Burkina Faso’s interim President Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was removed after a coup d’état took place in the country on September 30, 2022. The coup was organized by Burkina Faso’s armed forces who replaced Damiba with Captain Ibrahim Traore. The charges brought against him revolved around his apparent inability to deal with rising Islamist insurgency in the country.

Who is Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba?

Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, the former Interim President of Senegal, was born in January 1981. He finished his studies from Paris, where he attended École militaire. He later earned a postgraduate degree from Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM), where he specialized in criminology.

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During his military career, Damiba served as commander as well as lieutenant colonel of Burkina Faso’s third military region. He also served in the country’s Regiment of Presidential Security during the reign of Blaise Compraore.

Damiba took a strong stance against the rising Islamist extremism in the country by demanding that then-president Roch Marc Kaboré recruit the Russian paramilitary outfit, the Wagner Group to fight the jihadists. However, Kaboré opposed this proposal since this move had chances of problematising Burkina Faso’s relationship with the western countries.

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Damiba was the leader of a coup in January 2022, which deposed Kaboré as president. His regime proved ineffective in tackling Jihadists as well, and large parts of the country went under the control of non-governmental forces. 

Only eight months after taking charge of Burkina Faso’s government, Damiba was himself removed in a coup that saw Captain Ibrahim Traore become the new Interim President of the country. Numerous military officers who had earlier backed Damiba during the coup in January, had withdrawn their support from him, claiming that he had failed to tackle the jihadists. Demiba himself took to Facebook as the coup was going on, saying that there has been a “change in mood among certain elements of the national armed forces”.