 military coup halted Sudan’s democratic progress. Amid repression and economic decline, the Rapid Support Forces expanded its influence through business ventures and engagements. The army’s attempt to integrate these forces backfired, leading to armed confrontations and the Rapid Support Forces’ seizure of critical areas.

What next

Sudan requires a collaborative effort from the international community to aid reconstruction. It needs to establish a transparent, civilian-led government that represents the Sudanese populace and hears their voices in decision-making processes. Urgent action is needed to reconstruct Sudan’s post-colonial state as one that includes and safeguards the rights of all.

By Steve Osuji

CRISIS DEEPENS: President Bola Tinubu has announced a no-confidence vote on himself, unknown to him. He inadvertently admitted that he is unable to do the job and that his administration is in crisis when he inaugurated two hurriedly cobbled up, new-fangled economic committees to run things and revive economy. The first one is a 31-member Presidential Economic Coordination Council (PECC), while the other is a 14-man Economic Management Team Emergency Task Force, code-named (EET).

If Nigerians noticed the move by Tinubu, they didn’t seem to give a damn. Many had long given up on the Tinubu presidency anyway and they have switched off its activities. They have come to the eerie realization that Tinubu is not the man to get Nigeria out of the morass of poverty and underdevelopment, so many have long moved on with their lives, leaving the man to continue with his extended blundering and shadow-boxing.

The teams are made up of the usual culprits: the jaded Dangote-Otedola-Elumelu circle; the Bismarck Rewane-Doyin Salami-Soludo celebrity-economists and the same raucous crowd of  governors and ministers. The same motley crowd of people who brought Nigeria to her current tragic destination has been gathered again!

Apparently, Bola Tinubu forgot he had just last February, assembled the Dangote-Elumelu hawks as his Economic Advisory Council members. Scratch! That was just another presidential blunder out of so many. Now PECC and EET are Tinubu’s NEW DEAL. Call it “peck and eat” if you like but that’s the new buzz in Aso Rock. But for discerning minds, this is a clear sign that crisis has deepen in Tinubu’s administration.

SELF-INDICTMENT: But which serious president sets up a new economic management task force after 10 months in office? What about its cabinet? Has it been rid of the failed ministers and aides whose apparent failure warranted a side team like this? What has the new government been doing in office all this while? What about the election manifesto and the president’s economic vision Could it be that all these have been forgotten in 10 months to the point that outsiders are needed to give direction and “revive” the economy?

Now some ministers and state governors have been co-opted into this  new TASK FORCE. They are mandated to meet twice a week in Abuja for the next six months. So what happens to the governors’ duties back home? What about the ministers’ core assignments? All of this seems quite weird right now. The simple message here is that the president has lost focus and direction.  Vision, if any, has failed him. The presidency is weak and puny nobody is holding forth in case the president falters.

BLANK SCORECARD: Now almost one year in office, no scorecard, nothing to report. All the positive indictors the president met upon inauguration have all crashed to near zero. Even the deposits in the blame banks have been exhausted  – there’s nobody to blame anymore!

LOW CAPACITY, LOW ENERGY: This column has warned right before election that Tinubu hasn’t the requisite mental and physical capacities to lead Nigeria. As can be seen by all, President Tinubu has not managed to tackle any of the fundamentals of the economy and the polity; the very basic expectations in governance are not being attended to. For instance, the corruption monster rages on afield, with Tinubu seemingly not interested in caging it. Official graft has therefore worsened under his watch. About N21 billion budgeted for his Chief of Staff as against N500m for the last occupant of that office has become the compass  for graft in Tinubu’s Nigeria. Today,  the police is on a manhunt for the investigative journalist exposing  filthy  Customs men while the rogues in grey uniform are overlooked. The president personally ballooned the cost  of governance by forming a large, lumbering cabinet and showering them with exquisite SUVs, among other pecks.

Insecurity is at its worst with no fresh ideas to tackle it. The country is in semi-darkness as power generation and distribution is at near-zero levels. Importation goes on at a massive scale, productive capacity has dwindled further and living standard of Nigerians is at the lowest ebb now. There’s hardly anything to commend the Tinubu administration so far.

WHO WILL RESCUE THE SITUATION: As Nigeria’s socioeconomic crises deepen, and the president’s handicaps can no longer be concealed, who will rescue the polity? All the stress signs are there; the fault lines are all too visible to be ignored anymore. Recently,  we have seen civilians brazenly butchering officers and men of the Army and the army brutishly exacting reprisals almost uncontrolled. We see the escape from Nigeria, of the Binance executive who had been invited to Nigeria and then slammed into detention. That a foreigner could slither out of the hands of security personnel and slip out through Nigeria’s borders, suggests unspeakable ills about the country. The other day, so-called MINING GUARDS in their thousands,  were suddenly ‘manufactured’ –  uniforms, boots, arms and all. They are conjured into existence ostensibly to guard the mines. Which mines? Whose mines? How much do the mines contribute to the federation account? Are we using taxpayer’s money to fund an army to protect largely private and illicit mines? Why are we committing harakiri by throwing more armed men into our unmanned spaces? Even the Nigerian Navy has been unable to protect Nigeria’s oil wells! The Mining Guard is yet another  symptom of an insipient loss of control by the President.

