By Marcus Bangura/Op-Ed/Commentary
In the traditional African and collective imagination, a coup is a violent and unmistakable affair, bloody, abrupt, and dramatic. It conjures images of soldiers in fatigues, tanks rumbling through the streets, rifles and bayonets raised, the thunderous bang of boots on marble floors, the abrupt shuttering of parliaments, broken constitutional order, and stern-faced military leaders on radio, announcing their takeover.
Nonetheless, in our modern era, a more dangerous and deceptive coup is sweeping through the corridors of power, dismantling democracy not through force, but through diplomacy. Its most insidious adversaries do not wear military uniforms, but tailored suits and academic robes. These men and women stride the halls of power armed not with rifles, but with résumés, waging their campaigns not with bullets, but with pens, policies, and persuasive rhetoric.
This is the silent coup of the educated elite, unfolding not in darkness, but in broad daylight. Its weapons are policies, reforms, technocratic arguments, donor language, and legal acrobatics. Its effects are just as corrosive: a democracy hollowed out from within, even as its surface appears intact.
This new breed of coup is elusive, almost elegant, shielded beneath the polished veneer of legitimacy. The coup plotters are not rebels but insiders: lawyers drafting convoluted laws to evade public scrutiny; judges interpreting constitutions to serve entrenched interests; economists promoting austerity without empathy; and academics constructing theories that justify elite dominance while masking the slow erosion of democratic norms. Civil society actors, once voices of resistance, now manipulate data to align with donor agendas and political patronage, while media practitioners remain silent or complicit. Corporate magnates bankroll favourable narratives, shaping public perception to protect their interests. These actors, armed with credentials and connections, move quietly through boardrooms, court chambers, and university halls, engineering systemic shifts far more enduring, and arguably more dangerous, than any military junta could hope to achieve.
Unlike traditional coups, these operations carry an air of respectability. No constitution is suspended; it is merely “reformed.” No opponents are jailed; they are procedurally outmanoeuvred. Power is not seized but quietly centralized through executive orders, regulatory changes, and judicial activism. Public consent is not revoked outright, it is eroded, one technocratic decision at a time.
The danger lies in their method. Unlike the brash and visible violence of a traditional coup, these educated elites operate through procedural manipulation and bureaucratic entrenchment. They re-engineer constitutions, gerrymander districts, and weaponize regulatory agencies. Political opponents are not exiled, but rather outmanoeuvred through arcane legal manoeuvres or silenced by economic strangulation. The public, lulled by the absence of overt violence, accepts each incremental change as the natural course of political evolution.
Too often, we mistake technical expertise for moral authority. The doctor of law, the economist, the professor, these figures enjoy the public’s trust, their opinions weighted with the gravitas of education and experience. But democracy is not merely a system of experts; it is a pact between leaders and citizens, grounded in accountability and transparency. When those entrusted with knowledge exploit it to insulate themselves from oversight, they betray the very foundation of democratic society.
The consequences are profound and far-reaching. When power is captured by a self-perpetuating elite, policies skew toward the privileged few. Social mobility stagnates. Dissenting voices, no matter how informed or passionate, are dismissed as uninformed rabble. The vital dialogue between government and governed shrinks, replaced by the monologue of the technocrat.
As the African proverb warns, “When the roots of a tree begin to decay, it is the branches that speak of its death.” Our democratic roots are rotting, not from foreign occupation or military rule, but from the steady encroachment of a well-dressed, well-spoken elite class who assume the role of saviours while operating as gatekeepers. These individuals present themselves as rational custodians of the public good, yet their actions steadily exclude the very people democracy was meant to empower.
In countries like Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya, this elite rise has paralleled the retreat of mass participation. The post-independence dream of inclusive governance, built on the energy of liberation movements, student activism, and grassroots organizing, has been quietly replaced by a more exclusive model: technocratic rule, often endorsed by international institutions and shielded by academic credentials. Decisions that shape millions of lives are made behind closed doors, often in donor-funded workshops and foreign consultancy reports, not in open debate or participatory forums.
As Professor Claude Ake warned in the 1990s, African intellectuals have shifted “from the barricades to the boardrooms,” abandoning mass advocacy in favour of elite access. Ministries and parastatals are no longer instruments of public service, they have become platforms for prestige, procurement, and professional privilege. Policy has been reduced to a domain of “those who know,” while the majority are told to “leave it to the experts.”
The irony is painful. Education, once seen as a path to liberation, is now too often deployed as a justification for exclusion. As the proverb says, “Wisdom is like a baobab tree; no one person can embrace it.” Yet today’s elites behave as though they alone hold the key to national wisdom. They monopolize policymaking, limit dissent, and build systems that perpetuate their own dominance.
The tools of this elite-driven coup are varied and subtle. Technocratic governance removes power from elected representatives and hands it to unelected “experts.” Judicial overreach, often celebrated as reformist, reinterprets laws in ways that expand elite control. Corporate influence enables economic elites to shape public policy through lobbying and private financing. Intellectual capture narrows public debate, while dissenting voices are pathologized as “populist” or “uninformed.” In effect, democracy becomes a curated space, an exclusive club masquerading as a public forum.
This silent coup thrives on narrative. The message is constant: that ordinary citizens cannot grasp complex problems, whether climate policy, debt restructuring, or public health, and therefore, decisions must be left to “those who understand.” But as Kwame Nkrumah cautioned, neo-colonialism no longer arrives with foreign flags, it wears local faces and speaks in policy memos. Today’s “development experts” may not carry guns, but they wield assumptions and frameworks that systematically marginalize the poor and disenfranchised.
In Sierra Leone, for example, austerity measures, subsidy removals, and currency reforms have been introduced under the banner of economic modernization, often with limited public debate. The burden of these decisions falls hardest on those furthest from the decision-making table, market women, youth, informal workers, and subsistence farmers. Dr. Carlos Lopes, former Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, has warned that Africa’s obsession with pleasing creditors often overrides its accountability to citizens.
This elite dominance is reinforced by external validation. International donors, more comfortable with “fiscal discipline” than democratic deliberation, routinely empower technocrats while bypassing elected institutions. As PLO Lumumba puts it, African elites have become “servants of foreign logic,” implementing imported governance models that neither reflect nor respect the lived realities of their people.
The consequences are stark. Political apathy deepens. Youth are disillusioned, turning to protest, migration, or withdrawal. Civic spaces shrink, as dissent becomes inconvenient. Polarization rises, as citizens lose faith in institutions that no longer listen. When people are excluded from the table, as one proverb reminds us, “they may burn the village down just to feel its warmth.”
The path forward demands bold reassertion of democratic values, transparency, participation, and humility in leadership. Experts must advise, not rule. Policy must be debated openly, not dictated from donor templates. Civic education must empower citizens not just to vote, but to question, to critique, and to co-create. Institutions like the African Union and ECOWAS must recognize that governance without grassroots is governance without soul.
As another proverb wisely puts it: “A single bracelet does not jingle.” Democracy must jingle with the voices of the many, not just the polished cadence of the educated few. The greatest threat to African democracy today may not come from a general with a gun, but from a consultant with a laptop, a lawyer with a lacuna, or a policymaker with a foreign brief.
The silent coup of the educated elite is calm, calculated, and dangerously effective. To resist it, defenders of democracy must learn to recognize the well-appointed adversary, one who, in the end, may inflict more lasting damage than any general ever could. We must call this threat by its name and confront it head-on, reclaiming democracy not merely as a system of rules and procedures, but as a vibrant space of diverse voices and collective agency. It is no less dangerous for its lack of gunfire; indeed, its silence is part of its strength.
