Control Trivia Quiz

Answer: President

The Burkinabé President was Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, and he had just been elected in 2020 to a second term. On Sunday, January 23, 2022, gunfire was heard near the Presidential Palace in Ouagadougou, and several cars were found riddled with bullets. Despite initial denials by government officials, it eventually came to light that Kaboré had been arrested by the rebels.

A tweet from him read: "Our Nation is going through difficult times.

At this precise moment, we must safeguard our democratic achievements. I invite those who have taken up arms to lay them down in the Higher Interests of the Nation.

It is through dialogue and listening that we must resolve our contradictions."

Answer: Prime Minister

When Paul Kaba Thieba resigned from his position as Prime Minister of Burkina Faso in January of 2019, President Kaboré immediately appointed Christophe Joseph Marie Dabiré as the new Prime Minister. He held that position for two years until he was fired by President Kaboré on December 8, 2021.

The pretext for the firing was the growing unrest and constant insurgencies by hostile forces. While Kaboré made Dabiré take the fall for the unrest, many Burkinabé felt that it was Kaboré who should have stepped down instead.

Answer: No

President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré and Prime Minister Lassina Zerbo were both detained by the military forces staging the coup. Both of them were able to use their Twitter accounts following their detainment, so, they were being kept alive. However, their location following their detainment was kept a closely guarded secret.

The ironic thing about Zerbo, a 58-year-old geophysicist, was that he had only held the post of Prime Minister for 45 days.

Answer: True

Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa whose political situation since achieving full independence in 1960 has been very precarious. There have been many coup d'états as well as many more thwarted attempts to overthrow the government. Notable coups and attempts at coups have occurred in 1966, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1987, 1989, and 2015.

In August of 2021, a plot to overthrow the government by the army had been thwarted and about 100 military personnel from the Burkina Faso Armed Forces had been jailed. Also, about two weeks prior to the successful 2022 coup, the government reported that they had thwarted a coup attempt. They also stated in late 2022 that the President and another official had survived an assassination attempt.

Answer: National broadcaster

The first step in the coup was to seize the government leaders and to detain them. The next stop for the rebels was the Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina, the national radio and television broadcaster. While some government officials had declared on the day of the coup that everything was all right and that the citizens need to return to their regular activities, the rebels went and seized the airwaves. That afternoon they broadcast nationwide that a military junta calling themselves the 'Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration' had taken over the government and the country.

Answer: Lieutenant Colonel

Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was a lieutenant colonel in the Burkinabé army. He got much of his military training outside of Burkina Faso. He graduated from the École Militaire in Paris, France. He also trained for ten years (on-and-off) in the United States in dealing with insurgent strikes, something that Burkina Faso has been reeling from in recent times.

In response to the insurgencies, Damiba authored a book "West African Armies and Terrorism: Uncertain Responses?" showing that he's not just a leader, he's also a thinker.

He seems to have amassed public support for his coup, with many citizens taking to the streets in support of Damiba and his junta, the Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration.

Answer: Insurgent strikes by ISIS

Much of the frustration directed at the government, and specifically at President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, were insurgent attacks, primarily by factions belonging to ISIS. Since the civil war in Libya in 2011 and the rise of the ISIS movement, attacks in West Africa, and specifically in Mali and Burkina Faso had become more and more common. Already, the Islamic State terrorists gained a foothold in the inland parts of West Africa, and they were attempting to expand their holdings.

The Burkinabé was seen as underfunded, with a lack of appropriate weapons and equipment. They also lacked sufficient training to deal with insurgent attacks. When President Kaboré was elected for his second term, the problem was seen as something that he had created and was unwilling to fix, hence the unrest.

Answer: Constitution

The first of the four to be restored was the Constitution of Burkina Faso. It was restored on January 31, and, at that time, Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was appointed as the interim President of Burkina Faso. When details became more clear, the transition period was set to be three years and then democratic elections would be held.

Internationally, this was not seen as a move in the right direction as the takeover was considered to be illegal, however, with the events in Russia and Ukraine overshadowing world news, by early March 2022 the coup was largely forgotten on a worldwide scale.

Answer: United States

While the United States urged dialogue between the two countries and asked for the safe return of President Kaboré, they did not condemn the coup. They also issued a travel advisory for the country as well as urged their citizens located in Burkina Faso to seek shelter and stay safe (and out of trouble). On the other hand, many countries, including but not limited to Austria, Nigeria, United Kingdom, France, Bulgaria and Luxembourg all specifically denounced the coup. Countries like China, Canada, and South Africa, while issuing a statement about the events, did not denounce the coup outright.

Answer: ECOWAS

ECOWAS - the Economic Community of West African States - consisted of fifteen West African countries who had a similar goal in mind, developing West African economies. ECOWAS is considered to be an integral part of the African Economic Community and has been since 1975 since it was founded.

When the 2022 Burkinabé coup occurred, Burkina Faso's membership was suspended in ECOWAS. Interestingly, the same thing happened to both Mali and Guinea in 2021 when military coups also occurred in both of these countries.