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..as Israel calls off Israel-Africa summit scheduled for Lome
By John Eche with agency reports
Shifting population patterns registering that the Togolese population is getting increasingly youthful has been identified as a core driving force in the ongoing protests against the government of Togo.
For several weeks running now, thousands of protesters in the West African nation which has only been led by three men since gaining Independence in the sixties, with two being from the same family, have been ‘demanding that wide-ranging political reforms be instituted across the country.
Significantly, young people within the age bracket, 0-24 make up some 60 percent of the population of 7.7m people.
Among other demands, the citizens of the French-speaking nation which shares borders with Ghana and Benin Republic and is one of the members of the 15-nation strong sub-regional grouping, the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, want a revision of the constitutional clause permitting incumbent President Faure to run for an unlimited number of terms.
Adama Gaye, a political analyst, in his analysis of the situation stated that at the centre of the entire crisis was the naked fact that many in Togo were indeed “fed up with the fact that it’s the same family which has been ruling the country” across five whole decades!
“Faure Gnassingbe is now facing the battle of his life because the population of Togo is young,” Gaye reportedly told the Al Jazeera news network from his teaching post in Dundee, Scotland.
The protests have now run on for close to a month leaving many to wonder if this is indeed not the end of the road for the embattled president and indeed one of Africa’s longest-serving ‘ruling families’ in the modern nation-state era.
President Faure Gnassingbe of Togo
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