Today is the 35th anniversary of the conclusion of the National Conference in Benin Republic. The expectation then was that a process had begun for establishing a new social contract for the reconstruction of state and society, starting with a peaceful move from arbitrary rule to democracy.

Benin Republic had been ruled since 1972 by General Mathieu Kerekou, who, after putting to an end a cycle of chronic instability, proclaimed Marxist-Leninist principles as state ideological policy right from 1974. This orientation was operationalised through a government-controlled economic policy under the political hegemony of the Revolutionary Party of the People of Benin (RPPB), which remained in complete control of political power until the beginning of 1990s.

The National Conference was held in Cotonou from 19th to 28th February 1990, under the chairmanship of the Catholic cleric, Mgr. Isidore de Souza. The people of Benin wanted and devised a National Conference in which they could demonstrate that the country belonged to them also. When the government called the conference in February 1990, its aim was to “calm down” a restive population that had not received salaries for over six months and was about to revolt by proposing a new charter.

The delegates decided to take this literally. Their first decision was to declare its independence from the government project and proclaim the sovereign character of its decisions over the party-state. The stage was set for the decomposition of the Kerekou regime. The Conference decided not to take instructions from the President and made their decisions binding on him, thereby confiscating his powers. The Conference then established new organs to organise the transition to democracy and multiparty elections and appointed Nicephore Soglo to the post of Prime Minister. It was a clear attempt by citizens to birth a new social contract between the State and the people. It was a moment of great hope for people’s power.

The National Conference in Benin took its inspiration from the “Etats Generaux” that accompanied the French Revolution of 1789 and it immediately galvanised Francophone West Africa. The autocracies in Niger, Togo, Cote d’Ivoire and Mali all crumbled as they were forced to accept national conferences that dissolved their existing power structures and crafted new multiparty democracies. The National Conferences were manifestations of historic moments in which the agency of democratic forces became sufficiently strong to destabilise well established authoritarian regimes.

The central objective of the National Conferences was clear – to dismantle the authoritarian State machine and to broaden citizen participation in the political system. That was the take-off of the West Africa democratic project. This process did not, however, reach the entire region and national conference demands were subverted in many of the countries in the region. Nonetheless, it set an agenda for the region’s future. Democracy must be central to the codes and standards that would secure the region’s political future.

Thirty-five years later, the political situation has changed dramatically. Military rule, which was confronted with a zero-tolerance policy has today made its comeback following the coups in Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Niger. This has posed in a very direct manner an existential crisis for ECOWAS as an organisation and its democratic model.

The fabled leading regional organisation in Africa could collapse and a democratic recession might set in with grave consequences for the region. With four out of fifteen members out of step, the fear has been that more might follow quickly. That could still happen.

The populist nature of the mobilisation strategy of the putschists singling out French neo-colonialism as the evil that must be destroyed, made other countries in the region with close ties to France very vulnerable. This was what led to extreme measures taken by ECOWAS against the Niger junta, and a series of missteps were taken.

The question today is whether the so-called third wave of democratic transition in West Africa, which started in the early 1990s, is waning. The greatest challenge that confronted the process of democratic transition was that of ensuring that democratisation was accompanied by the institutionalisation of constitutional rule. Constitutions, it is generally acknowledged, do not in themselves make democracy.

Most African constitutions are excellent documents; they have the right provisions about the rule of law, human, civil and political rights, elective institutions, governmental accountability, and separation of powers, and so on. The problem, however, is that these provisions are often not followed. West Africa has been the pioneer in the current phase of African democratisation and it took off with Benin’s National Conference in 1990.

We should, however, not forget that West Africa has a history of resilience to the risks and threats it has been confronting. The people fought for and obtained the return of democracy in the early 1990s in response to the debilitating authoritarianism and conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s. Democracy returned with new constitutions, political parties and regular elections.

The questions that were then posed were: Who are the beneficiaries of this return of democracy? Did the national conferences restore the broken social contract between the states and citizens? How have the lives of the people changed in comparison to the previous military or one-party regimes that ran the tyrannical systems the people had revolted against? Few can deny that there has been significant progress, but the change in people’s lives has not been significant enough.

The optics of democratic rule was dramatically weakened by the corruption, electoral fraud and lack of a level playing field displayed by the political class. Opposition parties were frustrated by ways in which their pathways to winning power democratically were blocked by ruling parties even when they had popular support. That was the context in which ideas started to emerge that if this democracy is not producing results for the people, what is the point of resisting or opposing coup d’états in principle? This is a critical issue today.

The democracy crisis of the region is linked to its political sociology, that the leaders do not resemble the people. We need to understand that West African citizens have always had a profound commitment to democracy, which their leaders have lacked, and it is that spirit that has maintained the democracy project alive over the decades, as successive leaderships have removed democratic gains placed on the table by citizens.

The ongoing battle in the region is between efforts at state capture by the political class and citizens’ attempts to entrench an inclusive democratic culture. The result of the history of an irresponsible political class misgoverning the region has been the emergence of a youth bulge that is too excluded for peace to reign and the emergence of violent extremism, both of which have negative impacts for democracy.

In Benin Republic today, President Talon has been systematically undermining the democratic system and sending all possible political opponents to jail or into exile. He is ready to announce a third-term agenda in a context in which the very young population of the country has virtually no memory of their nation’s moment of pride with the National Conference that took place thirty-five years ago. Be that as it may, the struggle for democracy must continue.