Finally, for the first time in a long while, an editor, Segun Olatunji, was abducted from his home in Lagos. For two weeks,  no one knew his whereabouts and no arm of the military cum security agencies owned up to picking him in such bandits-style operation. It took the intervention of foreign media and human rights bodies for the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) to own up they abducted him,  and eventually release him. Not one charge was brought against him.

Not even under the military junta were editors kidnapped by security agencies in this manner. The point is that the so-called democrat-president is losing patient with the media. There shall be many more abductions and media mugging in the coming days. When a government fails,  it kicks the media’s ass for reporting the failure; that’s the historical pattern!

Things will go from bad to worse and government would respond in more undemocratic and authoritarian ways. Lastly,  it’s unlikely that Dangote and Co can rescue the dying Tinubu presidency? These are fortune-hunters craving the next billion dollars to shore up their egos. To mitigate the looming crisis, Tinubu must quickly reshuffle his cabinet that is currently filled with dead woods and rogues. Many of them are too big for their shoes and they are not given to the rigors of work.

In fact, Tinubu must as a matter of urgency, fortify the presidency by changing his chief of staff to a Raji Fashola kind. As it is,  the hub of the presidency is its weakest link.

Steve Osuji writes from Lagos. He can be reached via: steve.osuji@gmail.com

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By Dr Chidi Amuta

Within the diverse pantheon of African rulership, something curious is emerging.  In many ways, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda is fast emerging as a model of the transformation of democracy into authoritarianism in Africa. While Museveni has retained his nationalist streak in the fight against the global LGBTQ epidemic as well as his isolated battles against Western multinational exploitation and blackmail, his practice of democracy and adherence to the rule of law would disappoint pundits of African democratic enlightenment.

He has repressed basic freedoms, violated the rights of his political opponents, bludgeoned opposition political figures and jailed those who disagree with him. He has enthroned what is easily a personality cult of leadership that is easily a combination of draconian military dictatorship and crass authoritarianism. That is not strange in a continent that has produced the likes of Nguema, the Bongos and Paul Biya.

In addition, Museveni  now displays some of the worst excesses of Africa’s famed authoritarianism, dictatorial indulgence and the dizzy materialism of its leadership. For instance, the president is reported to travel around with an interminable motorcade that includes a luxury airconditioned toilet.  Worse for Uganda’s democracy are the recent stories of  Museveni’s manouvres towards self succession. Specifically, he has appointed his son as Chief of the army, a move which many observers of Uganda see as a pointer to his succession plan.

For me,  the unfolding Museveni  authoritarianism is a classic instance of the transformation of African leaders from revolutionary nationalists  to authoritarian emperors. I once met and spoke with the early Museveni. He had emerged from a bush war as a liberator and valiant popular soldier that was heralded into Kampala as a liberators. He came to mend a broken nation from the locust ears of Idi Amin and Milton Obote.

The Museveni that I sat and conversed with in the early 1990s  was a committed socialist. He was an African nationalist. He was a social democratic politician  with a strong social science background. His primary constituency was the people most of whom fired his liberation movement in the countryside. We exchanged ideas freely on the thoughts of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels,  Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney and Amilcar Cabral among others.

As the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the new Daily Times under Yemi Ogunbiyi, I initiated and conducted a one on one interview with Yoweri Museveni in his early days after the overthrow of Obote with the backdrop of the Idi Amin carnage. What follows is both a travelogue and a reminiscence of the Museveni before now. Is it the same Museveni or are there two Musevenis?

In 1991, I scheduled a trip was to Kampala to interview Yoweri Museveni. I travelled alone through Addis Ababa and Nairobi. In those days, inter African flight connections were a nightmare of stops and delayed connections. I arrived Kampala and found my long standing friend, Dr. Manfred Nwogwugwu,  a demographer who was based in Kampala as head of the United Nations Population Commission. We had been together at Ife where he and his lovely wife, Ngozi, hosted me for the weeks it took me to find my own accommodation as an apprentice academic at Ife.  He took me on a tourist trip around Kampala. The city was broken and bore fresh bullet holes and bomb craters, the marks of war. From Biafra, I knew this ugly face well enough. Kampala had just been liberated by Museveni’s forces after ousting Milton Obote and remnants of Idi Amin.

I knew as a background that Mr. Museveni had been helped in his guerilla campaign by both M.K.O Abiola and General Ibrahim Babangida, then president of Nigeria. He therefore had a very favourable disposition towards Nigeria. He was also quite influential with African leaders from whom Nigeria was seeking support as General Obasanjo was lobbying to become United Nations Secretary General when it was deemed to be the turn of Africa. As a matter of fact, I was joined at the Museveni interview by Obasanjo’s media point man, Mr. Ad Obe Obe, who had come to interview Museveni as part of the Obasanjo campaign.

Museveni’s Press Secretary, a pleasant but tough woman called Hope Kakwenzire, kept in touch while I waited in Kampala for my appointment. She was sure the interview would hold but wanted to secure a free slot on the President’s choked schedule. She promised to call me at short notice to head for the venue.

