I remember, as a freshman in journalism school, a lecturer telling us that some Western newspapers and other media organisations had settled on a stock headline to use each time an African government was deposed in a military coup – and it was ‘They have done it again!’

I cannot vouch for the truthfulness of this claim, and neither does good old Google have any memory of it. But it spoke to how commonplace military takeovers of governments had become on this continent.

During the 1980s, which is when I learnt the art and craft of journalism and we had the class discussion on American and European journalists’ framing of coups in Africa, 22 attempts succeeded, compared with a peak of 26 in the 1960s, according to research conducted by American academics Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne. Their definition of a successful coup is one that lasts more than seven days.

The first successful African coup in the post-independence era was staged in Sudan in November 1957 and, as uncovered by Powell and Thyne’s research, more than 200 coups, some successful and others not, have taken place since those early days.

The most coup-prone country has been Sudan, with 15 attempts, five of which were successful. The last was staged in 2019, ousting Omar al-Bashir, who himself seized power in 1989. In second place is Burundi, with 11 attempts, followed by Ghana and Sierra Leone, with ten each, and Comoros, with nine.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, witnessed eight attempts between January 1966 and 1993 but has been a stable democracy where the transfer of power is determined by electoral outcomes since 1999. Burkina Faso, Benin, Mali and Guinea-Bissau have also witnessed eight coup attempts each.

It’s clear from the statistics that the temptation to trade military fatigues for symbols of political power – residence at State House, the ‘His Excellence’ title – started waning in the 1990s, when 16 heads of State were forced by army officers to leave office.

In the first decade of the cufrrent millennium, eight coups swept those behind them to power – the same number as for the ten years from 2010 to 2019. However, whereas 14 other attempts were foiled between 2000 and 2009, only nine attempts were thwarted between 2010 and 2019. The average for the two decades from 2000 to 2019 was two coups a year, a much lower number than in preceding decades.

But the ouster and subsequent detention early this month of Guinea’s President Alpha Conde appear to suggest military coups will continue to be very much a part of the African reality. Including what happened in Mali in roughly the past year – the overthrow of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in August 2020 and of the man who was installed in his place, in May this year – this continent has already witnessed three seizures of power this decade – and we are hardly two years in.

Could this be an augury of what is to come – more coups and a yearly average that’s significantly higher than two?

For an answer, one has to look at what triggers military takeovers. In an article penned in September last year, researchers at the Institute for Security Studies, in Pretoria, contended that the main causes included mismanagement of diversity, human rights violations, manipulation of Constitutions to serve narrow interests, and corruption. This cocktail is present in numerous African countries.

When news of the Guinea coup broke, numerous leaders, some speaking on behalf of multilateral bodies and others on behalf of individual countries, fell over themselves to condemn the perpetrators. If only they were as consistently worried about legitimacy issues in all countries and particularly where coups have tended to take place.