*Photo: President Bassirou Diomaye Faye*
Senegal’s new President Bassirou Diomaye Faye has confounded pundits with his unanticipated characteristic entry on to the world stage. He is 44 years old, officially married to two wives, and was born and raised in the small community of Ndiaganiao, where, in an Al Jazeera account, “in 2022 … [he] campaigned to become the village mayor but lost.”
Until 14 March, 2024, just 10 days before the presidential election which took place on 24 March, he had been in prison for 11 months on charges of defamation and contempt of court.
Faye’s Facebook protest, for which he was imprisoned, was against the incarceration of thousands of pro-democracy Senegalese, including his political mentor, Ousmane Sonko, who is now 49 years old and who has been described by voanews.com as a “popular opposition figure and mentor”, and, by Al Jazeera, as “a firebrand with a soft tone and a sharp tongue.”
Sonko created a political party, PASTEF (African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity), in 2014, and according to Al Jazeera, “the party attracted middle management civil servants who felt frustrated and powerless as they watched their superiors steal money and receive kickbacks with impunity.”
In the 1999 presidential election, he contested and came third. Due to Sonko’s conviction, he could not stand for election in 2024, and so, in November 2023, while both of them were still in prison, he chose in his stead Faye who has been widely described as “largely unknown to the public”.
As Al Jazeera further noted, “overwhelmingly funded by the Senegalese diaspora from Europe and North America, Faye and Sonko ran an American-style campaign, campaigning as a duo ‘Diomaye Sonko’ on a pan-African ticket. They filled up stadiums and lit up the sky with fireworks.” Moreover, in the words of Al Jazeera, “They crisscrossed the nation, surrounded by bodyguards holding back frenzied crowds of young people wanting to get a glimpse of the men – as if the two were rock stars and not former tax inspectors.”
In addition, Al Jazeera recounted: “The crowds sang the anthem to their campaign: ‘Sonko is Diomaye, and Diomaye is Sonko.’ Broom in hand, [Faye] promised ‘sweeping’ change from a new currency and the renegotiating of oil and gas contracts to changing Senegal’s relationship with France and the French language. Faye promised he would put ‘Senegal first’ and make the Senegalese his priority.”
The opposition was also deep-thinking, clear-headed and pragmatic in its agitation for change. When the incumbent President at the time, Macky Sall, declared amnesty to all those who had been linked with criminal acts related to the struggle, the opposition saw it as the President’s tactic to protect the government’s goons who had been alleged to have committed acts of violence, including murder, against the opposition. But the opposition also recognised that opposing the blanket amnesty would mean keeping Sonko and Faye longer in prison and thereby progressively weakening the democratic agenda to change the government.
The opposition’s dilemma was like what is captured in the Yoruba proverb, “Ó só síni lẹ́nu ó bu’yọ̀ sii: ìṣó nìyí kò ṣeé gbé mì; iyọ̀ nìyí kó ṣeé tu dànù.” (‘They farted into one’s mouth, but added salt to it; the fart is not pleasant to swallow and the salt is not desirable to spit out.’) This is another case in which ‘compromise’ is not a dirty word. So, the pro-democracy agitators reluctantly accepted the “win some, lose some” dictum as a veritable principle of life.
Faye’s hypnotic transition from prisoner to President has immense significance for Africa, especially her youth. His relative youthfulness and that of his political mentor indicate that if the youth present themselves and are seen as a credible alternative to the elders they mean to upstage, the masses would give them unflinching support. Though Sonko and Faye were not known to have been stupendously rich, a wide range of Diaspora Senegalese trusted them enough to provide the funds to facilitate their success.
The trust and financial support may have been earned due to the fact that the Sonko-Faye movement had an unambiguous message which resonated widely. The clear message was that the old political order must change, and the objective consistently remained just that all through the struggle.
Moreover, the Senegalese struggle had a discernible charismatic leader and a complement of credible compatriots. So, in or out of jail, the struggle had its set of trustworthy figures and rallying-points, and they were focused and dynamic enough to ensure that once any of them was legally-incapacitated, a replacement could be seamlessly designated.
This set of attributes was lacking in the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (#EndSARS) protests of 2020 in Nigeria. The protests were initially hugely successful, but soon manifested the rapid burst of bubbles as happens with “Andrews Liver Salt”, using the imagery favoured by opposition politician Rabiu Musa Kwakwanso.
In Yoruba, this same effect is described as “Ò hó sùkùsùkù dá wáíwáí.” They started off as protests against police brutality, and according to BBCNews, “the demonstrations rocked the country for two weeks – and led to the government agreeing to disband Sars and set up judicial panels of inquiry to investigate the widespread allegations of abuse by officers.” Dazzled by this accomplishment, the protesters naively changed their goal-post and started demanding an end to the democratically-elected government of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Legitimate questions therefore started to be asked about the real motives of the #EndSARS protests. Were they truly to stop police brutality? Did they have an ethnic agenda, given the desecration of the palace of Elékó, the Yoruba traditional ruler of Lagos? And given the live virtual directing of parts of the protests by Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the secessionist Independent Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) that had been declared as a terrorist group by the government and the live reporting of the progression of the protests to Kanu by Igbo protesters? Was it also ethnically-motivated considering Kanu’s call for and the subsequent wanton destruction of properties in Lagos by Igbo protesters targeting Yoruba assets (especially those of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu)? Were the #EndSARS protests also an opposition design for regime change, given the transmuting of the slogan from #EndSARS to #EndBuhari? Could that have been the reason for the anti-#EndSARS protests in Abuja?