Togo - Security Policy

If there is an area where the Eyadéma regime had implemented and developed a genuine policy worthy of the name, it is the area of security control of the population. A pro-active and planned sectoral policy had gradually taken shape, requiring enormous manpower and funding, supported by an ideology of conserving power and accompanied by a constant concern for follow-up in its performance with an obligation of result. This is a rarity to be noted.

It is extremely difficult to find one as well thought out and executed in the other sectors of life of the country like education, agriculture, health, employment, housing, Youth, women, town planning, community amenities, etc. Very early on, and especially after the Sarakawa accident in January 1974, when he saw the "internal enemy" everywhere, Eyadéma substituted a security policy for a policy of national defense of the territory. This was one of the perverse consequences to the uncontrollable devastating effects of the holistic ideology of the single party, the RPT (Rassemblement du peuple togolais - the Rally of the Togolese People), which advocated "the integration of the army into political life" from its inception in 1969.

By integrating the army into political life as an ordinary actor without any specificity (weapon carrying, for example), the Eyadéma regime forbade to build a modern army worthy of the name, strictly attached to its Function of the defense of the territory. The armed forces therefore replaced the police and gendarmerie forces in the administration of security which every citizen must expect from the State. Police and gendarmerie thus became suppletive or even absent forces in the management of the internal security which is traditionally devolved to them.

From the 1990s onwards, new actors such as paramilitary militias and guarding societies emerged to lend a hand to the army, generating more murderous insecurity than security for the citizens, especially at election times. The prominent role played by these actors in the process of the dynasty of the regime following the disappearance of the dictator Eyadéma in the bloody conditions is known. Their place was now more structural than cyclical if nothing was done in the political life of the country.

The three components of the security system are particularly the army, the central axis around which the other two actors are turning: the militia and the guarding companies. With its long form and the Jacobin concentration of almost all the national life in the capital, Lomé, Togo (56 000 km2 and 5 million habitants) presents itself as a small macrocephalic country easy to control safely by any authority obsessed with its security.

In the inability to produce a national defense policy like the one most African countries with the notable exception perhaps of Nigeria and surely of South Africa, the Togolese State or the authorities in charge of it entrusted the army with the administration of the internal police.

In light of the military’s action to install Faure Gnassingbé as President without an election, and its perceived partisan activity in previous Togolese elections, any military presence or activity around the polls would be viewed as intimidating by many Togolese and undermine the election’s credibility in Togo and abroad. This included the role to be played by the 3,500 special security forces that are to be deployed throughout the election period by the Ministry of Interior.

The Global Political Accord (GPA) signed in August 2006. The concept of a "republican" army, i.e., ethnically and regionally diverse, was spelled out in the agreement as a necessary change, as was a separation of roles between the army (national defense) and the police and gendarmes (domestic order).