When she eventually called, it turned out that the interview venue had just been switched from the Kampala State House to a government guest house in Entebbe, close to the airport and by the banks of Lake Victoria. Entebbe brought back memories of the famous Mossad raid to free hostages of a Palestinian hijack of an Israaeli plane. At the appointed time, I was picked up from my friend’s residence. As we headed for Entebbe, memories of the dramatic Israeli commando rescue of airline hostages at Entebbe during the Amin days kept flashing through my mind. When I arrived Entebbe airport on my way in, I was shown the warehouse where the hostages were kept ahead of their dramatic rescue. The rescue had made world headlines in those days. It reinforced Israel’s military prowess and the intelligence dexterity and detailed planning  of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) but the operational dexterity and intelligence excellence of Mossad in particular.

We arrived a nondescript white bungalow tucked amidst trees and vegetation. It was a colonial type sprawling white bungalow.  The entrance gate was a long drive from the building itself. When your car is cleared through the first gate, you drive along a bushy drive way towards the building. The first gate has normal military sentry who already know you are expected. As you drive along the bushy driveway, some surprise awaits you. Suddenly some small figures in full combat gear dart onto the drive way and wave your vehicle to a sudden stop at gun point. They are too young and too small to be regular  soldiers. But their moves are rather professional and smart. They are ‘child soldiers’ or rather ‘baby soldiers’ who had fought alongside Museveni’s liberation forces in the bush war that led to the freedom of Uganda. No emotions, No niceties. They screen the vehicle scrupulously for explosives. These small men  have apparently been trained to trust no one. They ignore the escort and Press Secretary both of whom are familiar faces. They insist I answer their questions for myself. I explain I have an interview appointment with the President. They briefly return to their tent at the wayside and briefly confer by radio communication.

They wave us through to the building.  I am taken through a rather unassuming hallway and a colonial looking living room and dining areas that opens into a simple sit out at the back of the building. The sit out at the back of the building opens into a vast courtyard with well manicured green gardens. The extreme end of the green is Lake Victoria. At its banks, there are tents with simple garden chairs. The serenity of the location is striking. Even more chilling is the eerie silence of the location except for the flapping of the wings of flamingos and pelicans playing by the lakeside. I quickly framed it in my mind: “Conversations by Lake Victoria!”

Seated alone in one of the tents is President Yoweri Museveni, the new strongman of Uganda. His simplicity beleis hthe mystique of courage and valour that now define his reputation. He was a leading figure in Africa’s then latest  mode of political ascension: the strong man who wages a guerilla movement in the countryside and marches from the forest into the city center of the capital after toppling an unpopular sitting dictator and his government with its demoralized army . After him, Joseph Kabilla of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) and Charles Taylor of Liberia followed the same pathway of political ascension but with differing outcomes.

The man in the tent was dressed in a simple black suit. He welcomed me very casually and warmly. “Nigeria is a long way from here, I imagine!”, he said jovially as he ushered me to take a seat. As we settled down to exchange views, it turned out that our exchange would be more than an interview. It was more of a radical social science conversation.

We compared notes on the class struggle in Africa, the burden of the political elite far removed from the masses, the alienation of the rural masses, the working class in Africa’s imperialist inspired industrialization. Museveni was very knowledgeable and sharp. His intellectual exposure was impeccable. He knew a lot about  Nigeria, about our cities and the structure and general disposition of our elite. He had very kind words about M.K.O Abiola and his commitment to African unity and liberation which he was supporting with his vast resources. In particular, he supported Abiola’s ongoing campaign for reparations from the West to Africa for the decades of pillage during the slave trade and the subsequent colonial expropriation and haemorrhage of resources.

I still managed to pierce through his armour of social science and dialectical materialist analysis to ask him a few worrying questions about Uganda and Africa’s political future. He was generally optimistic about the turnaround of Uganda after the devastation of war and the rampaging carnage of dictators.

He added that he was facing the tasks of reconciliation among Ugandans after decades of division and distrust just like Nigeria did after our own civil war. He invited me to return to Kampala a few months hence to witness what the will of a determined people can do towards post war reconstruction. He told me he was out to fix not only the broken landscape of the city but more importantly the destroyed lives of many poor Ugandans. When I mentioned what I had seen of the devastation of AIDS in the countryside, he nearly shed tears but sternly reassured me that he would contain the scourge of the epidemic by all means.

I left Museveni on a note of optimism on the prospects of Africa’s comeback after the days of the Mobutus, Amins, Obotes and Bokasas. Given my own left leaning ideas, I found Museveni a kindred spirit and an unusually enlightened and progressive African statesman. He questioned everything: African traditions, beliefs, the assumptions of African history, the political legacy of the colonialists and the neo colonial state. He discussed pathways to Africa’s future economic development  and the urgent need to question and possibly jettison old development models being peddled by the West through the World Bank and the IMF.

That was Museveni back in 1990-91.

Dr. Amuta, a Nigerian journalist, intellectual and literary critic, was previously a senior lecturer in literature and communications at the universities of Ife and Port Harcourt.